Hi David!

I've got two young children and joining the local running club was the best thing I ever did running wise. I go to club nights when I can and when I cant no one minds if I can't go. What I've found is that as well as the two official club nights there are two other unofficial long runs at the weekend.  this means that you and your wife could potentially both run with your club twice a week while the other one looked after the littlies. You will get loads of support and will notice a huge improvement to your running.

Also if your kids are a little bit older could you go somewhere safe like a park and they could cycle next you you while you both run?  I've even seen a lady run a half marathon with a pushchair.

The biggest problem I had leaving mine was mummy guilt at leaving them to go running at all. But they now know that mummy runs, they love it and nothing beats having them cheer you on at races. I know couples who take it in turns to compete/childsit!

If your main worry is that you can't both go to club nights at the same time I really don't think it's an issue, it certainly wouldn't be at my club.

Hope this helps and good luck to you both

mumof2 x

My advice - get a good babysitter, you both join the club and see how things go. Just make sure that your children are happy with what you are doing, if not then you will have to think about alternate training times. Good luck with whatever you decide

similar position to what we were, she went the club, I did ownthing and got on with it and accepted we couldn't both go, thats life, but at least you get out and run

We have much older children who did a lot of babysitting for our much younger children when we were training for our first marathon together.  They also looked after them while we raced together which was nice.  But the novelty soon wore off and we are now regarded as running bores.  So we rarely get the chance to run together.  We take it in turns to do our training and to compete in races, which is ok as he is now faster than me.  We have also started to do Parkruns, again taking it in turns to run for a time, while the other jogs around with the kids or plays with them in the park.

Thanks all for the feedback. In one aspect it is good that we are both injoying having the same interest and similar goals, in another aspect I wish she hadn't taken to it and then I could have gone to every race, etc. We keep looking at events for the next few months and having discussions like, are you interested in this one? which weekend is it? what else is happening on that weekend? Oh don't forget we have to fit our parents into the calender (both sets live over a hundred miles away)? and then before you know it we are both angling to do it. The training nights isn't so much of a problem it is the weekend events, so I'm guessing start thinking about limiting the actual events and pinpoint one every few months.

Thank, I like the idea of both joining a club for the social side as this could work, especially if we both attend the events and one runs and the other looks after out 2 little ones.

A race off!! The winner gets to do the events. Survival of the fittest, a great lesson for the kids. But be wary of the kids being left with the cake eating slow one transferring bad habits!!

A running club would be second choice if the above fails to deliver.

Good luck to both of you

a race off, what a good idea. best get some training in first though, would want to come second to the wife

I run in the mornings at about 6am and husband runs in the evenings.  He has much longer legs it would be demoralising!

What a positive response mumof2 - have you seen our Great Debates <therunningbug.co.uk/.../debate.aspx. Might be a vote against running clubs being too elitist from you