![]() I learned how to read when I was 3. I threw a stack of Dr. Seuss books on the floor next to my oldest sister Pam, who was 14 at the time, and then I cried until she taught me how. People who know me won’t be surprised by any of this – that I’ve been reading since then, that I threw a tantrum or that it all had to do with books and stories. I read as much as I write as much as I talk and think. As I tell a friend, “It’s the words, every time.” They just undo me. I began writing short stories soon after – and my mom has some of them stashed away somewhere that I would compose on a typewriter when she had to take me to work with her at her office job when there was no school. My dad bought me an electric typewriter for Christmas when I was in fifth grade. A fountain pen later, when I thought every writer needed one (note: They’re too finicky for me). College introduced me to the art of the personal essay, through a creative nonfiction course that also began a lifelong love with MFK Fisher, an essayist who wrote about food and love, or, as she summed them up together: Hunger. Are you swooning yet? It gets better. In “The Gastronomical Me,” she writes about a “rotten apple rolling” or something as awful as “a young woman with a cancer.” Who cares about the rest of it? The phrases are enough. As an English major, all I did was read. As myself, it’s all I would have done anyway, so to earn a degree doing something I loved seemed ideal. And it has been – even though I joke when people ask about a liberal arts degree that I spent five years learning how to read. That’s probably true – I did. I don’t regret it. My head is full of lines I love – from the opening lines of Philip Larkin’s “This Be the Verse”, which I won’t quote here because it’s a family blog, to one sentence from Gertrude Stein’s massive “The Making of Americans”: In it, the narrator talks about a man dragging his father through an orchard by one leg, and the father says, “Stop, I did not drag my father beyond this tree.” Every day I try to drag myself beyond that tree – to be better, go farther, be more, somehow. I fail. We all do. Sometimes it’s incremental progress, and sometimes it’s none at all. Sometimes I slide down a voice into a living room, to paraphrase John Updike in his short story “A&P,” which I hadn’t read in 20 years and dragged out a few months ago, forgetting about the cold grocery store, the teenage cashier, the three girls in bathing suits walking through the aisles. That’s how words live with me. And just like the soundtrack I’ve written about here, there’s a narrative that goes through my head, too, full of these writers and lines and sentences and plots and just constructions that surface when I need them most. Sometimes it’s just funny – a “30 Rock” line of bad poetry in the middle of someone’s emotion, said to break the mood, for a moment. Sometimes it’s me going down the rabbit hole of Jeanette Winterson quotes on Goodreads, remembering her books and how much I love her. Consider this from her: “I stretched out my hands, holding the falling sun in one hand, and the climbing moon in the other, my silver and gold, my gift from life. My gift of life. My life is a hesitation in time. An opening in a cave. A gap for a word.” It’s from her book “Lighthousekeeping,” which sat in hardback on my nightstand for a decade before I finally opened it last year, and then fell madly in love with her again. I hadn’t read her since college, and now I’ve gone back and re-read all of what I owned plus most of what’s been published since then. Then I did the unforgiveable: Gave that hardback away to a friend who needed it more than I did, even though the book had been borrowed from Lori Walsh. If anyone would understand, she would. What does all of this have to do with running? What does anything have to do with running? Everything. The words and miles their own threads. April is National Poetry Month. I generally hate national anything month or national anything day or any kind of construct that makes me celebrate something I may not be in the mood for. Including birthdays. It’s an issue, I realize. But this month, all my social media feeds are crammed with poems. I click through when I have a minute, and I’ve remembered some I forgot about. Found different ones that moved me. Just reveled, for a moment, in someone else’s interpretation of life and love and all of it. One of my favorite poetry terms is caesura, which is just a pause in the middle of a line. What a delicious word for a hesitation, a moment, a time to consider. I ran the Denver marathon relay one year with a group of acquaintances from all over the country. They had asked me to come out, and I did, and anyone who has traveled with me knows how I am: I showed up with a book and $20 