Everything about Stacy Seigfred looks like you’re seeing it through a soft-focus lens. Her sandy hair waves around her face, the way she moves is easy, and despite whatever story she’s telling you, her full lips still move into a smile. She’s the brightest part of her living room – which is spare and unadorned. Wood floors, a Formica table that has folding sides. Two chairs to sit and talk or eat breakfast. A small couch and a television mounted on the wall, paused in the middle of a Lego movie. Two photos hang on the wall behind her, a lifetime between them: One of her daughter Anna, 7, who shyly brings rubber bands and popsicle sticks over to us as we visit, trying to make a propeller. The other is her daughter Katelyn, who was 13 when she died in February. In the photo, Katie stares right at the camera, her eyes engaged with whoever shot the picture. Her hair is pulled back from her face, and she leans against the headrest of her wheelchair, the smallest smile on her lips. She sees you, and when you look at the photo, you see her. This is a story about Katie. Stacy grew up in Tea, and then she met her husband Keith and they moved to Oregon. Katie was born in 2003 and was a fussy baby, “like off the charts,” Stacy says. She mostly stayed in the house to contain it, but a friend convinced her to go to a play date that was led by a registered nurse. At that, the nurse commented that maybe Kate’s shrieks were from acid reflux. “It was like a light going off,” Stacy said. She went to a doctor who didn’t diagnose reflux but did treat her for an ear infection. It didn’t clear up the crying. A few weeks later, Stacy was lining up her six-month well-baby check. “I just thought we have a fussy, colicky baby,” Stacy said. “I’m horribly sleep-deprived, and one day she started crying at 3 a.m., and she was still crying at 11, and I grabbed the phone book and I picked a pediatrician at random, and I got one of the best ones I’ve ever met.” She got in that day. They talked about acid reflux, checked for all the usual suspects when a baby won’t stop crying. But it was an offhand comment that changed Stacy’s life and began to explain Katie’s. “The pediatrician said, ‘By the way, why isn’t she holding her head up,’” Stacy says. Stacy knew that Katie wasn’t pushing up, but she thought she was just a little behind. The comment set off a flurry of tests, and they learned that Katie was missing her corpus callosum, a network of fibers that join the two hemispheres of the brain. “Without the callosum, some people are out and about walking and talking and don’t know they don’t have the corpus callosum,” Stacy said. “Some people are on the opposite end of the spectrum, and Katie was on the opposite end.” Later a diagnosis of spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy was added. Each bit of information about Katie led to another round of appointments and therapies. It got to where Katie would scream as soon as she saw a hospital, and yell her way through the waiting room and the appointment. “You know what it’s like to do something with your kids they don’t want or don’t understand,” Stacy said. “It was like that, only it was all the time. And 95 percent of the time they didn’t need to do anything, maybe listen to her heart, but she would voice her way through the whole thing. It was never fast.” They went to physical and occupational and speech therapy, to chiropractors and physicians and everything in between. And through it all, Stacy did what any mom does – she tried to communicate. She held Katie’s hands and made sign language gestures. She talked to her and sang to her, held her and whispered to her. When Katie was about two and a half, she responded. “Her first word was two words,” Stacy said. “It was ‘all done,’ and she meant it. She was saying, ‘I don’t want to do this.’” Stacy stops talking for a minute, and her soft eyes fill. You can see the memory of Katie reaching out to her -- showing her she heard and understood, could comprehend and communicate -- move across her face. Anna had been standing quietly, taping wheels on her Popsicle sticks. She moved over and wrapped her arms around her mom, and you watch and wonder. How many times have they encircled each other in the past month, not knowing which one of them needed it more? Sometimes your kids need you, and sometimes you need them. Katie learned a few more words. She eventually said mom, and no, and oh no, and yeah. Beyond that, she mostly communicated with her eyes – Stacy would hold up two choices and let Katie look at what she wanted. But it was sometimes frustrating to have to help people understand her daughter. “They understood so little,” she said. “Trying to put her on a typical developmental scale just flat didn’t work. There were things that a newborn could do that she couldn’t do. The list of things she couldn’t do was a long list.” She pauses. “But she was clearly very bright. She understood everything going on around her, and she just processed things in her own way.” She never really warmed to the doctor appointments, even growing upset when Elmo would go to the doctor on “Sesame Street,” her favorite show. “I watched ‘Sesame Street’ for over 10 years,” Stacy says with a laugh. Katie loved it. As Katie grew, she