Small miracles can happen

I have been struggling to get 4 runs in during the week due to work, the girls, and everyday stuff and yesterday I had a thought, albeit a crazy one, that maybe we could put the girls in the Wike and run to London's skating lesson. Given that the facility is only 2 miles away. Now on the surface this seems like a very reasonable idea but here is the fine print. My husband does not run, although he has expressed interest in taking it up for the sole purpose of being able to complete a sprint duathlon this year. He loves biking but there are not really any bike competitions and he realizes that if he wants to partake in some fun events he is going to have to take up running. Now you must know that Mike has been vehement in the past about not taking up running, so the mere notion of him wanting to run was exciting.

So the first part in making this idea work is convincing him that this would be an excellent way to start. We could take frequent walk breaks and break up the running in two sections with a huge rest in-between. Another factor is that since my husband does not run it only makes sense that I be the one to push the Wike, at least most of the way, to even out our running levels; however, I have never run before the Wike, let alone do it with both girls with a combined weight of about 90 pounds. So I did not know what exactly I was getting myself into. The last factor is that although it is only 2 miles to our destination, it is marked by significant up and down hills. I was determined though to give it a try and make it work. To my pleasant surprise, my husband agreed to give it a try. So off we went...

It was the longest, hardest 2 miles I have ever done. I have no idea how others run with a stroller and maybe they have a better designed stroller than we do and/or less weight to deal with. I found that going downhill was actually harder on the body than going up hill for you had to actually hold the stroller back so it wouldn't take you flying forward, needless to say my upper body got an incredible work out but my form was terrible during the process. The uphills also proved to be a challenge and I had no choice to share the burden of pushing it up the hill. Although we were only going 2 miles given the load, the newness to the whole running with the Wike experience and Mike's virgin running legs, we did a run/walk strategy and made it to the arena just in time. On the way home we decided to try a different route for the hills were just too steep to really make it enjoyable and had a much better experience on the way home. We still had to alternate pushing the stroller and took frequent walk breaks but in the end we covered over 6k total and most importantly Mike was not scared off from doing this next Monday.

So there is hope out there to all those with significant others who have declared not to join the running club. Some day it might just happen and when you least expect it. Now here is to hoping that Mike will completely catch the running bug and maybe one day we can cross a marathon finish line together but I know I am getting ahead of myself now.


Juliana