and figured I had everything I needed. At the finish line, it was raining and I was waiting for the other women, and I realized I didn’t have any of their contact information. I just hadn’t thought to bring it. So I sat there, in the rain, with my library book and hoped they would recognize me when they came past. They did. So as I thought about this blog post – which I had originally planned to use to talk about how much I hate lightning, since it’s spring and all – instead I decided to just go straight to running and language, to combine my month and my true loves and see what I find. Of course, Winterson is there for you, always. Also from “Lighthousekeeping” – “Turn down the daily noise and at first there is the relief of silence. And then, very quietly, as quiet as light, meaning returns. Words are the part of silence that can be spoken.” Or this bad boy, which could easily apply to racing: “You play, you win, you play, you lose. You play. It's the playing that's irresistible.” I log all my books on Goodreads, and have for the past few years. I wish I had kept a lifelong list of everything I’ve read – it would be mighty and glorious. It also would save me money. Instead, I sometimes pick up a book and settle in with it and then realize I’ve already read it. More than once, I realize I also already own it. A list would have helped, maybe. Goodreads, which is just a Facebook for all things of word nerdery, of course has a list of quotes about running from various books. So here are some that I thought were glorious, not all from books I’ve read, and in no particular order. “I'm often asked what I think about as I run. Usually the people who ask this have never run long distances themselves. I always ponder the question. What exactly do I think about when I'm running? I don't have a clue.” ― Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running “If you don't have answers to your problems after a four-hour run, you ain't getting them.” ― Christopher McDougall, Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen “Running in the wind, in the pollen and dust, a flower in flight” ― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita “Outside, daylight was bleeding slowly toward dusk.” ― Stephen King, The Running Man “There are many challenges to long distance running, but one of the greatest is the question of where to put one's house keys.” ― Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry “There was no let-up. The tempo was always moderate but steady. If a new guy decided to pick up the pace, that's where it stayed, whether he finished with the group or not. You showed off at your peril.” ― John L. Parker Jr. “Here I am I am tired I am tired of running of having to carry my life like it was a basket of eggs” ― William Faulkner, Light in August “The marathon will humble you. But the truth is, sometimes it will do more than humble you. Sometimes it will break your heart.” ― Bill Rodgers, “When Douglas walked, his mind ran, when he ran, his mind walked.” ― Ray Bradbury “Remember, it’s the pace that kills, never the distance.” ― Bill Jones, The Ghost Runner: The Tragedy of the Man They Couldn't Stop “For every runner who tours the world running marathons, there are thousands who run to hear the leaves and listen to the rain, and look to the day when it is suddenly as easy as a bird in flight.” ― George Sheehan Did you think I wouldn’t make you read yet another Winterson quote? One for the road: “Tell me a story, Pew. What kind of story, child? A story with a happy ending. There’s no such thing in all the world. As a happy ending? As an ending.” ![]() 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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![]() I’m sitting at my kitchen counter eating jelly beans and thinking about Boston. On my timeline today on Facebook, a photo popped up from 2013 – it’s me and my best friend Laurie, in the Philadelphia airport. I had paid extra on my flight home from Boston for a stupidly long layover so that Laurie could bring her daughter to the airport, and we could all just hang out for a few hours. It was a sweet and needed ending to a weekend of weirdness – the amazingness of the run itself and the shock of the events after. It’s one memory of the Boston Marathon for me. There are many others – nonstop texting with Kristen Johnston every marathon Monday as we track our friends and the elites. Emailing with Owen Hotvet – first from the newspaper, where we both worked, and now on our phones. Sitting at my old desk, my television turned for one day from CNN to the race – telling coworkers the truth: It’s my Super Bowl. My one sporting event I care about. My new coworker Paul Heinert quizzed me on all the athletes at Legends this year, and I think we were both