discovered a game she could play with her family. Keith would come home from his job as an auto mechanic and sit at the table holding Katie, a water bottle near them on the table. Katie would shoot her arm out and knock it over. Keith laughed, and they cleaned up the mess and put the bottle back. Katie knocked it again. And again. “She liked a lot of games that didn’t seem to result in something she would want if she actually won,” Stacy says. That included knocking things off tables, rolling under furniture. And a favorite -- pulling the curtains off the rod from her bed. Stacy embraced whatever Katie embraced. “I buy this one Legos, and I’ll buy this one curtains,” she says. When Katie was 6, Anna was born. “It was very scary,” Stacy says, noting it’s the same sort of overwhelming feeling for any family that’s growing. They didn’t worry their second daughter would have the same diagnoses, neither of which are hereditary. And she was able to enjoy every milestone that Anna met that Katie maybe never would. It wasn’t comparing daughters that saddened her – it was seeing other kids Katie’s age. Recently, Stacy was able to hire a teenaged babysitter for Anna. The sitter was six months older than Katie was when she died. “Here she is ready to start high school and ready to start driving and old enough to babysit, and that is bittersweet,” Stacy says. “The gulf between where she was, that’s hard.” Katie attended JFK Elementary School and then Patrick Henry. They navigated the school district and the doctor appointments, a surgery to fuse her spine in the Twin Cities. And Katie was healthy – she didn’t have the same respiratory issues that many people who aren’t mobile have. “Then it just kind of all hit at once,” Stacy says. She seemed tired, and she didn’t enjoy the things she normally did. She lost some interest in eating, and she struggled with spasticity. Then the seizures started. At first they were small ones. Keith had moved back to Oregon, and Stacy and Anna were planning a holiday visit to see him. Stacy’s parents were going to take care of Katie. Two days before they were supposed to fly out, Katie had a grand mal seizure. Stacy struggled with going on the trip, ultimately deciding to take Anna. While she was gone, it kept happening. Two days after the first grand mal seizure, Katie had another one. And then she had two more the next day. Stacy’s parents kept some of it back, so she wouldn’t worry on her trip. “Then two days before we were supposed to come home, they said she seems really distressed, and her nose was bleeding and she just looked at them and she made a distressed sound,” Stacy says. She told them to take Katie to the emergency room. Both of Katie’s lungs were full, and her body temperature was 85 degrees. “I’m stuck 1,700 miles away, and they have to call me for everything,” Stacy says. “Then they wanted to intubate her, and that’s when I really lost it.” Because of the holiday weekend, she couldn’t get back immediately. But Katie held on. “She surprised them because they didn’t think she was going to make the day, but she liked surprising doctors, so that’s not really shocking,” Stacy says. She made the next day, and she made the next day. And she got better. They were getting ready to send her home when she spiked a fever. She came home in the middle of December. Katie did well for about a week, and then began to fade. Stacy was in touch with palliative care. They told her to expect the pneumonia to come back and to try to plan for the best life for Katie. They made it through the holidays. But then she was readmitted and the family had a series of difficult discussions. “If we’re not going to do anything for her here, then I want to take her home,” Stacy said. So she did, and the pediatric palliative care doctor made house calls. They worried Katie wouldn’t make it the 10-minute drive home. In the morning, the doctor came and said Katie sounded better. Stacy felt like the truck that had been parked on her chest for the past few months had lifted a bit. “Then she sounded worse again, and the truck is parked on me again.” She began to struggle to breathe, and Stacy couldn’t get her attention. A few days went past, and people came to visit, including a teacher and aide from school. The teacher’s aide counted to Katie, something she loved, and when she was done, Katie smiled. “We weren’t sure if she was still in there at that point, and it kind of energized the whole family,” Stacy says. But she began to decline again. They signed up for hospice. “I’m doing the fluttery panic thing trying to figure out how I’m supposed to help her, what I’m supposed to do,” Stacy says. For a moment, everything in this dining room goes quiet. Anna is taking a bath. Their cat is swirling around the table legs. Small bunches of tissues dot the Formica table, a plastic bottle of pop teeters on the edge. Stacy’s soft face is framed by the photos of her daughters. She begins to speak again, and her voice brings you back to Feb. 5. “The doctor came over and listened and said she didn’t sound good. We talked for 15 minutes, and then went back to her room to check on her, and she was sinking. Anna and her grandparents came home at that moment. Katie’s lips were white and she had this occasional