Love is a Marathon: How Training for a 5K is Just like Marriage
My wife and I just completed a 5K together. It was a great experience and a great accomplishment. It was my 2 nd official 5K and her 1 st 5K ever. About a week after the run, I reflected on our training and the completion of the run. I came to the realization that training for a 5k is just like our marriage.
We didn't even know we would be running in the 5K until 4.5 weeks before the actual run. We were not prepared at all, and we had only 4.5 weeks to train. I actually felt I was in the worst shape of my life, due to my lack of activity and terrible eating habits I'd been practicing recently. But off we went!
The beginning
The beginning of our marriage, we were clueless and didn't have any idea what we were getting into. In theory, training for a 5K didn't seem to difficult.
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We had our 5K training plan and we scheduled it in our calendar. Little did we know, there'd be unexpected things come up or that it would actually be a challenge to do what we knew we should be doing each day. Sounds a lot like marriage, doesn't it? Well, at least our marriage.
The grind
Once we got in a training groove, we felt good the first week. Then one of us would oversleep, or one would be ready to run, but the other wouldn't. Or I'd get behind on my work, and have to use our morning run time to catch up.
It was tough. Kind of like having kids, financial challenges, or life in general happening. Basically, it was our marriage in a nutshell, because all of those things have happened.
Then the week of the race, I was sick. We didn't train at all. It was looking bad, and I was beginning to doubt it was all worth it. I quietly wanted to quit and say forget it. My wife was still excited, but could sense what I was feeling. She didn't say anything. I think she just quietly hoped I wouldn't bail out.
The finish
A couple days before the race, she nursed me back to health and by the morning of the race I was feeling better than I had in like two weeks! But I wasn't sure how we'd do when we ran because of our lack of training.
Throughout our training, we had not built up to the 5K or run more than a five or six minute stretch. Neither one of us talked about a plan to run/walk, run until tired, or run the entire way. We just started together, and stayed together the entire time.
I'm proud to say we ran the entire 5K, and we ran it in less than the time we discussed as a goal when we first began training.
Just like our marriage, when things seemed too tough, the bad seemed to outweigh the good, and we weren't exactly sure how it was going to turn out, we got it done. We stuck together, we encouraged one another, and in the end we had an awesome and rewarding experience. Just like our marriage!
-By Jackie Bledsoe, Jr.
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