surprised when I got about 30 percent of them right. It’s just not my thing, and it never has been. I don’t even know that much about professional runners – so when I watch the race, my adoration is fairly limited. I love our ladies – loved Deena and Joan and Shalane and Kara and Desi, come on, Desi. I don’t follow much beyond Boston, but on marathon Monday, they’re who I think about. That and the many men and women who have worked to qualify, who are standing at their first or 10th Boston Marathon, for the charity runners who raised money for something they believe in, for all the locals who are running the historic race through their own town. It’s awesome. It was awesome to do it, and it’s awesome to watch others do it. Here are a few links to follow along, and then after that meet two more local runners who are out there today. How to follow along: On Twitter: @BostonMarathon Watch: Live coverage o NBC Sports Network from 7:30 a.m. to noon. Primetime replay at 7 p.m. on Universal HD. Find your local channel here. Stalking: Track your athlete here. Need more? Wondering who from South Dakota – or anywhere – is running? This is a searchable database of all registered runners. Who are the favorites?
Meet the runner: Shannon Wezensky Newman Age: 34 Family: Husband, Steve, one pitbull Occupation: Engineer To qualify: Needed a 3:35 Where: Ran a 3:09 at the Marine Corps Marathon in 2015, then a 3:14 in Boston in 2016. Previous Boston runs: 1 Total marathons: Chicago, Mickelson, Marine Corps, Boston, San Francisco On qualifying: I did not see it coming for Boston. Then I won my second marathon I ever ran. I didn’t know … and then I ran the Marine Corps Marathon. On why she runs: It was a stress reliever. Working as an engineer you just need something to take your mind off things or problem solve and think about projects. And think about how you are going to tackle your day. I started just running in the early mornings, and then it turned into, hey, run this race for breast cancer, and there were so many people. … Then I was like, well, let’s try Mickelson Trail. I had to see if I could do it first. I didn’t want an epic fail in front of everybody. Then when I won it, that gave me the confidence to go to Boston. On training: I still drive back to Freeman to train on weekends. I like the peacefulness. I completely relax out there. All gravel. It’s so relaxing to me. On the Boston Marathon: I definitely learned don’t fall for the first half. It’s downhill. Have a lot of patience and pace and trust your training. Heartbreak Hill looks like a bunny hill but it feels like a mountain after 20 miles. On Boston itself: I absolutely loved it. I loved going back east. The people were great. It’s such a welcoming community with all the support around the Boston marathon and the people supporting it. The communities really rallied around the marathon. On the love of running: I’m definitely glad that I got into marathon running. It’s been a therapy tool for me. It keeps me calm. I enjoy the quiet time out on the roads. Meet the runner: Ed Thomas Age: 58 Family: Wife, 3 kids, 6 grandkids How many previous marathons: 22 (and a mountain of ultras) First marathon: Twin Cities Marathon First time qualifying: Fargo Marathon in 2011 Number of qualifying times: Six On getting started: Ed began running in 2010 as a way to support his son Nick, who had entered a treatment center for opioid addiction. Number of Boston Marathons: This is Ed’s 5th Boston. He missed 2015 because of an injury. This year, he used a 3:28 from Okoboji to qualify. “I’m old,” Ed says. “My qualifying time isn’t all that difficult.” Loves about Boston: The camaraderie. I have friends in the Boston area and many friends who will be running. That’s truly the fun of running – the people you meet along the way. On training: Training has been good … not as good as I would like, but good. (Note: Ed recently had his second attempt at the Barkley Marathons and also ran 50 miles at Zumbro to pace a 100-miler.) Good luck, runners! ![]() 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. ![]() If you had asked me what I hoped for when I set out for the Zumbro 50-mile run in Minnesota this past weekend, I would have given a one-word answer. Transcendence. It sounds absurd, right? But it wasn’t. I felt shattered going into this race – emotionally shattered by a year of firsts and lasts, of stops and starts, of all of it. A friend texted ahead of time to wish me luck and ask what my hopes were, and I replied to her that my goal was to be changed. To come out of those woods different than I went in. For my own personal Walden. To look at everything that was shattered and try to at least recognize some of the pieces, consider how to put them together. Consider how to put me together. To