gasp and her eyes were open but they weren’t focused,” Stacy says. The doctor looked at Katie. “He says, ‘Katie, are you dying?’” Stacy says. She takes a breath. “She was gone within a few minutes. I was holding her hand.” In a few hours, under a bright light in a spare room, we had gone through the timeline of her daughter’s life. But pins dropped over the years don’t define someone, and they don’t define Katie – or Stacy or Anna or Keith. That’s bigger, that’s impossible to describe. It’s a moment that’s every moment, the whole of Katie, of this family, pushing against everything you think and the boundaries of what you can endure. Contained in this room. In her wheelchair. In her movements across the floor, in a dinner plate shattering as it hits a wood floor at Katie’s whim. “She made my life better. People on the outside, they see the struggles, right? They see a little bit of the struggles, and then they imagine. But easier isn’t always better,” Stacy says. “She was a sweet, awesome, opinionated, complete person.” Editor’s note: The Seigfred family donated Katie’s wheelchair to 605 Running Co. Their hope is that Katie’s legacy can be making life easier for another family who may need it. Jacqueline Palfy is a longtime runner, reader and writer, marathoner, mom and board member of the nonprofit Sioux Falls Area Running Club. Her contributions to the 605 Running Co. blog will appear each Tuesday. You can follow her on Twitter @runnerJPK or reach her at [email protected]. Story ideas are encouraged.
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In my last post highlighting the Deadwood Mickelson Trail Marathon and Run Crazy Horse events I commented how those courses feature mostly downhill sections for the half marathon races and varying amounts uphill and downhill sections for the marathon races. If you are looking for an almost pure downhill race or training spot then today’s post is made for you. We are discussing one of my favorite training spots (and luckily for me it is just two miles from my front door): Spearfish Canyon. “The Canyon” empties into the east end of Spearfish and gradually climbs its way about 2,000 vertical feet as you travel south 20-plus miles. This gradual ascent away from town (and descent back towards town) makes for a favorite “out and back” training option. Even better, if you have a ride to your starting point you can run a point to point training run at a mild but definitely noticeable decline. Although varying, many of the miles in the canyon average around 100 feet of gain/loss per mile, depending on which direction you are going. Two local favorite races are held primarily in Spearfish Canyon each summer. The first is the Spearfish Canyon Half Marathon, held on the second Saturday morning in July. This race is put on by the CASA of the Northern Black Hills organization as a fundraiser. Runners in the half marathon (there is also a 5K race held in town) meet at the Spearfish City Park to load busses to take the 13-mile journey up towards the starting line on the side of the canyon highway just before the lodge at Savoy (home of the Roughlock Falls trailhead). From there, the race winds its way down the Spearfish Canyon Scenic Byway – open to traffic during the race so leave the headphones at home! Runners take the bike path through the city campground along Spearfish Creek for the final mile to the finish just as you enter the city park. A word of warning, the final flat mile can feel a little brutal after the initial 12 miles of continuous downhill. Some downhill training, especially on long runs, would be a good idea for this race! A little over a month after the Spearfish Canyon Half, you will find one of the more unique running events in South Dakota, the female-only Leading Ladies Marathon & Half Marathon. The Leading Ladies races also run down the canyon into the city of Spearfish with a very similar half marathon route and a full marathon option that starts further up the canyon and takes a short detour towards Roughlock Falls at Savoy. The late August start date can be a warm time, even at elevation, but the races start early in the morning so hopefully most of the mileage is out of the way before temperatures rise as the sun peaks above the canyon walls. For those interested, most information about Spearfish Canyon can be found here. If you want a place to stay, the Spearfish Canyon Lodge in Savoy cannot be beat for its beautiful surroundings and miles of trails just past the parking lot. Even if these races or a canyon training run don’t make it to your schedule, Spearfish Canyon is still a must-take detour in the Northern Hills and a fantastic place to spend an unstructured afternoon! Chris Riley is a teacher, cross country coach and lifelong runner in Belle Fourche, South Dakota. Watch for periodic guest blog posts from Chris and the west river running experience on Blog 605 The music you run to isn’t the same as the music you do other things to. I taught spin classes for several years and had the same sad, tired playlist for almost the entire time. It was almost all top 40 pop, with a few random alternative songs thrown in from a friend who does ultras in Alaska and has a fair amount of time to really think about what she’s listening