When your partner is not a runner

When your partner is not a runner | Daily Tribune

“They met through a run club,” makes for a cute story.

But what if your spouse or partner is not a runner?

The harsh reality is not everyone finds it easy to understand a runner’s lifestyle. When I started running earnestly sometime in 2018, my social life was turned upside down.

Suddenly, I would forego nights out with friends to enable me to wake up really early for runs. With long run Sundays starting between 3 to 4 a.m., I would ideally be in bed between 6 to 7 p.m. on Saturdays.

Whereas I‘d used to have wine with practically every meal, I have since completely abandoned alcohol and avoid it even during work and social events (mocktails have been my life saver). I have therefore shied away from gatherings where drinking alcohol is an implied part of the agenda.

Every free time I get from work and family, I’d rather spend in the gym for strength and conditioning or for doing wellness stuff like physiotherapy, sauna and cold plunges.

Vacations? These have become mostly “runcations” with the schedule revolving around out-of-town races I participate in.

Worse, I can’t stop talking about fitness and running. The books I read, the podcasts I listen to, the jokes I find funny more or less have something to do with health, nutrition and running.

A lot of people who know me saw this not so gradual evolution and were left scratching their heads.

I remember in an interview, Robert Redford said of his best friend, the late Paul Newman, that when the latter all of a sudden found his passion for car racing at a fairly late age of 47, the latter had become utterly boring.

Redford complained that car racing was all Newman could talk about whenever they’d hang out and wasn’t too happy about it.

After reading this interview, I wondered if I had become such a bore to be with too.

Luckily, my two sons don’t seem to think so — since they have become interested in fitness and running as well. Am fortunate, too that my best friend got into running at the same time as me.

But what of the people whose significant others are not into running?

The first possible point of friction is the lack of time. Runners are busy people, especially those who have to juggle a full time job and their passion for the sport. This means that a significant other will often have to adjust to whatever crumbs of free time left the runner in his or her life has.

If the significant other happens to be nocturnal, this can make the problem more pronounced.

Also runners often exhaust their energies on their sport and the training that goes with it so a significant other may have to get used to complaints about perennially being tired, having DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) and, worse, getting injured.

The financial cost that comes with running is also another thing that a partner might frown about. Running, even as a hobby, is not cheap. I have discussed this in previous columns. This might be a cause of disagreement between people in a relationship.

Does this mean that a runner-non-runner relationship cannot work? Certainly not. None of the above mentioned difficulties are insurmountable by any means. In a loving and supportive relationship, a non-runner significant other will perfectly understand and even be proud of his or her partner’s level of passion and discipline.

A runner can also benefit from his or her non-runner partner’s different perspective on things as the latter massages the runner’s sore muscles and, occasionally, bruised ego from a missed target pace.