​I love sleep!  Whether it’s sleeping late into the morning (If my three kids let me sleep in until 7:00a it’s a miracle) or taking a nap in the afternoon, nothing can beat the well-rested feeling when you wake up.  Fur runners, sleep is even more important.  According to the National Institutes of Health, the average adult needs 7-9 hours of sleep (Sounds great doesn’t it!), as an endurance athlete it’s important that you are not depriving yourself of sleep.
 
Sleep deprivation can cause your body to not fully recover between workouts and runs.  As you sleep, your body repairs and regenerates the muscle tissues that you damaged during your run or workout that day, it also builds bone and muscle to prepare you for future workouts.  That recovery can be slowed down even more when you don’t get adequate sleep, the body is not able to naturally release human growth hormone into your system.  This natural hormone aids in the recovery process and building stronger muscles.  When the body fails to get the adequate recovery, you increase your injury risk and open yourself up to future runs and workouts falling below expectations.
 
7-9 hours of sleep (and as a distance runner you could probably use a little more than the average person) can be difficult to get for an average person, let alone someone training for a 5k, 10k, half marathon, marathon, or ultra marathon.  So how can you try to get enough sleep?

1.Give yourself a bedtime  
We give our children bed times, so why not give ourselves a bedtime.  If you know you have to be awake early the next morning, make sure you are getting to bed earlier.

2. Don’t take any distractions (i.e. cell phone, tablet, etc…) to bed with you  
I’m guilty of this one.  I take my cell phone to bed with, tell myself “I’ll only check Facebook” and then somehow it’s 90 minutes later and I’m on my 50th YouTube video of the night.  If it will distract you from getting to bed once you are in bed, then leave it somewhere else.

3. Take a nap  
Naps are the best.  My mom is the napping queen of the world, so I’ve learned the importance of a nap (Especially Sunday afternoon naps after church while football is on TV) from the best.  Even a quick 20 minute rest can help so much.

​Grant Watley is a veteran high school and collegiate running coach and co-owner of the 605 Running Company. He received his Masters of Sport Science in Sports Coaching from the United States Sports Academy in 2011 and graduated in 2009 from Nebraska Wesleyan University with a degree in Health and Fitness Studies and a minor in coaching. His contributions to the 605 Running Company Blog will appear periodically focusing on training and nutrition.

I drove past 41st Street the other day, between Phillips and Cliff avenues.
 
I couldn’t remember the last time I ran that stretch. It’s funny because I ran it at least twice a week for nearly a decade. It was part of my normal 5-mile morning route from my old house in McKennan Park: I would run 18th Street over to Dakota, then cut over to Phillips on 33rd, and take it down the hill to 41st. Then head east to Cliff Avenue and come up Arcadia to 33rd and back home near the park.
 
It was a great run – hilly and fairly well-traveled, perfect for training on dark mornings.
 
I knew so many routes from that house – knew them down to the tenth of a mile. The 7.8-mile run that my friend Kari and I used to do, trying to hit it in 60 minutes or less, and sometimes we did. The run to Brandon and back on weekends, to get a long run in. The easy 5-miler.
 
My new house is in southeastern Sioux Falls. I’ve lived here for just over three years now, and I still don’t have the routes down like I did over there. I don’t know if it’s because I haven’t ever officially trained for anything while I’ve lived over here or if it’s because I almost never run with a GPS anymore. I run mostly for time, my phone tucked into a belt with Strava running in the background, and occasionally I look at it.
 
I know the corner that’s a mile from me, I know I’m about three-fourths of a mile to the bike path, I know when I go through Old Orchard and down to the bike trail, I can get close to 5 miles.
 
On a recent Sunday morning, I woke up and sat on my back deck, drinking coffee and reading and trying to determine if it was going to start raining and when and how hard. I’ve been doing a lot of trail running lately, but sometimes I just don’t feel like it. I ran with my friend Natalie a few weeks ago and she talked about how she just was burned out on trail running. She had big miles to do, and the slowness of the trails made it all just take too long sometimes.
 
That’s how I felt, even just facing down an hour and a half run to cap off a week of being sick. I needed something, but the thought of driving to the park, and then the hills, and then all of it was clearly in my way.
 
So I put my shoes on. Road shoes.
 