to. Every week I would think about updating my playlist, and every week I would forget until I plugged my ipod into the stereo in the spin room. It wasn’t the same music I would choose if I were sitting on the back deck with a glass of wine and the sun going down. That’s Wilco, every time. Or if I’m sitting at my kitchen counter, writing. It depends on what I’m writing. A piece of fiction I’ve been working on for six months and have about 200 pages of? Then it’s six Cat Power albums on rotation, each one sadder and slower than the one before. It’s unobtrusive and beautiful. Am I staring into space? Tom Waits, usually “The Heart of Saturday Night,” because it’s a little lounge-y and a little gravelly, and every song is a story. I used to be a smoker – a pack of Malboro reds every day for a decade – and that’s what he reminds me of. Or of my dad, who smoked Pall Mall cigarettes, used to love bars and still loves casinos. He probably doesn’t like Tom Waits because he already lived it all. I like it because I hear his stories in there. In college, I wrote paper after paper listening to either NPR or Bob Dylan or Buffalo Springfield or Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. “Déjà Vu” on repeat while I sat in a secondhand gold chair with the stuffing spilling out and spit out essays comparing poets and novelists in one take, leaning back and pulling my feet up to smoke between thoughts. It all sounds so sad, but it isn’t. Your life takes on a soundtrack, and sometimes it’s because you played it and sometimes it’s because it was someone else’s background music you got to hear. I grew up in Cleveland. Most artists tour through the area, and my dad always took us to concerts. He would see whoever we wanted to see – took me to see Sinead O’Connor and U2 and 10,000 Maniacs and anyone else my teenage heart was in love with. And he took me to what he wanted, too – Joe Walsh and Jimmy Buffett. Then Bruce Springsteen and Lou Reed and Chuck Berry in a 1995 concert for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. We watched Bob Dylan at Blossom Music, and that’s where I learned about Ani DiFranco, who opened for him. This week I’ve been thinking a lot about music and my dad, who still lives in Cleveland, basically a shut-in, watching The History Channel and waiting for one of his daughters to call. It started when I found out Paul Simon was coming to Sioux Falls. I called one of my best friends. “Paul Simon is coming. We were just talking about this.” We had been. Some random live music discussion, where I said he was one artist I just wanted to see. It’s been more than 30 years since “Graceland,” longer since Simon and Garfunkel. I spent many hours driving with my dad and listening to Paul Simon. When he bought me a CD player, “Live at Central Park” was what he bought me to play on it. (Memory all happens at once, sometimes, and when he bought me a tape deck, he included Chuck Berry’s greatest hits with it.) I got tickets at a presale. Paid as much as I could afford for decent seats. It’s worth every penny to me. In the meantime, I downloaded the albums I used to have, music I lost over the years and never found the time to gather again. On a recent Sunday, the kids and I overslept – some glorious thing that happens now that they’re a little older – and we made eggs and toast together. “Cecilia” came on, and Viv, 6, and I danced our way around the kitchen. I realized I could still sing every song on these albums, even though I hadn’t heard them in their entirety for years. It had happened again a few months earlier, when I heard The Beautiful South again after years of not hearing it. How does it all come back to you like that? But it does. You find yourself singing along, word by word, remembering the language and the nuances and the times you heard it. Lately I’ve done more running alone than I ever have, a lot of it on my treadmill in the basement. I don’t love it, but I’m getting used to it. This is how it is, and you just make do. Sometimes I just turn on something and listen to all of it – a 2-disc Queen compilation – which isn’t terrible to run to at all. A stack of Velvet Underground, which is – imagine running in a dirty ashtray. That’s kind of what it feels like. There’s something incongruous to getting in better shape while lamenting heroin or cocaine addictions. All Lucinda Williams all the time, the grit and the twang kind of perfect for a Tuesday night when you have all your demons to get out. Or a mess of Prince dance remixes, each version about 8 minutes long, and you tell yourself, if given the choice, always, always choose the extended dance remix. Or one day last fall, I went to Good Earth State Park, where I know all the trails by heart, where I can just run and not think. And I put on Neil Young, and his high, thin voice and it was all so spare and it was just me. The lookouts I didn’t step out on, the views I didn’t want to see, the vastness of it more than I could handle. I named my run on Strava that day after one of his lines from “Star of Bethlehem”: ‘All your dreams and your lovers won’t protect you.’ It’s a great line. It’s probably true. I tried not to think that hard. Instead I just ran. I got lost in his stories. In his voice. In the moments back in college when a friend would play “Campaigner” on his guitar, of southeastern Ohio and mountain biking and trails and the Hocking Hills and this tahini and tofu breakfast the local co-op made. As Viv and I danced in the kitchen, and later when Jack, 8, figured out that “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard” is a great song, I wondered what their soundtrack would be. Maybe it will be the sound of their mom, singing in the kitchen. Maybe it’s the oldies stations I play in the car and say to almost every song, “Your Grandpa Jack loves this song,” as I choke back tears and Otis Redding plays. Maybe it will be the sound of my feet slapping and slapping and slapping the treadmill after they go to bed. Maybe it will be all of it. Jacqueline Palfy is a longtime runner, reader and writer, marathoner, mom and board member of the nonprofit Sioux Falls Area Running Club. Her contributions to the 605 Running Co. blog will appear each Tuesday. You can follow her on Twitter @runnerJPK or reach her at [email protected]. Story ideas are encouraged. Regardless if winter weather wants to stick around too long, the calendar and the recent Daylight Savings Time change tell us that spring is on its way and summer is not far behind. For serious runners (my definition of serious being runners that are willing to pay money to enter races), race season is on the horizon. The race season in the Black Hills is bookended by a pair of marathon events held on the Mickelson Trail. The Deadwood Mickelson Trail Marathon (June 4th) and Run Crazy Horse events (October 8th) offer a variety of race options to train for throughout the spring and summer months while giving locals and out of town visitors spectacular views of the Black Hills on race day. Both races are put on by Wheeler Event Management (Emily Wheeler), and are organized and staffed by runners and volunteers from the Black Hills. Emily and her crew have come close to perfecting the art of putting on a mid-size race in a rural/wilderness setting and you can be assured that these are community events, not races put on by a for-profit corporation from a thousand miles away. Before describing what makes them unique, let’s talk about what these races share in common, because they are very similar! Both events are predominately run on the Mickelson Trail, a 109-mile crushed gravel trail that follows an old railway bed from Edgemont to Deadwood. Neither event is a “trail race” in the vain of rocky and muddy singletrack with impossibly steep climbs and descents. There are long hills involved, but they are gradual and at times so faint that you do not even notice a change in elevation. Both events feature a marathon, half-marathon, and marathon relays on the Sunday race day as well as a 5K event the day before. Both of the half-marathons are predominantly downhill while the full marathons feature first-half climbs with long downhill finishing stretches. Both events will also feature occasional trailhead crowds of cheering spectators but also many miles of solitude with just you and your feet on the crushed gravel – and any other runners who happen to be in your immediate surroundings. Deadwood is a great option for a “late springtime” setting – think moss covered rocks, babbling creeks full of fresh cold water, while Crazy Horse will feature beautiful fall colors and the contrast between the ponderosa pine and willow and aspen trees along the route. The Deadwood events carry the promise of a racing season to come while Crazy Horse has the atmosphere of one last serious event before the winter months set in. As with any time of year in the Black Hills, weather can certainly be the wildcard factor. I have spent mornings awaiting the Deadwood start shivering in huddled masses amidst the fog of an early morning at elevation only to be racing under a hot and dry sun-filled and cloudless sky by the later miles. Crazy Horse has featured almost perfect cool running weather the past few years, with the exception of course of the 2013 event which was forced to be cancelled after Winter Storm Atlas dumped several feet of snow on the region just days before the race. And speaking of elevation, yes both races will feature many miles at several thousand feet (mostly between 4,500-5,500 feet) but it does not seem to have much effect on the out of town visitors from lower elevations. Anyways, if you are looking for a pancake flat course to set a PR, then these probably are not you best bets. Even the net downhill half-marathons are not super conductive to ultra-fast times due to the hard-packed gravel surface of the Mickelson Trail. That being said, I did set my marathon PR of 3:05 at Crazy Horse last year so it doesn’t mean you have to plan on running slow – but if speed is your utmost concern you’d be better off sticking to a flatter course at a lower elevation. In summary, if you need huge crowds and an urban setting to feel at home, then these two events perhaps are not for you. However, if you want to spend some time racing in some of the most beautiful wilderness in the entire United States, where the nature can draw you in so powerfully that miles of your race literally fly by, and you appreciate a top-notch race experience where the race director pays close