know which pieces to pick up, which to leave there, to try not to cut myself in the handling. “It sounds poetic,” she said to me. It wasn’t. It was the emotion of survival, of feeling at the bottom of everything and hoping that however many hours it took me to cover 50 miles would be enough time to figure something, anything, out. ![]() Let’s be clear: I had no business being out there. The last time I did an ultramarathon was in 2013 – the 50K in Omaha that the amazing G.O.A.T.Z. puts on. And that came after running Boston in the spring, a summer of actual, real training and a surprising lack of injury. I haven’t run more than 19 miles at once since then – and that only twice. That’s three and a half years of pathetic training. In that time I had major surgery that took me out for months, two stress fractures, a divorce and a career change, a reconciliation with my treadmill. But sometimes you get what you need, and my friend Natalie texted me one day and asked for my birthday. I replied, and a few minutes later got a confirmation email saying I was now registered for the Zumbro 50-miler. I needed something to focus on, and she picked that. She’s a veteran ultramarathoner – one of the first women in Sioux Falls who began doing them years ago. She’s done two 100-milers and nine 50-milers. This race was a training run for her, leading up to a summer of hundreds, and she assured me however I did would be fine. The goal was to stand at the starting line and then, hopefully, the finish. She did her normal training – her back-to-back long runs, her early mornings over the gravel hills near her house outside of Sioux Falls. I bought a lot of boxed wine, spent a lot of time crying, canceled more runs than I showed up for. I did two 18-mile training runs. I did nothing for nearly two weeks before the race. My weekly mileage never got over 36, and often not over 30. I would go days without doing anything. “I would train harder for a half-marathon than I’ve done for this,” I told another friend. “But here we go.” My friend and ultrarunning partner Chris Anderson agreed to crew for us. He’s done it before, for Barry Hein when he ran the Black Hills 100. He knows me, knows Natalie, wasn’t afraid of the midnight start or the fact that crews for 50-milers had to hike to the aid stations. He printed maps, made gear lists, baked us butterscotch and chocolate chip cookies, picked us up so we could sleep the entire drive out there. We slept a bit and I woke up in the dark to Chris laughing quietly. “What,” I said. “I just realized how long I’ve been driving downhill,” he said. The race began in the Zumbro Bottoms campground, and every minute down we knew we would have to come back up, this time on foot, more than once, through the dead of night. The midnight start was almost more terrifying to me than the distance. I have terrible vision and have since I was a kid. I struggle with depth perception, and have bad peripheral vision. I wear bifocals. All of that over the years has meant that when I run trail runs, I typically run behind whoever I’m with and just follow their feet – joking that they get to be in the Achilles track club for the run, the group that helps visually impaired runners compete. It isn’t that dire, but it’s also not great. In preparation, I got contacts to wear. I had never worn them for that long, had never tried to run in them overnight on unfamiliar single-track trails. I borrowed a men’s watch from a friend, so the numbers were bigger, and that had a light so I could see it in the dark. That was as technical as I got, and the rest I just hoped for. My friend Nancy Kirstein, also one of the first women in the area to do ultras, let me borrow a rechargeable headlamp, lighter because it doesn’t have three batteries strapped to your forehead. We had met for a glass of wine earlier in the week and I asked her and Natalie and Karen Lechtenberg to bring all their headlamps. I have three and hate them all. ![]() We sat in the back of Chris’ car for the half hour before the start, the area lit by a few campfires, by runners with headlamps and reflective clothes on, with the string lights and noise and energy of the aid station we would loop through. Chris got us coffee, helped us organize our gear. We sat and stared, and I don’t know what they thought about. What I thought about was how grateful I was for these friends. For people who can see what you need and give it, who know you might take their gift and just destroy it, because that’s how it’s been going. For them to let me just be quiet, for that not to hurt anyone’s feelings. For Natalie to be as solid and easy and patient as she was. For Chris to bring the sense of adventure. To watch the darkness. To look out and see this atmosphere. This glimpse of who I used