Grabbed my old ipod and stood in the driveway, hit shuffle with all my old Wilco albums. I had gone to Lincoln, Neb., on Friday night to see them, the first time since they played the Washington Pavilion in 2002 or so. I didn’t want to be out of that evening, a little tipsy and a lot happy. I hear them and am back 20 years ago, driving to Columbus from Cleveland, am sitting on the deck, am writing, am running, am wondering and waiting and swimming all the way back up to now, arms full of everything I’ve collected along the way.
 
I came out of my neighborhood and headed north on Sycamore Avenue. It’s a slow and steady climb all the way to 18th Street, never steep enough to make you realize it, but there enough to make it all feel like a bit of work. As I turned west on 18th and took it over to Bahnson, I started to think about all the different times I’ve run up there.
 
It’s weird how the entire city can be laid over with memories of running routes.
 
Kristen Johnston and I used to run that route backwards, taking 18th over to Sycamore instead, and then coming around. I would run up River Road, climb the huge hill as it turns into 18th, and then turn south on Bahnson on mornings before work.
 
Now it’s all different on the same roads. I ran by myself, sang out loud, stood for too long at the corner of 26th and Bahnson, trying to breathe in the weird fall humidity, took a detour to get in a few more miles. Stopped to pick up a friend.
 
As I waited for him to get his shoes on, I laid on my back patio, trying to figure out why I felt so awful – blaming the humidity. I closed my eyes against the sun, turned on my side and tried to determine if I was going to get sick or not. I didn’t, and when he came out ready to go, I just asked for a hand up and we headed back out for another few miles.
 
I ended up running for about an hour and a half, with a bit of walking toward the end. I didn’t want to do the second half of the run. I almost didn’t do the first part, comfortable enough on the deck reading a book and drinking coffee.
 
But I went, and that’s what I just keep trying to do. Just go. Be consistent. Walk if you have to – you almost never walk as much as you think you might when you get started.
 
I’m not from Sioux Falls. I’ve been here for nearly 17 years, though, long enough to have seen the city change. I have friends who grew up here, and they talk about everything they remember on street after street. My memories aren’t that layered. Even where I grew up, it was so fragmented. I lived in Elyria, Ohio, until I was 10, then I moved to Rhode Island and lived there for a year. Then back to Ohio for a year, back to Rhode Island for a year, and back to Ohio for high school. College in Athens, Ohio.
 
And then I just kept moving. To Cleveland. To Minnesota. To South Dakota.
 
People ask me if I ever miss my hometown, and the true answer is no, not at all. It was never really mine. I wasn’t old enough to know it, hated high school enough to have that bad attitude cover up any nostalgia that may exist.
 
It wasn’t my town.
I don’t know if this is, either, but I’ve lived here longer than I’ve ever lived anywhere, and I only really ever thought about leaving twice. Once to the west coast, once to the east. Neither seriously. I want my kids to have a hometown, so I’ll be here for the duration, I think. It’s too weird to feel uprooted all the time. I know that.
 
My emotional Strava segments in this town are made up of training going well, or poorly, of injuries and friends I haven’t talked to in a long time. A phone call in a parking lot. A ragged discussion on the bike path, both of us crying. A fall on ice, a thunderstorm, a beautiful day riding bikes with the kids.

It’s everything, these routes. Maybe that’s how it always is, wherever you go. Other people have them in their car, on the drive to their first house, to all those things. I have that, too. But then I have them on foot, forwards and back, in the early morning, and at dusk.
 
They’re written down in perfunctory logs, date, time, distance, shoes worn. No other notes. I think I like it that way – I never know what I’ll remember until it happens, sometimes triggered by the day, sometimes the place. I don’t know what I’ll hit when I retrace them, when it will lift me up, when it will level me, sometimes both in the same run.
 
I don’t know what was making me feel so awful on Sunday, as I laid there on the patio. Maybe it was the heat. Maybe it was all of it. Maybe it was nothing.
 
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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The last time I tried to race anything was in 2013.

It was the last year I qualified for Boston, and I ran two marathons that year, giving them both everything I had to make my time. I missed the first one by about a minute, and made it by about 20 seconds at the second one.

Ever since then, I just haven’t had any motivation to push myself that hard. I still run. I run all the time – and I’ve done a lot of trail races since then, sometimes placing accidentally because I was graced with a small field.

But for the most part, it’s been four years of junk miles, a few months off, some ultramarathons that involve a fair amount of hiking and a lot of just running because. Because I like to be outside. Because it makes me feel better. Because time spent in the woods is my favorite time. Because that’s how I hang out with my friends.

