My Hubs Loves Me

Today I realized how much Tom loves me.

Rewind 4 years and a few months to the summer after we got married.  I'm running with Tom and I blurt out, "Come on!  I'm not even getting a workout."  And there was the end of our running together and Tom's running, period.  No amount of begging, pleading or marital offers would change his mind.

Now come back to the beginning of this summer.  I was running with one of my besties, Angela, and I told her how much I would love if Tom would run with me again.  But I mostly just wanted him to work out for his own health.  That's when she became his trainer (remember, he refuses to work out with me).

She would wake up crazy early in the morning and meet him and our neighbor, Collin, in our garage for a training session.  Collin's wife, who is also a running buddy, mentioned that she would love if Collin would get in running shape as well.  So they all start working out.  At first they refused to run and they would do a lot of weight lifting.  Then they started playing racquetball and Angela made the losers run lines.  They eventually got their cardio work out going too but they refused to run anything that took more than 20 seconds.

Angela is also this super party organizer.  And besides training Tom and Collin, she organized a beginner, intermediate, and advanced running group, as well as teaching aerobics and organizing basketball group every Thursday.  Seriously, she was working out like 8 hours per day.  Amazing!  So, since it is the end of summer and she is a super party organizer, she decided to organize a race for all the runners she had been training/running with.

Yesterday we had packet pick up and got our t-shirts.  She flew a musician in from Portland and had a concert for everyone.  Then this morning was the race.  I ran the 1/2 marathon that started at 7.  The 10k started at 8 then the 5 k some time after that.  She had arranged for the husbands and families of the women that were running to set up water stations all over the route.  She asked Tom to help with the times at the finish line so I got someone to watch Morgan (thanks Tucker) and went on with the day as planned.

Almost at mile 10, I see Tom getting out of a car that Angela was driving.  He had on his running shoes and one of the race shirts.  He was totally there to run the last 3.1 miles with me!  I asked if he was going to run it all without stopping (I previously promised some pretty great things to him if he did) and he said that was his plan.

We ran together for about 5 minutes then I looked back and could see the first 1/2 marathon runner that was behind me and since he knows how competitive I am during a race, he told me I could go ahead so I could beat her (sorry Alison but you were my motivation).  It wasn't until I finished the race that I realized (with some help from Angela) that Tom had been training all summer to run a 5k for me.  They would get up and go play racquetball for like 5 minutes so they could tell us that they played but then they would really go running.  Oh my heart!  How sweet is that?!

I hitched a ride back to Tom so we could run the last 1/2 mile together.  I love this man so much and I appreciate what he is willing to do for me.  I also love and appreciate Angela (in a different way) for being there to be his Jillian and not let him give up.  I know there were some frustrating, yet very funny, times.

Now I owe him some promises.  And now I know he can run 3 miles without stopping so guess what he gets to do with me three times per week.  ;)