attention to detail and takes previous race feedback seriously, then either the Deadwood Mickelson Trail Marathon or Run Crazy Horse events are absolutely worth a closer look. Hope to see you at a race or run in the Black Hills area very soon! *Keep watching for future “West River” blog posts about running and racing in Spearfish Canyon as well as details of the Black Hills Runners Club Trail Racing Series Chris Riley is a teacher, cross country coach and lifelong runner in Belle Fourche, South Dakota. Watch for periodic guest blog posts from Chris and the west river running experience on Blog 605. Deb Shissler is everywhere. Show up to a group run, and Deb is there. Look on social media, and you’ll find a selfie of Deb, with her eyes sparkling and a comment about how it was a great day for a run – no matter what the day was. And stand next to her somewhere for long enough, and you’ll find yourself in an exuberant and lovely conversation about whatever comes up. She’s magnetic. Shissler, 62, is originally from Texas and moved to Sioux Falls about a year ago, by way of Maine, where she lived for more than 30 years. She’s an IT system analyst for Avera – and she’s so passionate about her hobby that she’s enticed more women in her office to spend part of their lunch break running. She started running in 1979 – during the first big pop culture running boom, but at a time when it was still unusual for women to identify as runners. She was in the Army studying to be a Korean linguist at the time, was a single mom and went on her first run after asking someone on a date. “I didn’t have running shoes,” Shissler says. “I had fatigues and Army boots. I ran 3 miles with him and dated him for a year and a half.” They’re still friends on Facebook. She had run a little bit in high school, but later she tried again and discovered she had some natural talent – winning every race she signed up for between 1979 and 1984, including her first marathon in California. “My first prize was a cardboard tray of fresh vegetables,” Shissler says. In the military, there were women she ran with. But she was faster than all of them and found herself running with the men. “I never really thought about being a woman runner,” Shissler says. “I just loved to run.” After the military, she stopped running for a while. Then she moved to Maine and picked it up again, mostly running alone. It was 1985, and she found herself winning races again, or taking her age group. It was a good feeling for Shissler. “I’ve been competitive since day one,” she says with a laugh. “I’m still competitive. I’m addicted. Is there a 12-step program for running?” She’s grown slower over the years – far from her marathon personal record of 3:13, and she worries that change of pace will keep her from doing things she wants to try – like more ultras – because she might not make the cutoffs. But at some measure it doesn’t really matter to Shissler – it isn’t only long-distance running that she loves. It’s endurance and competition. To that end, she’s been focusing on the half-marathon distance and another love: Triathlon. “Long-distance running is my first love,” Shissler says. “And I have to put swimming in second.” When she first began swimming again, she couldn’t do 25 yards without stopping. She began a training program and quickly realized she could do 2,200 or 2,500 yards and get the same satisfaction as a run. “It’s a good workout for me,” Shissler says. Biking carries a different feeling for her. “It’s the ability to go far without as much energy,” Shissler says. “I’ve done 120 miles one day on a trail and spent the night and did 120 miles back the next day, and you can’t do that running. Well, I can’t do that running.” That’s how it works for Shissler – she finds something she loves and then just does it. And keeps doing it. And encourages others to do it. “It’s never too late to try,” she says. “Some people just aren’t meant to be runners. They’re meant to be walkers or cyclists or rowers. But whatever it is, find that happiness out there.” Keeping that joy has meant a lot of things to Shissler over the years. It helped her stay steady as a single mom. It helped her stay healthy enough to donate half of her liver to a friend. And it helped her to encourage her sister, who hasn’t always been active, to embrace a different lifestyle. “She runs a 15-minute mile, and she’s run a half-marathon,” Shissler says. “She gets out there and pounds the pavement, and now she’s swimming. We entered our first triathlon a few weeks ago, and she loved it.” It’s easy to see. Talk to Shissler for 10 minutes and you want to swim, bike and run with her, too. Her laugh is contagious, she talks a mile a minute and she’s just so absolutely friendly. When she tells you to find your happiness, you can take one look at her and realize here’s a woman who has found hers. Deb Shissler is what joy looks like. Jacqueline Palfy is a longtime runner, reader and writer, marathoner, mom and board member of the nonprofit Sioux Falls Area Running Club. Her contributions to the 605 Running Co. blog will appear each Tuesday. You can follow her on Twitter @runnerJPK or reach her at [email protected]. Story ideas are encouraged. |
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