to be and what I used to do and hope that somewhere in me, I could do it and be it again. To be changed. We stood at the start and listened to the race director remind us to defer to any 100-milers out there, who had been running for 12 hours by the time we started. To recognize they would be slow, their reflexes not as fast, their heads not as clear. The group of us set off, a line of lights heading up the first climb, a mile of ascent in the dark. The visibility wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be because of the glow of lights ahead of and behind me. I think that helped tamp down some of the panic I had about the midnight start. Last year, I ran another race that Rock Steady Running puts on, the Afton 25K in Minnesota, and the crowd and chaos at the starting line as we pushed our way onto the single track in the woods had made me panic to the point where I had to hold the hand of my friend for about the first mile. I couldn’t breathe and couldn’t explain what was happening. I worried it would happen again, in the dark, but it didn’t. The crowd began to thin out and we were able to run, me following closely behind Natalie. The course is three loops, each 16.7 miles, with four stations on it and then the fifth being at the start and finish. We had estimated a finish time well above 13 hours, knowing my training, allowing for the dark and the course, which was hilly and rocky and covered in roots. Natalie had warned me that if we spent even 3 minutes at each aid station, we would waste an hour of our time. The goal was to be efficient. To get what we needed, nothing more. To power hike up every hill, run every ridge and flat and downhill until we couldn’t, then just relentless forward motion until we saw the finish. “I promise you, no matter what happens, once you see that the finish line is in reach, you’ll forget all your pain and just be happy,” Natalie said. I hoped she was right. We couldn’t have asked for better weather for the race – lows in the 40s overnight, not much wind, no rain or hail or snow or ice covering the trails. No terrifying thunderstorm of flooded creek bed. “I guess I can’t blame the weather when the wheels come off,” I joked to Natalie at one point. We ran. We did everything she said we would – power hiked the steep hills, scrabbling over rocks and roots. We ran the flats, me close behind her and following her feet and her light. Trail running requires a lot of concentration from me – doing it in the dark even more so. If you want to do something that removes your ability to think about anything except the moment, beginning a race at midnight on trails you’ve never seen works. The first loop we tried to understand the terrain, how it fit together and how far the aid stations were – because neither of us had bothered to look at all. “My plan is to just show up and run. I can’t manage any other details,” I had told Chris earlier. “I don’t even know where this place is.” When Natalie and I got to the second aid station, she said, “This has to be like mile 10 or something, right?” We looked at Chris. He seemed hesitant. “Um, it’s mile 7,” he said. OK. I drank some Coke. Ate boiled potatoes and potato chips. We adjusted our lights and gave Chris our jackets, the night having already warmed up for us. We headed out and began to climb. The aid stations were all – it felt – at the bottom of the park, and every run in and out was steep and rocky. We wound our way through and hit our least favorite parts of the course. For Natalie, it was a mile long stretch of beach volleyball sand, squishy and inefficient and just stupid. “I hate sand,” she would say. “Why is this even here? I hate when people say they like running on the beach. Running on the beach is terrible. It’s never a good idea. You get sand everywhere.” “Like sex on the beach,” I joked. “Fraught with peril.” We kept going. My least favorite part was a downhill we ended up calling the Rocky Horror section – it was between aid station 3 and 4. It felt like the entire thing was a carpet of rocks – and not the kind you can just smash down on. They were big enough that I felt like if I landed wrong I would twist something. Steep enough that I felt like was sliding a little, and my heart pounded enough every time we had to go through it that I had to actually say in my head, “Self, it’s OK. You’re going to be OK.” It was the only stretch where I seriously considered just sitting down and scooting down the trail. Natalie is better at it, and waited for me at the bottom each time. In the daylight, I was able to see the strip of dirt on the side and run as much as I could down that, but it was never a stretch I was comfortable on. I couldn’t imagine doing it other years – if it were wet or snowy or covered in slippery frost. And