How I got my husband from being a couch potato to running his first half marathon!

20 years together, 3 kids, and 13.1 miles later

Hi friends, Happy Saturday! For many, many years, I’ve begged my husband to run with me, and my offers had always been fastly declined. That is until this summer, when he committed and finally signed up for his first half marathon ever. While my husband has always been athletic in playing soccer on and off throughout his life, he hadn’t spent too much time long distance running. Lucky for him, he’s married to someone who is quite the expert on it.

The chosen race and Training

For our race, we chose our local City to the Sea half marathon in our beautiful San Luis Obispo. For training, I followed my regular running schedule of lunch runs and weekend runs, while he started a few weeks before. He would go out running in afternoons while I was working or in between kid pickups. We were able to get out together a couple of times and run about 7 to 10 miles each time. Running with him forced me to push myself a little harder and maintain an average of 9 minutes a mile, which is a time I normally didn’t see when running alone. My husband even lost 6 pounds in the timeframe of two weeks!

Race day and a new a PR

Sharing race day with someone is so special. You get to watch them experience the same emotions you’ve forever described and the same sense of pride in accomplishing something you work for physically and mentally. Rain showed up HARD that day, with it being the day of the week that we were expecting the most rain. While we ran most of the race in rain, it was perfect. If anything, the rain and cooler weather motivated us to run even faster. At mile 13.1, we got to celebrate our success and discover that I set a new PR in my running journey. I took 15 minutes off my previous race times!

What’s next?

For me, the next big race is the upcoming 2026 LA Marathon. It is a really big deal for me. I earn my Loyal LA pin for it being my second consecutive time running it. I plan to enter the 2026 New York Marathon Lottery in Feburary as well. My Chicago 2026 Marathon Lottery attempt was not successful, but I am happy that I entered and tried . So far, I have the Houston Texas Rodeo 10k run on my agenda, in which I am so excited to run with 2 of my work besties and, of course, explore Texas. As for my husband, we are still planning on continuing our runs together, and there is still hope he can join me at the LA Marathin as a runner. Only time will tell.

Thanks for reading my blog friends, and have a good weekend!

Csy-Lux