Four years ago when I began running, my beautiful wife made the snarky comment that I was only taking it up because I had recently turned 40 and was therefore no longer a spring chicken. Truthfully, being a spring chicken has its drawbacks and I didn’t want that fate either. However, to be honest in this, I was extremely skeptical about running and was really only doing it because I had finally caved in to a friend who wanted me to do a relay with him. I used to make fun of runners and was positive they were only doing it because they had lost a bet.
As it turns out, I love running and everything that comes with it (except maybe the loss of all my toe nails) and have turned into a rather obsessive type who likes to disappear for hours at a time in order to get my fix. Which of course brings us to the delicate topic of how to handle your spouse during those escapes where you announce you’ll be back at a certain time and then you blow it by an hour. To be sure, I am guilty of this on more occasions than I can count. And as you can imagine, this has made it difficult to gauge my wife’s level of sarcasm related to my running and has forced me to be a little better at my guess-timations. To be fair, if it were up to me I would go out for 4 hours but I happen to like being married so I usually do my best to limit most outings to 1-2 hours for the sake of peace.
My typical schedule is to run everyday except Monday. A lot of my runs can be done on lunch breaks or late at night after my wife goes to bed, which tends to work really well for our mutual schedule, meaning I am around and available when she is. Of course, there’s no such thing as a perfect schedule when you’re putting in 55-60 miles a week and mileage is increasing, so certain runs interfere with our time. In those cases, I highly recommend that you tread lightly unless your spouse is a runner too and then maybe you can run together. This has yet to work for me but I’m still hopeful. In the meantime, I tend to watch my wife’s face for signs that I’ve pushed a little too far. In some cases, I clearly need to watch closer.
Common faces are what you might expect, especially knowing that sarcasm is in play. I get the one eye shuttered, half smirk a lot and I know it means she doesn’t take me seriously. I also get the eye roll followed by the sigh that means I have clearly blown the plans she had for us. I’m in the dark a lot about those plans and am in the dog house often, which brings on the furrowed brow, angry eyes, stern look that always means that if I go running now, I’m sleeping in the driveway. If she closes her eyes and shrugs her shoulders I have a 50/50 chance of not being poisoned later. I also have to watch for the gingerly laugh that might suggest she is completely OK with me being gone for 2 hours as that is usually a trap. Every once in a while my wife surprises me with a, you should go for a run comment, in which case her face is somewhat neutral. I have also learned that while those moments are a great opportunity for me to get gone quickly, they also mean I have a very limited window.
These are most of the faces exhibited by my wife and while there are a few more, it is with sincerity that I say that my wife puts up with a lot to be married to a runner, especially one who gets cranky when he doesn’t get his run in. Of course, my crankiness does not go over well and is usually met with a face that would make the devil wince. I originally thought that by demonstrating I needed to go for a run might induce less of the faces. It turns out I was a little off base on that thought as the unintended consequences have simply meant a higher grade of sarcasm. And while my own sarcastic wit is well-known among the cosmos, my wife is no slouch in the category. This of course makes for fun conversations both pre and post run, especially when I’m trying to get out for 20 or more.
At the end of the day, the relationship I have with my wife is special (maybe it’s because I’m a charity case and she likes that about me) and our 17 years together have proven that 2 very crazy, sarcastic, passionate people were meant to be together.
At this very moment, she’s rolling her eyes.
But, she’s smiling.