During the early phases of our relationship, Sue and I focused on enjoying time together. She’d just taken on a new job, and I was in a state of transition working as a freelance writer for companies like Aquent and Creative Circle. I landed gigs with small companies, but typically, those were just like contract positions. They’d last through a couple of assignments, and the owner would return to their little core of one or two associates who had worked with them for years. Often, their ambition for growth exceeded their appetite for change.

So I worked out of the house. I was familiar with the lifestyle of remote work and home-based employment, because it began early in life. In the 1980s, I spent a couple of summers writing and painting in a two-story Chicago flat while my roommate worked days and nights at Rush hospital getting his Master’s in Exercise Physiology. That left me alone in the apartment overlooking Lincoln Park, where scenes of Chicago life passed by as if on a movie screen. I was writing stories for Illinois Runner magazine and working part-time as a retail manager at Running Unlimited, the Arlington Heights store that sponsored our racing team. Down in Chicago, I was doing occasional projects for my former track and cross country coach Trent Richards, whose company One-On-One Fitness specialized in training corporate executives how to stay in shape.

Staring out that bay window while also working on a novel felt like I was playing hooky from school. I guess I was playing hooky from life in some respects. Yet that experience prepared me for periods out of the so-called “work world” when I was either unemployed or serving as a caregiver. It taught me not to feel bad about myself if I wasn’t employed in a job full-time.

During those two years in the 1980s, I drew self-esteem from all the running and racing I was doing. In 1983 I moved from racing with a team out in Pennsylvania to living and running in Chicago summer. That fall I won several 10K races, beating thousands of people through the streets of Arlington Heights, where I won the Run for the Money 10K in 31:42, and the Frank Lloyd Wright 10K in Oak Park, where a rainy morning with 55-degree temps made the competitive instincts rise and flow.

All that winter I trained in Lincoln Park during one of the coldest periods in Chicago history. Temps dropped far below zero, yet still, I ran through the cold and snow, determined to “prove myself” somehow worthy of whatever vision I had of myself as a runner.

That was also tied to my vision of myself as a writer and artist. Having been unceremoniously dumped from work as a graphic artist for an investment firm, my mind was stinging from that disrespect. I poured myself into alternative pursuits that proved to be a pattern for life to come.

Sue seemed to understand that about me from the start. As we got to know each other, she understood that I’d had prior career success, but she’d also witnessed the weird mistreatment and dismissive policies of the firm where I’d worked when we first met. I owe her so much gratitude as the ups and downs of employment and contract work tested me these past ten years.

She’s had her work challenges at times too. I admired how she endured injustice as her position changed. That inspired me to be resolute rather than dramatic about life’s obstacles. She also did not fixate on my ADHD issues. Instead, she saw my productivity and viewed ADHD as a puzzle to be solved. A patient reminder from her was all I needed to adjust a routine, and it was the more minor things, like loading the dishwasher attentively or making the bed the right way, that helped me grow more consistent habits.

But most of all, we’d fallen in love. The “L” word entered our language along the way. I told her I loved her, and she said she loved me too. It was official: we were in love.

Our daily runs and rides added to those bonds. We made trips to Madison, Wisconsin to ride the hills west of town on hot summer days. She trained for the full Ironman that first year we were together and everything went well until a white Escalade stopped in front of her at the entrance to the Illinois Youth prison west of St. Charles, forcing Sue to lay her bike down and skid to a stop. Her Scott bike frame cracked. We were a month out from her race, and critical training lay ahead.

She borrowed a bike to ride one weekend in Madison and it was a tragic misfit. The bike fit was terrible and we ditched it that day. She was also going through some first-year job stress and the pressures caught up to her one day while we were running a ten-miler in the Herrick Lake Forest Preserve. Sue stopped in tears. At that moment, a teammate from our triathlon club happened to run past. She slowed, turned around and embraced Sue. I stepped away to let them have privacy. There are moments in life when women most appreciate the connection with another woman, and that was one of them.

A coach for our triathlon team came around the corner on her run and immediately stopped to comfort Sue. This was not the first time I’d seen Sue genuinely upset. She has enormous emotional control yet as she put it aptly when we first met, and it was evident that day, “We all have our shit.”

That trailside conference with the coach turned into action. She dated the team’s triathlon coach at the time, made a call on her cell phone to the head coach, and within days, a new bike was ordered and delivered. After she’d departed, I encouraged Sue to jog with me and keep going. We finished that run together.

Sue rode the new Specialized Shiv tri-bike at Ironman Madison and finished the race. The challenges still weren’t over. She’d had asthma issues coming out of the cold water that morning. It took the entire first half of the 112-mile bike ride to clear her lungs. She’d run the marathon distance and was circling the Capitol square when she passed me on the final lap with tears of accomplishment on her face. She called out, “I’m going to be an Ironman!” I burst into tears and ran alongside her a few yards. “You did it, honey!”. It had been a long journey to the end of that race, and we’d done it together in many ways.

In more ways than one, we were building our lives together.