People who race together, stay together

 Kids, jobs, and life in general put spouses on the back burner. The person who you couldn't imagine your life without suddenly becomes your tag team wrestling partner in the game of life, trading off and collaborating to somehow and someway to get everything done. And when that date day you have waited for a month for finally comes, somebody throws up, a babysitter cancels, or some another mini-crisis occurs. This is the story of our lives. 

So... back to running. Rewind to October 2015. When I approached my husband about running the mini, (this would be the Indianapolis Festival 500 Mini Marathon I so lovely refer to as simply, the "mini.") I believe his exact words were simply "no." (Rewind also to the 2008 mini, Jason's first and only 1/2 Matathon, where his longest training run was 6 miles. This had a huge influence on his answer: ) But as an ambassador for the year's mini, it is my job to promote and recruit for the mini. So I was relentless, and when he said he would do it if I ran with him, I agreed. And for those who don't know me, I will admit that I'm way selfish about running, but I felt if it's my job to promote and recruit, said my obvious reply was yes. So I will forgot my level 2 seeding and a hopeful sub 1:40 time to make this a successful and memorable experience for us. (Although I totally think this guy can go sub 1:40 if he trains rights!)

So intstead of the weekly "sit down", we have a weekly "run on." Of course we start out reviewing our week thus far, what's to come, and plans for the weeken ahead, (our runs are every Wednesday after work). Our runs work on many components of marriage-coprimise, communication, and supporting each other. We compromise a on route and a pace, we communicate on how we are feeling, and we support each other when we are struggling on those last miles. When we are done, we feel like we can accomplish anything in our marriage, and most importantly reminding ourselves who blessed we are to still get out there and get after it at 37 years old.

I asked my husband what his thoughts were on our new weekend runs. He told me that they reminded his of back to the summer of 2007, when we ran together and cooked dinner EVERY TUESDAY NIGHT religiously. And we fell in love over that. These runs are the time when life is perfect, all is good, and we can accomplish anything together. And how fitting was it he proposed to me in the middle of a 5K in 2008. 

But at the end of the day, a seasoned runner with a career ending injury, told me this week, "it's not about the miles or the pace, it's ability to get out there and run." It with my nagging IT band and my husbands pending asthma flare up this week, we remembered that on yesterdays run. We simply "enjoyed the run."