I wish I could have seen the frontrunners navigate it – I would love to see how they did it. The only word for my method was gingerly. We finished the first loop in four hours, and Chris met us with my son’s Spider-Man Thermos containers filled with ramen noodles he made on a camp stove. We ate that, and we set back off into the night. The best part of the second loop was knowing the sun would come up. Chris had told me that when the sun rose on the 100 he helped pace, it energized Barry. I hoped that would happen for me, too. To be honest, I didn’t feel that bad considering my training. Somewhere on the first half of the second loop, my legs started to seize up. We saw Chris around mile 25 and I said to him, “It hurts. Bad.” I had been joking about this cartoon I saw years ago from the blogger Hyperbole and a Half about a real pain scale, not the ridiculous one with the even numbers and slightly uncomfortable faces. Her pain scale is legit. My favorite is the face that says. “I am actively being mauled by a bear.” That’s what I told Chris was happening. Natalie told him she had ibuprofen. He began digging in the backpack he was carrying that we crammed full of gear. “No, it’s at the car,” she said. He looked at me. “If I go, I’ll miss the next aid station. Is that OK?” Honestly, I couldn’t answer. I wasn’t thinking that clearly – and that was the lowest point for me in the race. It wasn’t the kind of “Oh dear god, what am I doing” that I’ve faced in other races – like when you go out way too fast and realize you can never recover. It was more of just a sort of addled confusion. I just stared at him. “Go get it,” Natalie said. “We’ll see you in two stops.” We made it through, and my legs didn’t actually seize up like I felt they would. At the next station, one of the nicest volunteers ever filled my hydration pack for me and helped me get it back on. We kept going. When we saw Chris again, we both decided we wanted out of our tights, and to just wear the shorts we had beneath. You know it’s a long race when you have multiple changes of clothing. Natalie and I both sat for the first and only time on the course and asked Chris to help us. “I’m not taking my shoes off,” I said. “So please figure out how to get these over them.” I drank two cups of Coke and ate a quesadilla. Honestly, if he had just cut them off me and thrown them away, it would have been fine. We watched the light come in, the sun come up and stopped to put our headlamps away. We ran up on ridges we hadn’t noticed before, and marveled at the park. It’s beautiful. This is why you trail run: To be outside. To be in the woods. To just remember how grateful you are. It’s the joy. Trail running brings me joy, and I started to feel some of that out there. At the end of the second loop, Chris reminded me I had now run farther than I ever had. I told myself I just had to start loop three, and then see what happens. Natalie agreed, and reminded me nobody could save me, so we would have to finish. It wasn’t daunting. I felt good. At mile 41 I felt better than I had at mile 25. Chris looked at me at the aid station and said, “Single digits left. You’re going to do this. You’re doing this.” And I realized that I was. And it wasn’t terrible. At all. It was beautiful to see the park in the daytime, and that helped lessen the frustration of the 17-milers, who started at 9 a.m. and began to pass us on the course. I’ll write a post on trail etiquette another day. Most of them were gentle and kind, and it brought a lot of energy to see the frontrunners come through. Passing the 100-milers was sobering and inspiring. Being passed by the sprinters was exhilarating, for a while. As I grew more tired, I confess to being annoyed when they would ride my heels until I moved. I didn’t mind if they asked to pass – yes, of course. But sometimes I felt like they just hounded me until I moved. “I’m not moving unless they ask,” Natalie said, and she was right. We were tired and every time I stepped up or down off the trail, I felt like it was another chance to twist an ankle. How I made it that far without doing that amazes me. Still, almost every runner we encountered in any distance was kind, respectful, friendly and fun. When one 17-miler jostled me, he reached back and apologized and said, “Good job, 50-miler,” and that was enough to forgive him. For me, the wheels began to come off around mile 47. We were on a stretch of trail that was perfectly runnable – that’s one great thing about the course. The first and last segments are pretty good running – a nice way to start and end each loop. But I felt really shaky all of a sudden and couldn’t think straight. I walked for a while and ate a pack of jelly beans, hoping maybe I just needed some kind of straight sugar rush. It helped, but