Are we ready for matching track suits or divorce court?

To avoid the tennis ball, I cocked my body to the left, taking a hit in the kidney. Instead of a ball, I returned a glare.

“I wasn’t trying to hit you,” my husband said, “I was just aiming in your general direction so you wouldn’t have to run to get the ball.”

Who says chivalry is dead? No one who exercises with their spouse. It doesn’t start this way. It begins as man-on-woman competition, like Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs.

My husband took up kayaking a year or two before I did. Then he presented me with a long yellow boat for my birthday. The first time we went out on the lake together, he was paddling like a native on the introductory sequence of Hawaii Five-O. I couldn’t even get the thing to go straight. Instead I circled like a wet dog trying to bed down for the night.

The first time we went biking together, I was sporting only a sports bra and shorts. I assumed he was enjoying the scenery as we climbed Hurricane Road, especially the standing pedaling hill sequences. Afterwards, I asked him if he had a good time. “I could have gone faster,” he said flatly. It was the last time I asked him on a bike ride.

I know couples who can’t play tennis together unless it’s a doubles game with his and her attorneys. Why is it so difficult for a husband and wife to exercise together? Are Mars and Venus that far apart when it comes to working out?

Men are inherently stronger. My arms are about half the size of my husbands. And I am just behind Jada Pinkett Smith in that department. I can be paddling nonstop and he has to stop every ten seconds or so and pause so he doesn’t get too far ahead of me.

It’s no different on dry land. I overheard him talking with his friends about the qualities they wanted in their second wife: tall, blonde, and fast walking. He’s constantly three paces in front of me. It works in Afghanistan where there are so many land mines, but it is annoying when you are in the parking lot at Target.

I walk and bike to the beat of the Wicked Witch of the West’s theme song, it’s a perky song you can dance to, just enough for Toto’s ears to blow back a bit, but it’s not going to tire Lance Armstrong.

Walking or biking with my husband does allow me to step it up a notch, which can be helpful if you want to increase the intensity of a workout. But few of us want to increase the intensity of marital conflicts.

For this reason, when exercising with a spouse, approach it like a checkers game with your children or grandchildren. Be there for the experience, not the victory.

For men, it means pulling back a bit on your ability and not striving to prove your superiority. You won that contest way back when you shot that first wildebeest with a hand-hewn arrow.

For woman, it means bringing it up a notch from the leisurely pace of “Those mint green shutters do not work with that jewel tones landscape palette” to a point where you can’t talk or sing because you are breathing so hard. There, in the middle, Mars and Venus might find a place just as comfortable as the couch, but with greater health benefits.