I tried to hang a wrought-iron curlicue thing on my deck a few weeks ago to suspend a planter full of impatiens.
 
I don’t know the technical or gardening or metalworking term for whatever the thing was – an arm of sorts with holes for two screws and some dips and swirls to make it look pretty enough, or, as Paul Simon would say, all right in a sort of a limited way for an off night.
 
It was the first item I’ve purchased since being divorced that would rely on me and my mediocre skills of home repair or improvement. But it’s two screws into a wooden post, I thought, it can’t be that hard. The kids and I brought it home and I went into the garage to get the drill my dad bought me when I moved out of the house 22 years ago. My ex-husband Philip had left me a small pile of tools and a home in good enough repair that I wouldn’t have much to worry about.
 
Memory served enough for me to get everything assembled, and I leaned over the rail to position the screw into the post. It was a weird angle, sort of half bent sideways with my arms over my head. I considered getting a stepstool. Didn’t. I drilled a bit of a hole so it wouldn’t be so awful once I had to hold the bracket up, and I confess to patting myself on the back when I remembered how to reverse the drill to back the screw out.
 
I then immediately dropped it and watched as it rolled between the slats of the deck and fell into the rocks and weeds and who knows what else below.
 
“Crap,” I thought, “I’ll never find that.”
 
Then,  “Oh well. It’s not like I’m hanging a tree – I’m sure this thing will hold my pot of flowers with just one screw.”
 
I picked up the bracket, fit the screw onto the drill, did the weird lean over the railing and pressed ahead. I felt it go in, and as my pride swelled, I leaned back and took pressure off and immediately stripped the screw, halfway in.
 
“Good grief,” I thought, and wondered how the heck one gets it back out. I tried to unscrew it with my hand – impossible on every level. I tried the drill again – which whined and spun and did nothing to help me. I tried just staring at it all, hoping I would somehow figure it out.
 
When all that failed, I did what any self-respecting suburbanite does: I went to my neighbor and asked for help. My neighbor Zahur, always friendly, offered to come over. When he did, he took one look at my tools and went home to get his own. Five minutes later, my bracket was hung, with two screws, including one he had from home, and I had another basket of impatiens to water.
 
It was one of a string of firsts, and it sounds so small: I got out my drill, remembered how to use it, then flubbed up the job I was doing.
 
Two weeks before, I had mowed my lawn, the second time in my life I’d ever used a lawnmower. I had to have a friend show me how to use it, and when he did, I cried with gratitude, then immediately wished I could mow in the dead of night so my neighbors couldn’t see my try to navigate the flower beds and curbs and my pitiful upper body strength as I tried to start it.
 
I made it through that, too. And while I still can’t answer what seems to be everyone’s question about yardwork, “How long does it take you to mow?” (I don’t know … depends on how many times I have to stop and get something for the kids or how much Diet Coke I drink between the front and the back, or if my neighbor wanders over and we sit on the deck and gossip for a while.)
 
Every step is incremental progress.
 
Now I know how to mow a lawn. Now I know to apply pressure when using the drill. And now I know how to use an edger.
 
I had realized this weekend the grass near the swingset was out of control. The kids could have begun playing some random war movie over there, or become covered in ticks, or maybe it would all just grow long enough to hide the swingset itself, and save me from ever having to tear it down and figure out what to do with it. These were all viable options to me.
 
Instead I went into the garage, looked at the edger and saw it had directions on it. I followed them. It wouldn’t start. I tried again. No luck. Called Philip. I’ve tried to not ask him for help – we’re both respectful of one another’s time and the untangling. He asks me for help with his schoolwork sometimes or for my pumpkin bread recipe, and I ask him things like, “Where is the thing to make the sprinkler things work?”
 
We do our best to answer each other, gently and honestly, knowing we have a lifetime of negotiating to do as we raise two young kids. And I always say you marry someone for a reason, and just because you get divorced, some of those reasons remain. It’s not always amicable – if it were, you wouldn’t be divorced in the first place. But we continue to try, sometimes harder than we did to stay married. Or maybe it’s because there’s no obligation now, and every decision to be kind is made and meant intentionally.
 
“Look, I’ll just come over, it’s fine,” he said, and arrived a few minutes later. We stood in the garage, our hands in our pockets, and looked down at the offending and unstarting edger.
 
“You have to try to start it like 30 times,” he said. My sapling upper arms whined just thinking about it. He knelt down to do it, and I stopped him.
 
“Can I do it? I’m going to have to do it,” I said. “Just tell me what I’m doing wrong.”
 
I got it to start. He showed me how to hold it, told me to tap the disk at the bottom when I needed more string.
 
