OK, I'm going to brag about my fiancé for a little bit.
My future husband is a champ. He is incredibly goal oriented, and picks up new hobbies/skills/talents/expertise very quickly. When he sets his mind to something, it gets done quickly and it gets done well. He's a great racquetball player, and takes weight lifting very seriously. He's in incredible shape, and is very knowledgable about how to accomplish his fitness goals.
When we met, I had been running for a few months. I had a couple of 5k races under my belt, and had finished my first 10k a few weeks earlier. Early on we talked a lot about our fitness routines, and he made it very clear that although he could run, he had no interest in ever doing it ever.
In the spring, he decided that he wanted to run a race. At that point my plan was still to run the Anthem Marathon, so I suggested that he might like to do the 8k that morning while I was doing the marathon. So he signed up, and we made plans to go for a run together in the near future.
Well, it didn't go super smoothly. For a number of reasons. First of all - he's about 8 inches taller than I am. My fastest and largest strides at that point were still so slow that if he stayed at my pace, he was basically walking. Secondly - the state we live in can best be described as 'balmy' during the months that he was training. Going on his first outdoor run was definitely a huge shock with respect to breathing and sweating. Third - the neighborhood we were running in was very hilly. The route we went started fairly flat, and only got hillier.
Not that that stopped him. He worked a running plan into his already very busy workout schedule, and stuck with it.
When we got to the 8k, he informed me that his goal was to run the 8k in about 45 minutes, but he expected the race to take more like 50 minutes because he was still walking sometimes during his training. He asserted this more than once while we were frEEEEEzing at the starting line. Once the race started though, he was OFF. I was able to keep an eye on his red sweatband for a little while, but I had lost him by mile 1.
At the finish line I got my medal, got my water, and then tried to find him. I found him sitting on a stoop with his medal around his neck. Contrary to what he had thought, he had not only run the entire distance, but he had finished in 40:38!!!!!!!! 10 entire minutes faster than he had expected.
I'm so proud of him. When I found him at the end of the race I completely forgot about my own time and my own race. I was so excited for him, and so happy that he had exceeded his own expectations.
Even though running isn't his favoritest physical activity ever, he's really really good at it. He's also a really great coach for me, because he keeps me accountable. He asks me all the time what my training plans are, how they're going, what my times are, etc. With his knowledge of lifting and strength training, he's also very good at providing me with strength training suggestions. He's good at taking issues that I have, and diagnosing what is going on, and offering suggestions for how to fix them.
We're getting married in a few months, and we've talked a lot about the future of my running. I know that time is going to be tight when we're working and moving. When we have kids, it's going to be hard to work time in to go on a 15 mile run on Saturday mornings. More than once, he has looked me in the eye and said "I'm going to make sure that you have what you need to keep this up." If that means entertaining the kids when he gets home from work so that I can get an 8k in before dinner, or taking care of breakfast on Saturday mornings so that I can get my long runs in, or making sure wherever we live that we have a treadmill in our basement so that I can get a run in during kids' nap time.
I'm one lucky girl.
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