I told Natalie it was likely I would sort of walk-run the rest of the race, and we did. She was a great partner and would just say, “let’s run to that tree,” and we would, for a while. And our last loop wasn’t our slowest – the middle one was. So who knows how much better we would have done had I been running more that last 5K. It doesn’t matter, really, because I was doing the best I could. The very last stretch is a dirt road, up a little bend and then into the finish. “Is this the last part,” I asked. She said it was and suggested we start to run. “I’m not, and I won’t until people can see me,” I laughed. My pride would overtake my tired legs, but not until it had to. But she had been right, and as we came through the park, I stopped being mauled by a bear and instead was just amazed. “I can’t believe we did this, and I don’t know how to thank you,” I told her. We came through the finish, and I got teary, like I do at the end of all my races, and, frankly, whenever I just watch a finish line. We finished in 12:35, and Natalie was the first master’s woman across the line. We were 6th and 7th women overall, (and South Dakota’s own Emily Wanless killed the course and won it). I was happy. I don’t know if transcendence is what I got. I spent the entire third loop singing two songs in my head – Dire Straits “Romeo and Juliet” and a cover of “Mama You Been on My Mind” sung by Jeff Buckley. Natalie and I didn’t talk much. We stared at the trail a lot. We were quiet a lot. And we were fine with it. There wasn’t much complaining at all – less than I complain on a random Friday morning run, to be fair. We just did it. Put that way, it doesn’t sound enjoyable. But sometimes that’s exactly what you need. To just get through that part, whatever that part is, and see whatever there is to see when you come out of it. At one point around mile 48, I think, somewhere in that no man’s land for me, I said to myself, “Runner, run. This is what you do, so do it,” and I picked my feet up and began. I don’t know how that translates. Maybe it just means begin. EPILOGUE: I woke up in actual pain on Saturday night, after not being able to sleep from adrenaline and being awake for about 40 straight hours. I think I actually was somehow mauled by a bear in the privacy of my own home. Where I had to army crawl around my bed to change positions because my entire lower body gave up on me. Also, I plan to chat with many of our local folks who went to Zumbro, so keep an eye out for those posts. ![]() 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. ![]() On Monday, April 15, 2013, I stood at the starting line of the Boston Marathon. And 3 hours and 51 minutes later, I stood at the finish line. About 20 minutes after that, I turned from the line of school buses, where a volunteer was handing me my drop bag, and wondered what that huge noise was. It sounded like a train hitting a building, like some absurd accident. That wasn’t it. It was the first of two bombs that went off at the finish line, and the next sound I heard was the steady wail of sirens as all of Boston became a stage, as the runners became players and as I went from athlete to journalist to shell-shocked mom driving back to Williamstown, Mass., watching the news of the day unfold over social media. I flew home, wrote a column for the Argus Leader on a layover, and then had a stomachache for about a week and a lingering fear of crowds. The Boston Marathon is many things. It’s historic, and storied, and competitive and a frequent entry on someone’s bucket list. When you’re out there, it’s everything you thought it would be – the crowds and the streets and the energy and the moment you realize you’re one of the country’s elite, as close as any of us mere mortals will ever be to being amazing. As the standards have grown tougher for the race, one of the few outside the Olympic trials you have to qualify for, so has the desire to run it. But first, you have to qualify. If you’re new to being Boston bound, you should know that you have to run a certain time, based on your age and your gender, and then, to make it worse, registration is on a rolling basis, so sometimes a qualifying time isn’t enough. You have to be even further below it. That’s how competitive it’s become. With that in mind, it’s easy to get excited for the runners headed to Hopkinton, where the race starts. It’s a point-to-point course that ends in Boston, with a set of logistics and early shuttles and security now that can be mind-boggling. But none of that matters. Because it’s Boston, baby. Because it’s the holy grail of marathons. Because if you run them, and you run them hard, this is your goal. Because you’ll try and try, look for courses known as Boston qualifiers, obsess over weather and mile splits and celebrate ever 5-year milestone birthday, hoping that the extra few minutes to qualify will negate the fact that you’re five years older and closer to being past your prime. God, it’s good. For me, I tried for years to qualify. I did in Fargo, then cracked my pelvis and had to defer. Then they changed the standards, I had a baby, and I had to qualify again. I made it in Twin Cities, with my beloved friend Owen Hotvet pushing me step by step by step. