PR With Your Family! 5 Tips for Triathletes

Triathlon season is in full swing!  Most of you feel like this:

Picture from Nautica Malibu Triathlon

Is your family as excited about triathlon season as you are?  It is possible to have a happy spouse and family at the end of triathlon season this year!  Lincoln Murdoch agrees!  Not only has Lincoln been an accomplished triathlete for 20 years, but he has also been happily married for 37 years!

My wife Jen and I could not be more different in almost every area of life. She has a huge interest and involvement in houses, home decorating, etc. and is very good at it. She never works out. I’m a workout freak and race as much as I can cause I love to. She supports me and I support her. We find those things we DO like to do together and make sure we do them – movies, watching or attending sports/games especially college sports, traveling together, dogs, etc.
It’s not easy and it takes intentionality! But, it’s worked for us now 37 yrs. We’re each other’s biggest fans in what we do apart.

Lincoln offers these 5 tips for happy family after triathlon season:

1. Think about your death-bed. As you lay there are your kids or your spouse or your former spouse going to say, “I just want to really thank you for all those morning workouts and for getting that PR in that one race. That matters so much to me right now. Thanks for making my life secondary so you could achieve that.” Anyone want to have that discussion? I think not…

2. Do you think more about your next workout or your next date with your spouse? Many couples drift apart because they quit doing the very things together that they did which caused them to fall in love in the first place. Quit doing those things…and the “drift factor” will kick in.

3. Keep your spouse’s needs and desires first and if they need you for something, skip that workout! A few skipped workouts every now and then don’t matter a bit. What does matter is the person that is supposed to be the most important person on the planet to you.

4. Beware if you’d rather hang with your tri friends than with your family. Beware of any kind of temptation towards someone of the opposite sex who does triathlons especially if your spouse doesn’t. (Mine doesn’t but supports me in it because she knows SHE is the priority, not triathlon.

5. “Monitor” your spouse’s attitudes towards your involvement in the sport. Are they positive? Neutral? Getting a little negative? Outright opposed? React to those accordingly and you can keep your marriage strong. Ignore them and things could start to unravel.

Share your thoughts below!

 Find out more about Lincoln Murdoch here