“What?” I asked. “Isn’t there a blade somewhere?”
 
He explained the string thing again. I must have looked stricken.
 
“On the ground,” he said hurriedly. “Tap it on the ground, not with your hand.”
 
I started to laugh. “God,” I said. “I’m glad you explained that. I was like, wait, you want me to tap it while it’s spinning? How does it not cut me? Also I just don’t have that kind of wingspan – I didn’t know how I was going to reach it and hold it at the same time.”
 
We both laughed – and it was a rare and wonderful moment between us, the kind that maybe would have saved us had it happened more often in the decade before, or maybe it could have never happened with who we were then. It doesn’t matter – my regrets from the past year are over the little things, not the big decisions, and all my gratitude is for moments like this, when we can be human to each other.
 
He walked around the yard with me, offered tips.
 
“Don’t get it too close to the …” and I gouged a hole in the earth. “Or the …” and a piece of the swingset ricocheted off the slide.
 
As Philip got ready to leave, he looked at the back of my car. “That’s a sweet sticker,” he said, about the Celtic-style owl and the Zumbro logo.
 
Since that race, I’ve struggled to run. At first I thought I broke my foot, so I took a few weeks off. I’ve had enough stress fractures to know what one feels like, and there’s nothing any doctor can tell me that I don’t already know. Rest. Come back slowly. Make sure it feels OK before you start at all.
 
That’s good advice for just about anything, really – from your love life to your running life. I’m trying to follow it in both. It’s all incremental progress – but moving forward is moving forward, and each step takes you a little farther.
 
This week I ran consistently for the first time since Zumbro. It was nothing amazing: a 4.5-mile run on my treadmill on Tuesday night to force the issue, 6.5 miles on Thursday at Good Earth State Park, my favorite place to run, and then 5 miles at noon on Friday with a former coworker, doing the same route we ran together for a decade. Saturday I joined the 605 Running Co. morning run and potluck breakfast (thank you, Benson, for that amazing tea). And then on Sunday my friend Kelly took the kids so I could get another 6 miles in.
 
It’s not a ton – not quite 30 miles this week, but better than the 5 a week I’ve been logging as I throw a test at my foot here and there.
 
But it’s something.
 
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.

This weekend, 605 Running Co. manager Greg Koch and I had an awesome opportunity to share some of our stories with the REACH Literacy group.

Greg shared a great story about his stint as a quarterback. I talked about how the best advice I’ve ever received isn’t advice at all: It’s an example of hope, and it’s how my dad lives and how he talks to me and my sisters. Giving someone the gift of hope is better than anything else, I think. I’ll take it. And then I’ll try to live it.

The stories were part of an event and book signing, sharing some of the best and worst advice we had ever received. We came out of it happy and laughing, and we began talking about running stories and advice.

We’ve all received advice about running, much of it from people who don’t run – “You’ll ruin your knees!”

I’ve been a runner for nearly 30 years at this point, if I count my start as freshman year high school track – where I began my career as a mediocre runner. The best compliment I got at my high school banquet was the Hustle Award, and a comment from my coach that other girls “had to work hard to beat you.” I guess putting up a fight is a good trait, right?

As Lydia Loveless sings, it didn’t matter, because I always lose.
Kidding. I don’t. But I don’t always win, either. And I like a little competition – we all do. As a runner, that’s most often with yourself – with your own personal time goals or distance goals or life-balance goals or whatever it is that makes you lace up your running shoes.

When you’re chasing a goal, there’s a fair amount of advice offered along the way. In no particular order, here’s some of the best running advice I’ve heard out there. I’d love to hear yours, too!

Don’t try anything new on race day. Let it be known: This is good advice. Also: I have absolutely done new things on race day, including taking a pair of shoes out of the box and running in them (no problem) and eating different food (no problem). Having it work out was dumb luck, like most things.

If your thinking you’re running the right pace, slow down. That is so true – the adrenalin of race day can absolutely mask the fact that you are starting out way too fast. We’ve all done that. And you generally can’t make it up – you always pay that last stretch for your sins at the start.

Follow the plan, but be flexible. I’m a single mom with two kids – I can’t follow a training plan to the letter. I bet most of you can’t, either. Heck, even before now, I struggled. Work and weather and a lot of things get in the way. If your reasons are real – you aren’t the type to just make excuses to miss a workout – then give yourself a break when you miss a day. A tempo run or long run or recovery run here and there won’t make or break your race. It’s a pattern of inconsistency that will ruin you.

Tell someone your goal. This is good advice for just about anything, and all it really means is be accountable. For many of us, that means telling someone you’ll meet them at 5 a.m. to run – and then sticking to it. For others, it means not being afraid to say, hey, I want to run my first 5K or qualify for Boston or remember to lift weights. Sharing your goals with others means you can have a community to support you.