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. But it was worth it. Because running Boston was one of the greatest moments of my life as a runner. And covering the bombing at the finish was one of the most amazing moments of my life as a journalist. Every year I scan the entry list from South Dakota and Ohio, where I’m from, looking for names I recognize. I watch the race every year on television – I have a new job this year, so hopefully nobody will notice when suddenly there’s long distance running on and not CNN. And then I watch the results come in, refresh all my social media obsessively because I know how hard these regular runners worked. I know what it means to them. I know what it meant to me. Over the next few weeks, you can read about a few of the folks from South Dakota who are headed to Boston. The full list of entrants is at the end. This week, it’s Rhonda Punt and Darin Swanston. Name: Rhonda Punt Family: Husband, two sons, daughter-in-law, son’s fiancée. “We all run in some manner. They are all great supporters and cheerleaders.” History: Rhonda began running when she was 35 (she’s in her 50s now). “With the exception of heavy mileage weeks during marathon training, I never tire of running. It’s my favorite hobby, and a big part of my social life.” Marathons: Boston will be her 8th marathon. Her first was Leading Ladies in Spearfish. She qualified in Des Moines, Iowa, and then in Sioux Falls, but the rolling entry meant she didn’t make the cut. Her time in the Apple Dumpling Marathon in Elroy, Wis., was good enough to get her in. She and some friends entered as an afterthought after choosing to go watch some friends do an Ironman in Madison. “We went a day early and ran the marathon,” Rhonda says. “The next day we were on our feet for 17 hours as we followed the triathletes around Madison. What a weekend.” On her social time: “I have a bestie that I have run races of all distances with for many years. We plan on running it together and embracing all the sites and energy,” Rhonda says. “This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for me. And bring on the post-race lobster rolls and Samuel Adams!” On training: Winter marathon training in South Dakota “wasn’t as bad as I envisioned in my head.” Mantra: “This is an honor to be training for Boston in the middle of winter!” *** Name: Darin Swanston Age: 43 Works: Department of Justice History: Darin has run 12 marathons, and his first was Swan Lake, in Viborg, S.D. Trying to qualify: Darin tried for three years to qualify, and finally made it in June at the Revel Rockies Marathon in Colorado (who qualifies at elevation??). Then he qualified again in November at the New York City Marathon. This will be his first Boston Marathon. On what it means: Darin was in Boston in 2014, the year Meb won – a sort of symbolic taking back of the race after the bombings in 2013. “I made a pledge to return someday and run the marathon.” On what it’s taken: Darin hadn’t run farther than a half-marathon at that point. “I really had no idea what I was committing to,” he says. With no formal training, “I had to learn everything from scratch and do my own research.” He read books and took notes on everything from training to nutrition to sleep patterns and what to wear. “I have probably tried nearly every brand of clothing, most nutrition supplements and most of the training plans,” Darin says. He’s narrowed down what works for him. On almost giving up: “After Chicago in 2015, I was about to give up on the Boston hope. My times had leveled off after peaking in the Marine Corp Marathon in 2014 at 3:22, the following year took me back to the 3:27 range, where I stayed all year. I ran Los Angeles in 2016 and stayed at 3:28.” What saved him: The Hanson training plan. “The longest run with this plan is 16 miles, and the plan trains you for the back half of the marathon.” He set a PR by nearly 16 minutes in Colorado. On winter training: “It is probably the most peaceful time of year to run outside for me, but it can be the hardest. I refuse treadmill running unless it’s an absolute must.” On goals: “I’m ready to get through the last two weeks and head to Boston!” Next week, meet more runners. Full list here. ![]() 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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