Don't Propose During a Marathon

If you are a dude figuring out how to pop the question to your significant other, and she’s an active gal who is training for a marathon, let me offer you some advice: don’t propose during the race.

This race is not about you, nor your love for her. Your girlfriend has been training for this race for a very long time. She’s been getting up ass early to log in 18-mile runs. She probably iced a few shin splints along the way and spent hours curating the perfect playlist to get her through a few very disorienting long hours. She may have a target time, or a personal record she’s trying to break. If you know you want to spend the rest of your life with this woman, the most loving thing you can do is support her in that mission: get up early, make her pasta the night before, and show up on the sideline with an obnoxiously large poster, screaming her name.

Whatever you do, do NOT propose mid-race, at mile 16, like Dennis Galvin reportedly did at the New York City marathon on Sunday:

Personally, getting a ring on my finger at the specific moment that I am both overheating and shivering, my underboob sweat on full display, is NOT the moment I am ready to hear the love of my life ask me to spend the rest of my life with him, nor is it the moment I want to say yes. The only thing I want between miles 15 to 25 are to stab everything and everyone around me, probably now, including him.

If you simply must be the person who proposes at a marathon, wait until after your significant other has finished the darn thing. She won’t really be able to walk, but at least she’ll be riding the high of finishing a 26.2-mile race. Otherwise, this is what’s gonna happen: As Galvin’s cousin Kathleen Figueroa told CBS, fiancée Kaitlyn Curran “cried a little bit, said yes, hugged him and then said ‘OK, I have to go finish my race.” Romantic!