If you’re warm when you start out, you’re overdressed. Ugh, this is a tough one. We’ll remember this in January. But when you walk outside and you’re cold, it can be tempting to run back in and grab a warmer hat or a fourth layer to put on. You have to remember you’ll warm up as you go. (Unless you’re biking – I always get colder biking. I blame the wind generated by my amazing cycling abilities.)

Just relax. I used to run only by miles – I had to do a 5-mile run or a 10-mile run or a whatever-mile run. But then when I was recovering from an injury or a pregnancy, I remembered what my sister Kim would tell me, and I just ran for time. It took so much pressure off. Now, I still do that. I run for an hour, or try to get to 45 minutes on the treadmill. It works for the days when the thought of a certain mileage is daunting and you need to just start, somehow, and keep going, for however long. It means you have to be a little squishy in your running log, but that’s OK sometimes, too.

​All of this advice is meant to bring us back to our core reasons of why, every time, whether it’s at the starting line or the finish line or a random driveway at the crack of dawn. Relax. Slow down. Be flexible. Have fun.

We run because we love it. Because it’s time with our friends, time outside, time taking care of ourselves. We do it out of habit, sometimes out of joy, sometimes out of a desperate need to just unwind or not think or have time to think, to go with friends, to go deep within ourselves.
We run.​
​

​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.

​Kate Patrick doesn’t really have a plan.
 
She’s OK with that, and it’s likely that the members of the Sioux Falls Women Run Facebook page will be, too, once they get to know her.
 
She’s warm and friendly, and her smile is open and genuine. We met for coffee one evening downtown to talk about her new role with group, serving on the board and overseeing social media when founder Sara Lefebvre moves to the Twin Cities next month.
 
They’re big shoes to fill, and Kate knows it.
 
But Sara isn’t worried.
 
“I felt like Kate Patrick was auditioning for this since the day she came into the group,” Sara said. “To me, she was a no-brainer.”
 
“We needed someone who was a very active Facebook user, who was also super encouraging” Sara said. And because she was on the training team, she was able to connect the two groups. Jacqui Meadors will take over as director of the nonprofit group and the training team.
 
“I don’t want to let Sara down,” Kate says. “But I think with this group and what she’s created, everyone wants it to continue.”
 
Kate’s right about that – the Sioux Falls Women Run Facebook page has a life of it’s own, with more than a thousand women as members and posts about runners who go at a “sexy pace” – code for a no-drop run – garnering more than 200 replies from women looking for someone to connect with.
 
The group won’t let her fail – they’re loyal to the cause, which is bringing women together and giving them a safe place to talk about their passion for running, or their newness to it, their goals and dreams and embarrassing questions about every bodily function that can interfere with the miles.
 
But once you meet Kate, you realize she could lead just about any group – she’s that disarming.
 
“I have such a love for this group and what it means,” Kate says.
 
Kate’s story of how she became a runner has become a common one in Sioux Falls. The 30-year-old mom of two ran a few miles here and there in high school and college. She’s from Brookings and went to South Dakota State, where she would hop on a treadmill at the gym to get some exercise.
 
That kind of casual and sporadic running carried her through the next several years. But once her son Nolan, 1, began sleeping through the night, she began thinking about the Sioux Falls Marathon. She signed up and shared it on her Facebook page – which was enough to cause her friend Kim Fromm to add her to the SFWR page.
Kate immediately connected with the group of west side women who regularly meet to run. She was afraid to join a group run, but she made herself go anyway. “There are all those factors you create in you rhead about why you shouldn’t do that,” Kate says. “I showed up and had headphones and nobody had them, and I was like, OK, put those away.”
 
She laughs about it, then immediately talks about how quickly friendships formed. She joined other group runs in other parts of town, and slowly watched as her circle of friends grew – many of them these women she met while running.
 
It’s that kind of community she hopes to continue to inspire with the group.
 
“You find those people you started running with who have become friends, and you know you will have their support,” Kate says. Because of that, she signed up for the Twin Cities Marathon this year, knowing she would be supported by and accountable to these women. “If I had to do a long run by myself, I would quit.”
 
Thankfully, she won’t have to.
 
Weekends starting in about March are full of posts of women completing their long runs, sweaty selfies and comments. Women searching for others to train with, tips on where to run, what to wear and when the water fountains will be open.
 
“It’s a life-changing experience for me,” Kate says about the running group. “The friends I have gained in the past year, you can’t put a word or a price on that. It’s truly amazing.”

​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.