Do's and don'ts · May 30, 2023 · 2 min read
Whose day is it
Before every shared workout one of us is the engine and the other is the governor, and we say which out loud before the first step.
Most couples-training advice is a lie told with a smile, because you won't hold the same watts, you won't want the same long-run pace, and one of you will be ready to chat at mile eight while the other is having a private argument with a hamstring. In our house the engines don't match, Jay is faster, and that stopped being interesting a long time ago, so the useful question is what you do about it on a Saturday morning.
The rule
Before every shared session, one person's name goes on the workout. That person is the engine, so they set the pace, they pick the effort, and they say when it's over, and the other person is the governor, whose whole job is to sit on that pace and keep it honest. It sounds too simple to matter, and it has settled more arguments than anything else we do.
What it looked like at Hibiscus
May 2023 was Michelle's day. She had a PR in her legs and a half marathon in front of her, so Jay's job was to pick a pace that was easy for him, hold it exactly, and keep her on it up Diamond Head and through the flat, hot miles after. She ran 2:12, a PR, and Jay felt fine afterward, which was how it was supposed to go because it wasn't his day. Six days later at Honu it was his day, and nobody was pacing him through the lava.
Where it goes past the long run
The rule also decides who gets the early ocean swim and who gets the later ride, which weekend gets the brick and which one gets the recovery, and what happens in the week when one of us is tapering for a race and the other is mid-build. In that week the taper usually wins the calendar, because the race is closer. We don't always get it right, and when we get it wrong it's almost always because nobody said whose day it was and both of us assumed.
The kitchen clause
One more piece of this has nothing to do with pace, and it's that dinner is not a workout. If the evening turns into a negotiation about protein, or who ate what, or whether the recovery shake counts, the week has already gone sideways. So we eat, we talk about something else, and we go to bed early, because sunrise comes fast here and somebody's name is already on the morning session.