Training Together Is Pair for the Course : Ken and Donna France are happy to share a pastime, even if it does mean frequently swimming a mile, biking 25 and then pounding out a 10K run.

You could think of it as an “I Love Lucy” episode with muscles.

The standard plot line: Lucy feels she and Ricky aren’t spending enough time together, so she decides to take up one of his more passionate interests.

In the world of the small screen, this interest is golf; Ricky isn’t a bit happy about it, and Lucy is inept.

In the real world of Ken and Donna France, however, both of them are fairly thrilled about their shared pastime, even if it does mean frequently swimming a mile, biking nearly another 25 and then pounding out a 10K run.

Besides, they’re both pretty good at it.

At Sunday’s Mazda/Orange County Performing Arts Center Triathlon, Donna’s relay team (she competed in the cycling leg) won in the women’s masters relay class and Ken was on his way to what might have been a winning time (he competed in all three events) when the derailleur of his bike broke during the cycling leg of the race.

And both of them compete for the Your Name Here Triathlon Club, sponsored by Fibar, which has fielded the world champion triathlon team for the last three years.

Still, Sunday morning in Orange County usually finds thousands of couples lazily swatting a few tennis balls around and then adjourning to the nearest champagne brunch, not pulling on Speedos, getting numbers painted on their arms and legs and tearing around Mission Viejo on a bike.

Just what does it take to become a husband-and-wife triathlon combo?

First, it helps to be fit in the first place, and the Frances were. Lifelong devotees of fitness and former ski instructors, they met 12 years ago when both were dancing in Orange County with the Jimmie DeFore Dance Co. They were paired as a team, dancing tap, jazz and ballet numbers on, among other places, the dinner theater circuit.

“With dancing, one left led to another left and we were married eight years ago,” said Ken.

However, during one practice session in 1984, Donna injured her knee and, while she was recuperating, she was involved in an auto accident that left her with a broken pelvis and several torn muscles. To pay the medical bills, Ken said he realized that “I had to get a real job.” He became the director of operations at the Pacific Club. Donna, when her recovery permitted, began teaching dance at UC Irvine.

Ken missed the experience, the physical release, of dancing, he said, and tried aerobics classes on weekends, “but that didn’t cut it.”

When he then took up cycling, however, he found that “the movement and the speed” of the bike resembled his beloved skiing. He started training in earnest and bought his wife a bike.

“And she got hooked on it, too,” he said.

“I liked it right away,” said Donna, 41. “We’d always done everything together until then, but I was in the studio and he was on the bike. We were in two different worlds.”

They began to train together in their time away from work.

At first, said Ken, 42, cycling was a way to stay in shape with his wife. But after a year of training, he decided to compete in his first triathlon four years ago. The couple continued to train together and, last year, Donna began competing in the cycling leg of triathlon relays.

“But,” said Ken, “she’s going to start doing it all soon, and then everybody had better watch out.”

Pretty competitive talk, but both Frances insist that their swimming, biking and running satisfy a craving for benefits other than victory.

“We don’t look at it as competing,” said Ken. “We just get high on the lifestyle, the endorphins that doing this produces. And you meet great people here. From the top to the bottom, they’re all doing what you’re doing, training and suffering the same things.”

Donna said that the training, the competing, the socializing afterward, all are elements that allow her and her husband to be together while maintaining a high pitch of fitness.

“Really, any kind of exercise can keep you together,” she said. “When you feel fit, you feel good about yourself and you tend to feel good about the other person, too.”

And, she said, the payoff is worth the extra planning it takes to make time for an elite training regimen.

“He works out at lunchtime and feels better after that than if he’d had lunch,” said Donna. “You can find time if you want it bad enough.”

Do they ever stray from the Spartan path?

“Sure,” said Ken, “and we enjoy the hell out of it. After the race we’ll pig out and drink beer and champagne and eat tacos and all kinds of things. But the trick is to do it quick and then get it out of your system.”

And then it’s back home for a few more miles of training. Together.

Fishing without a license will be OK Saturday, a state-designated Free Fishing Day. The occasion will be marked at Upper Newport Bay Ecological Reserve with demonstrations, prize drawings and touch tanks with bay creatures. Rods and reels will be available for loan. Activities will run from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at Shellmaker Island, off Backbay Drive at the reserve. Information: (714) 640-6746.