I get up and groggily stumble into the 6am Body Revolution class at The Fitness Lab almost every Tuesday and Thursday morning. This weekend, my husband asked if I’d be going to class on Tuesday, and of course I said yes. TO my surprise, he told me he wanted to come with me and check it out.
Our serious sweat session together brought back fond memories of one of my biggest fitness accomplishments. A few years ago, before we were even engaged, my then-boyfriend and I moved to San Francisco for his job. It wasn’t a move I wanted to make, and I was basically a real pain for the entire year we lived there. It put strain on our relationship and was tough on both of us individually as well.
Shortly after we moved to SF, I found a running group to join. I needed to run off my bad moods, I wanted to meet new people, and I had to balance out all the burritos I was eating! My husband, who I have never seen run before in my life, told me he wanted to join as well. We trained together for months, and even without ever having run before, he was consistently faster than I was. It was irksome, but I was happy to have the company before and after our runs.
When race day came, I told him I’d meet him at the finish line, but he ran next to me for all but the last mile of the race (after I urged him to PLEASE not let me hold him back from the adrenaline rush he was clearly experiencing). He was waiting for me, beaming at the finish line, and I have never been so overwhelmed by emotion. I couldn’t believe I’d actually completed my first half marathon, and I was shocked that my formerly lethargic significant other had done it with me. My time was good because he helped me stay at a strong pace and I truly felt like we had accomplished something big together.
That was nearly three years ago now, and while I’ve kept up my running, my husband hasn’t hit the pavement once. I look back on that time in our lives and I know that it really was the running group that got us through a tough time together and that half marathon was a perfect representation about how we are stronger together.