Tips for your family during marathon training

1. Sleep:  It is critical for the spouse/significant other & children to get a good night's sleep because let's face it, if they are up sick, bedwetting, or just tossing and turning, we are going to pay for it. Nothing worse than an early morning run on little to no sleep because we are going to get up to do the run no matter what, & you don't want to see angry marathon mom after a long run with little rest. So please keep the sleepytime shitshows to a minimum.

2. Eat your own snacks:  Listen, we don't touch the Pirate Booty or the Coors light..especially in training  ...so do not go through the stash of Honey Stingers like it's Trick or Treat.Yes, they do taste good, but they are purely functional & too expensive for you to be tossing them back like gummy bears by the bag load. And by the way, the Nuun tablets are not some new flavored water product for you & the kids. Leave them be.

3. Pep talks: We know you are so sick of us talking about it...the runs, the fuel, the tightness, the wall (that would be the point during the 26.2 miles when we run out of glycogen stores, part of the training is to try to outsmart the wall)  there's so much to do to prepare the body for this race...like practicing how to fuel (refer to #2). But sometimes, as the highs & lows of training hit us, we do feel like we are screwed. When we say we had the worst run ever, & how in the heck am we going to make it through...take that as your cue to say "Honey, you have put together a plan, you are doing a great job, you will nail it."  And repeat....

4. All fun ends by 10:00 PM: Sounds prudish & rather lame...but trust me, this is for the best for all. We're happy to engage in a little cocktail hour & entertain friends & family, just make it early. You will be thankful we crawled into bed by 10 & were snoring by 10:10. Marathon training does not even come close to any other training we've done in the past. It is exhausting, & it is a huge commitment...when we're not doing it, we're thinking about it...constantly...so the exhaustion is as equally emotional as it it physical. Send us to bed & don't take it personally...& don't wake us up.

5. At the end, on race day, pat yourself on the back: We know what a sacrifice/strain this can be to the family... all those long runs throughout the training which means you are on kid duty...the early mornings which equates to a tired mom, tired wife, & tired maid...having to listen to us talk endlessly about whether Runguard is as good as Body Glide, how many chews are enough per 45 minutes, & my personal favorite, hearing us stumble down the stairs at 5am because we are so tight first thing in the morning we can really only make it down sideways or we kind of walk-fall down the stairs....but we remember, we are doing this for our family as much as we are doing it for ourselves... trying to set an example for our children, our family. It is almost as much your marathon as it is ours...so when we get to that finish line, it's every bit our finish as it is yours. After you tell us we nailed it, pat yourself on the back...you nailed it too:)