| Still, this is a more reconcilable situation than that
of my training partner, whose wife patiently waits for him to get home from work, run,
then reacquire his appetite, even though she's been home and hungry for at least two hours
by that point. They probably don't even want to think about what their days will be like
when they have kids. And what of leisurely weekends together? He's off at a race, on a
two-hour run or, worse yet, waiting for me to come over to train. As Thoreau's aunt Maria
said of the difficult runner's patron saint, "I wish he could find something better
to do than walking off every now and then." Certainly
don't look for much help from us around the house. After all, who can spare the energy to
vacuum when there's a 10-mile training run in just a few hours? Nonrunners think that
we're like so many wind-up toys, who roam randomly until our power is temporarily
depleted, and that our mileage is merely a last-resort way to run out the clock. Once,
after I had run 18 miles to my sister's house, one of her in-laws saw me collapsed for the
rest of the day in an easy chair, and said, "Coulda spent that energy workin' in the
yard, ya damn fool."
Now, if this was Montana in the 1880s, and I was out training while
the family farm floundered, such comments might deserve more than a bemused smirk. But
just because we willingly expend 1,000 or more calories a day, this doesn't mean we want
to use our fitness toward "worthwhile" undertakings. When I was at Mark
Conover's house, his fiancee´ traipsed through shin-high grass upon getting home from
work and said, "Honey, I thought you were going to mow the lawn today."
"Yeah, I thought I was, too," Mark responded. Then we headed out for the second
run of the day.
Conover's kind of recalcitrance certainly isn't the exclusive
possession of Olympic marathoners. Those parts of our personalities that helped to make
any of us runners, indeed, that are honed by and rewarded in running—independence,
self-definition, self-sufficiency, introversion, muleheadedness—don't always make for
domestic bliss. It's no surprise that two of the three members of the 1976 Olympic
marathon team have been married more than once. Again, Thoreau is relevant, this time as
described by mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson: "There was somewhat military in his nature
not to be subdued....as if he did not feel himself except in opposition. It cost him
nothing to say No; indeed, he found it much easier than to say Yes. It seemed as if his
first instinct on hearing a proposition was to controvert it." Sound like anyone you
know?
Not that it's all bad living with a runner. Given that I weigh what
I did in high school, my future betrothed can rest assured that if I become too unbearable
around the house, she can always beat me up.
1999: Oh, the irony. A few weeks after writing this, I met
Stacey, so so much for all the whining about a mythical beloved. She insists that I'm
pleasant to live with, but that might just be because she weighs less than me.
(Plus, now he cooks and vacuums! In fact, as I write this he is
mowing the lawn.-SC)
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