Unity is strength… When there is teamwork and collaboration, wonderful things can be achieved.
~Mattie Stepanek
I warned my husband that something crazy was about to come out of my mouth. “I think we need to run a 5K.”
I was not a runner. I was a stay-at-home mom still carrying double-digit baby weight from two pregnancies in the last three years. With my husband in graduate school, and a toddler and a baby in the house, exercise hadn’t been a priority. Running was just about the last thing I ever thought I would do for fun.
But it was an idea I hadn’t been able to shake for a couple of days. A friend had posted something on Facebook about a program that would take people from no exercise to running a 5K in nine weeks, and I was intrigued.
My husband, who had been to Army boot camp and served eight years in the Reserves, was all in from the start. He started researching running gear, jogging strollers and a 5K we could register for a few months later. Me? Even though it was technically my idea, I was hesitant. In high school, one of the physical-education requirements was to run a mile-and-a-half every year. I dreaded it and always came in near last. I remembered how slow I was. How I would sweat and feel like I was going to faint as my face turned deep shades of red. How I had to walk part of the way. I was literally in no shape to be running.
Sometimes, I joked that the only time I would ever run after high school was if I needed to save my life. In a sense, I did. Our marriage was only three years old at this point and had been dealt a serious blow. My husband had recently confessed to infidelity. While we were both committed to healing and keeping our marriage together, it was going to take work. We needed a lot of help to restore our relationship, and for some reason I thought running would be part of the solution.
I was desperate enough to think that training for a 5K would benefit our marriage. For one, we’d have to spend time together several days a week. We had registered for a 5K that was exactly nine weeks from when we started the training program, so we had to keep to a strict schedule. Quality time as a couple was something we lacked, what with two small kids and no family within 800 miles. During our training, we had a few offers from friends to watch the kids, but buying a jogging stroller was our guarantee that we wouldn’t miss a workout.
Second, I needed to accomplish something difficult — to push myself beyond what was easy and comfortable. I wasn’t sure if I could run a 5K or save my marriage, but I knew I couldn’t do either if I didn’t try. I hoped that training for my first-ever 5K would help me develop the kind of discipline and perseverance I would need to face difficult circumstances of all kinds.
Third, I wanted the physical act of striving toward a common goal to inspire us to do the same for our relationship. I wasn’t sure which would be harder.
Nothing dramatic happened in those nine weeks. I didn’t lose a bunch of weight. Our marriage didn’t heal automatically. But, week by week, we stuck to the plan and gave it our best effort.
The morning of the race, I was up with the kids before dawn, as usual. Their grandparents came to town to watch them (and us) during the run. It was a cold November morning and I questioned our sanity. This idea had always been crazy to me, but now that the reality of it had arrived, I was even more sure that this unconventional plan was not something normal people did.
My body practically hummed with adrenaline and nervousness as we gathered with hundreds of runners at the start line. And then we were off — putting our training to the test on the actual race route. It was an emotional 36 minutes. The first mile passed quickly. The second mile dragged. We saw our kids a couple of times on the route, and I blinked back the tears. As we neared the end, people we’d never met — fellow runners — shouted encouragement.
When the finish line came into view, my husband, who was slightly ahead of me, reached back toward me to take my hand. I couldn’t hold back the tears any longer. That one gesture symbolized so much of what we had been through in the past months. After all that had happened, he was still reaching for me. We were still in it together.
We finished the race holding hands and sobbing. Running a 5K hadn’t made our marriage perfect, but it had changed something in us, something I hoped would last.
That was eight years ago. We’re still married. We’ve run a few 5Ks since then, and we’ve had more than a few challenges in that time. But the lessons from that 5K remain. We make time for each other. We push ourselves to do and say what is difficult because we know it will be good for us. And we keep our goals in front of us, working together as a team.
I can’t say I love running yet, but I love how running makes me feel. Strong. Confident. Accomplished. All because I took a chance on a crazy-for-me idea.
— Lisa M. Bartelt —