Running is a Partnership

Six ways to keep the peace and stay on schedule

My wife Lena doesn’t get why I run so much. It’s not that she doesn’t understand on an intellectual level that running keeps me fit, relatively happy, and mostly sane. It’s that running 5-6 days a week doesn’t make a lot of sense to her. Given a choice, she’d much rather do a little bit of everything than a whole lot of one thing.

Over the last decade-plus, we’ve reached a level of detente over my training schedule. This has not always been an easy peace to maintain. We negotiate, we bicker, we occasionally get exasperated with one another because of my running. At the risk of offering marital advice in a newsletter, here are six ways I try to keep the peace: