To be married to a runner.

Maybe at first, dating or marrying a runner might not seem like a bright idea. Really, who wants to spend most of their time with a fitness-obsessed freak who usually wakes up before the sun is out, hands over their hard-earned cash for race entry fees and is probably missing a few toenails?

My husband Abrie is NOT a runner. Nope. No way. But he is a great husband who quietly listens to his wife yammer about her sport. One might say he has successfully mastered the art of the “passive listener of running talk”.

To top it off, I decided to train for my first marathon, and I’m beginning to experience a nagging feeling that has started to intensify.

For once, I’m not referring to nagging feelings of injury; all is smooth sailing on the injury front. [*knocks vigorously on wood*] What’s really starting to eat at me right now is Guilt, yes, with a capital G. Early in the training cycle, it was a faint whisper, but with each passing week, the nagging internal monologue grows louder:

Your running is selfish!

Your running is annoying to everyone, especially your family!

You’d be a better mom/wife/friend if you weren’t taking so much time to RUN.

As runners, we are faced with scheduling conflicts and compromise. Sometimes running is inconvenient, and it doesn’t always just inconvenience us. Running can be a massive pain in the butt for everyone who relies on us too.

For me, the guilt is sometimes overwhelming. While my other runs were shorter and less frequent, and therefore more easily re-scheduled, marathon training runs require focus and dedication to squeezing them all in. This means I have less wiggle room in my schedule to work around a kid’s temper tantrum, my husband’s desire to sleep in on a Saturday morning, or spontaneity in general.

A typical conversation with my husband sounds a little bit like this:

Abrie: Do we have anything going on this weekend? I’d like to do A, B, and C.

Me: Oh, sure, that would be fine. We don’t have much going on. I just have to run 20km on Saturday morning, Oh, and I have 10km to run on Sunday. Can you fit A, B, and C into Sunday evening sometime?

Abrie: Sigh…

And cue Guilt.

In all fairness to my dear husband, he is actually incredibly accommodating. He supports my running and almost always has a delicious meal ready for me when I return home from a long run.

Despite that, I start to even annoy myself with the broken record statement, “But first … my run.” I think my husband’s accommodating nature actually makes me feel MORE guilty sometimes. I feel he needs to punish me by acting more annoyed. Then again, I don’t think I’d like that much either.

I suppose when you’re a wife/mom/friend/runner, you’re used to balancing multiple roles in life, and guilt is inevitable whenever the delicate balance of all things is disrupted. 

Marathon training stops for no one, which means it’s not conducive to pleasing everyone who matters to you. There is something to be said for being dedicated enough to attempt to make it all work, but I also have to have some self-compassion that there will be times when I drop a ball (or four), and that’s just a function of being human. I’d likely drop balls even if I wasn’t training for a marathon because, well, I’m a human!

So how do I manage all of this internal discord? On my pessimistic days, I begin to resent my training. I don’t let myself stay in that mental place very long, though. These feelings are my cues that I’m probably tired, and it’s expected to get down on myself when I look at my calendar, and fitting it all in seems impossible. I have to remind myself that I chose this. I choose to run amongst the chaos of the rest of my life. I must remind myself that this is temporary and that this training cycle has an end date.

I know that this is a wonderful problem to have; I have a lot of people who want my time, and I’m healthy and strong enough to train for a marathon. Sometimes it feels like a tough decision to compromise and make sacrifices when it ALL feels essential. But, just like we do when we run a race, we have to take the attitude in life that we just need to show up and do our best.

Oh, yeah, and when that training plan IS finally done: I am making my husband and children some damn pancakes!!