Often in professional sports you hear about athletes' lifelong dreams of competing on the elite circuit, the countless hours spent driving to the training facility, the 4:30 a.m. alarms just to get two workouts into a day, but not so with Bowden. Though she was active and participated in a variety of sports throughout her adolescent and early adult life, it wasn't until she was 19 that a couple new to the triathlon world inspired her to enter one herself. That couple, it turns out, was her parents.

Bowden's parents started running in their forties. When she saw them taking off together for 6- to 10-mile runs, Bowden was moved to jump on the bandwagon. "They set a really good example," she says. "Kids often grow apart from their parents, but this was a way to keep our family together. I'd go watch them in a race, and think this sport was crazy. Then I started to get excited about it."

Fortunately, Reid was excited about triathlons too. The couple met in 1993 after they won their respective triathlons in Japan, despite the fact that neither of them was considered a contender in the field, Bowden says. After the double win, Bowden and Reid stayed in touch. Despite the fact that they lived and trained in different cities in Canada, they frequently ran into each other at triathlons. When Reid moved across Canada to British Columbia so he could train outdoors year-round, he successfully wooed Bowden to come join him. The rest, as they say, was history, and Bowden can't picture it any other way.

"If we weren't doing the same sport, we would never have gotten together," Bowden says. "You spend your whole day training, and it would be hard for someone else to understand what you're doing falling asleep on the couch at 8 at night. Some days we're both pretty baked, and don't mind if we're not talking a lot or going out. We live a low-key life after 5 p.m.-and that's okay with us."

Generally speaking, the couple spends between five and eight hours a day training for their competitions; long-distance triathlons require quite a bit more practice than your basic weekend warrior race. Triathlons break down into a 1,500-meter swim, 40-kilometer bike ride and a 10-kilometer run. But long distance triathlons, such as the Ironman series in which Bowden and Reid compete, require a 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike race and top it all off with a full marathon-yes, a 26.2-mile run. Bowden and Reid earn their income by winning these races and through sponsorships."Usually we do three Ironmans a year," Bowden says. "The average person does maybe one. Two is pushing it, and we do three because it's what we do for a living." Even more amazing is that Bowden and Reid are both tops in their fields. In fact, Triathlete magazine recently named each the long-distance triathlete of the year for the second straight year.

While their races help them bond as a couple, their coupledom also helps propel their careers, Bowden says. "Initially, Peter was really into [triathlons], and I was just having fun. He made me focus and be more consistent. At the same time, he was too uptight, and he learned from me not to stress out at races."

So what's it like for the couple when they race together? "It's definitely pretty funny," Bowden says. "A lot of races Peter will finish hours ahead of me, but usually the top three to five racers have to go for drug testing. So I come across [the finish line] and I'm all happy, and then he's not even there."

The other downer is their schedules. They often travel to different races, but try to support one another despite the geographic distance their profession throws their way. "The ones where we're not together, I'll try to watch him and he'll try to do the same," Bowden says. "We don't take a lot of vacations, so when it's our off-season, usually we just want to be at home and see our friends."

As for their future plans of racing together, "it's hard to say," Bowden admits. "Definitely in the future there might come a time when one of us isn't competing [professionally], but still maybe competing just for fun." For now racing is their lives.

Often the racecourses double-back on the biking and running legs. Bowden and Reid know each other so well that they can guestimate where on the course they'll run into each other. "We actually pass each other quite often," Bowden says. "It gives you something to look forward to. The best part is that when we go to a race, it feels like we have a double shot at [winning]. For everybody else in the race, it 's just them, but for us, it's both of us."

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