Carolyn Hax and the husband who runs too much

Carolyn's advice:

"You have to speak up. It may seem obvious that he’s robbing the marriage to feed his running habit, but you haven’t told him and he hasn’t figured it out. So a respectfully timed (i.e., when you have nothing pressing waiting for you) conversation is due:
1. “I love that you found running and eased your depression.”
2. “I have been hesitant to say something that risks undermining your passion.”
3. “I must say something, though, because I’m burned out. I can’t do all the morning and weekend child care without relief. I am happy to sit here and figure out an arrangement that allows you to keep training.”

Plus: Training that much is an injury waiting to happen; one or two off days per week seems healthy as well as fair. And can he run early enough on other days to be back before kid wake-ups? That seems like a fair balance of tending to his mind, preserving his marriage, strengthening father-child bonds and not breaking his spouse."

My take:

If Mom is doing the morning routine, Dad should do the bedtime routine every night. On weekends, Mom gets one morning off, and Dad gets the other. If Dad wants to run both weekend days, he needs to do it early or late on one of the days so Mom gets the morning off.

My husband and I both run daily and have three kids, and this is more or less our arrangement.

15 hours? PRs?

This was a good response until this inaccurate pseudoscience was thrown in. I worry that whoever receives the advice would focus in on this falsehood rather than the real message. Trying to show a sense of concern here is also insincere. Both partners in a marriage need me time and they'll have to figure out a way for both to have it for a healthy relationship. This is why people who run are so often wealthy or middle class - they can afford to have someone else watch the kids.

Actually there is some evidence that one day off isn't bad.

He's having an affair.

Lol. This

What are his PR's?

At the root of all marital problems is insufficient blowage on part of one spouse or the other. Blow ‘em happy.

Sometimes even the "expert" advice givers can improve too. If someone carefully read what the runner's wife had written to Carolyn, they would have learned that she had talked to her husband about how much he runs. So she had already "spoken up" about it. If your advice is going to be worth anything then pay attention and "listen up." Otherwise it is just a piece being read for entertainment.

Care of the children, housework and jobs outside the home all must be put before a personal endeavor such as running.

I subscribe to the Post so here is a link everyone can read (I"ve also changed out the original link) as you can share 10 articles per month:

wapo.st

Advice | Carolyn Hax: It’s tough to split kid duty with someone who runs 15 hours a week

Husband took up running seriously as a treatment for his depression, but now their parenting load is split unequally.

Link:wapo.st/4aDCsbN

I thought Hax's comment about injury was stupid. Other than that, isn't this easy? If he gets 15 hours of alone time, shouldn't she get the same?

I trained for marathons and had PRs when my kids were little. Time management is very easy. Get up early and get your run in before everyone else gets up. Any sort of strength training, stretching, etc. can be done at home with simple home gym stuff like resistance bands, free weights, etc. I used to do all that stuff while watching TV with my wife after the kids went to bed.

I think the thing that just grates on me is: how does he not see for himself how unfair this is? How is this even a conversation that SHE has to initiate? Does he just expect that she'd be fine with doing all this herself? Did he incorporate her into this change before he made it, or just expect she'd be a happy sidekick?

When the kids get older and more independent, you have more time for yourself. In a few years, he'd be able to do all this running without any issue. But until then, he has a major obligation he can't just toss to the wayside.

15 hours per week is an awful lot of running. With reflection, I never ran that much in any given week, even up around 70 mpw. This random new runner averages over 2 hours per day?? Unless he's training for ultras, something else is going on.

Carolyn Hack has been giving her bad advice forever. Surely 90% of the "reader letters" she gets are made up.

Agreed. I remember my son went to a doctor for an illness and noted that he was running about 50 miles per week, and the doctor referred to that as "extreme." My son chose not to mention that this was the first cycle of base building for summer and he'd be up above 100 mpw in-season, he thought it would blow the doc's mind. People who don't or at least haven't run shouldn't dispense running advice, but then I suspect we're all guilty of going beyond our expertise when it comes to areas we don't know well. It's kind of like how all of us here can spot the subtle or not-so-subtle flaws in a running movie but a non-runner wouldn't, but might spot flaws in another movie about whatever they know well.

If he lives in WA maybe he's running at parks, so perhaps the wife is factoring in commute time? Idk.

I.e. drive 30 mins, run for 1 hour, drive 30 mins back.

15 hours/week seems extreme for a new runner.