More on theTheme of "Invisible Runs"

On the heels of yesterday's post I felt I should 'splain my family dynamics a bit more, whne it comes to Ultrarunning.

My wife is a wonderful, loving, understanding  person, and is a former long distance runner, so she knows the drill.  But the plain fact is simply that she and the rest of my family are very jealous of my time. Let's face it, if I go out for a 25 miler on the Appalachian Trail near my home, you're talking a 6-hour run, plus drive time.  Boom--there goes half a day.  Vaporized.  And in 1998, when I ran the Massanutten 100, on Mother's Day weekend...that quest burned up a massive chunk of banked goodwill.

My solution has always been to run at "invisible" times--i.e., running at work whenever possible (my employeer espoused fitness time off) in lieu of going out for a longer/slower 1-hour run in the evening; beginning my long weekend runs well before dawn so as to be back by 8:00 AM; saving up my monthly "really long" run for when I was out of town on a business trip; etc. 

So I get creative to keep the peace.  We all, myself included, have our blind spots.  Some will say I should throw down the gauntlet at home, stake out my turf, dammit, and claim my rightful guilt-free leisure time.

But that's not my style or my personal choice.