Dear Erik,

how do I get the wife to understand my desire to ride and give me the time to
train enough to at least be competitive? She doesn't seem to understand my
attachment to my bike.

My Response:

ooh... yeah... see... there is nothing you can do about that... i am lucky in that i met my babe when i was in full swing with the biking thing and i think she accepts that i am not me without cycling.. and she understands that it will be my own decision to stop and it will have to be taken on my own terms... in other words- she cant do anything about it and i will stop when i am good and ready...

i am sure that your wife sees cycling as a theif that steals your time away from the family... nothing you can do will change that... i am sure also that she resents a bit the fact that you are not willing to give up a part of your selfish single man's life... they always want you to give up all the single guy stuff you used to...and if you came to cycling after your marriage thats even worse because you are picking up NEW SINGLE GUY HABITS!!!...

dom perras said to me that stopping cycling will be the greatest heartbreak of your life, no matter what the terms... so you will either have to live with the friction or decide which heartbreak is worse.. losing your wife, or a part of yourself...

thats what it comes to in the end... you will most likely have to quit cycling to stay married... or at least you will have to sacrifice what little happiness you could have had as a competitive cyclist... and settle for never ever improving...

would she be happy with a compromise?... does she wanna do stuff like walk around aimlessly all day and look at crap or drive to some far place thats exactly like where you live and do the same stuff that you do where you just drove from?... maybe you could do some of that stupid crap... i dont know... but that even makes it so you will have to sacrifice training time... and thats not the direction you want to go in...

i bet though that you could be fit if you used the time you have better... you are screwed... you cant change your wife or make her see anything new about cycling.. so its better to try to work at the real problem from another angle- try to get fit with the time you have rather than to allow your wife to give you more time...