Because it’s what I do and who I am, and it has been for a long time.

And when people would talk about why they would run, those would be the reasons I would give. For a long time, it hasn’t been because I’m trying to get faster, or qualify, or place, or anything.

I’m just trying to survive out there, and when I make time to do that, I find a way to survive everywhere else in life. It isn’t as fatalistic as it sounds – it’s just the truth. Sometimes that’s what you’re trying to do, every day, the best you can.

You wake up and pack lunches for kids. You consider cleaning your kitchen and decide that sort of wiping down the counters and sweeping most of the floor without actually moving any chairs is good enough. Laundry clean and folded is almost as good as put away.

And a run after work in the rain where you go a few miles past where you intended, where you run completely in your head, completely alone, is the right kind of run. Or a sort of run and hike midmorning at Good Earth State Park. Or staring down the treadmill, again, while listening to Lucinda Williams.

It’s all life.

But on Saturday, I decided to run the Good Earth Trail Run, the second of three races in the trail series put on by the Sioux Falls Area Running Club. It’s the state park nearest my house, and I love it there. I wanted to be part of the inaugural race, and I wanted to support the club and Nathan Schwab, the race director who has been working really hard to get the series going.

Plus it was $20, as a club member, and I got a very cool buff and a glass from Wood Grain. No matter what happened out there, it was a good deal.

It was a crisp morning, and I ran into Rhonda Punt at the starting line. I know Rhonda from the Thursday night running club runs out at Good Earth, and because she was kind enough to let me feature her on this blog once. I know she’s in great shape, fresh off Boston this  year, and solid. I thought we might be fairly evenly paced, and imagined us running together.

But you know how it goes at the starting line of a race: Every man for himself. I was there with a friend who was just doing the 3-mile, and he headed out and I let him go. I have done zero race training. Every time I’ve run at Good Earth for the past few months, I’ve hiked the hills instead of running them. I tell myself it’s good ultra training, but the truth is, I’m just lazy.

One of the folks I’ve featured on this blog commented one time that it was fine if you just run for fitness. I’ve been remembering that lately and trying not to beat myself up for not being somewhere in a training cycle or in racing shape. At the same time, I don’t want to get so lazy that I let that part of my former life pass me by. There’s a time and place for everything, right, and lately my time and place has been self-preservation.

Rhonda took off on the course, and I let her go. I started out slowly and just tried to maintain an even effort. It was some of the best advice I ever got about how to run hills: Instead of trying to maintain pace, just try to maintain effort, and I told myself that’s what I would do.

I wasn’t racing. I couldn’t. I’m not in shape to do it, even if I wanted to.

Still.

I got down the hill and began to run the loop at the bottom, and I passed someone. Passed someone coming up the hill again, felt good at the top as I ran the flats. I saw Rhonda ahead of me, and this is where I confess that I just wanted to catch her.

Because why not.

Because for the first time in a long time, I felt a burning desire to just run harder. I have no ability to back up the desire, but it felt good to even feel that spark. I spent the rest of the race about 100 feet behind her, never really able to gain on her. I lost sight of her around the corners toward the end, and it was tough to keep motivated when I wasn’t sure if she had pulled away, and as I became increasingly aware there was no way I would get her without some kind of obsessive push, and the spark in me wasn’t quite that hot.

I came through the top of the park, and a lightning strike lit up the sky around me, thunder clapped immediately, and a minute later it began to downpour.

I didn’t catch Rhonda, who went on to win her age group. I was far, far behind the winning women, solidly in the middle of the overall pack of runners. But I went up to her at the end anyway and thanked her.

It was fun to have someone to chase. Even better when it’s someone you like, so you aren’t annoyed when they beat you.

Nathan is doing a really good thing this year with the trail series. Next up is Newton Hills, the club’s longest running race, and then shortly after is the ultra at the same park. I love seeing trail running take off. It’s my favorite way to run.

But I’m grateful to be reminded there’s more to running than just an easy hour before or after work. That there’s more to me than some sort of aimless junk miles, a half-hearted attempt at keeping decent mileage, a resistance to tracking my pace.

Maybe I’m not where I used to be, and maybe I never will be again.

But I could probably be better than I am right now, and Saturday’s race reminded me sometimes it’s worth a shot.

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 wish I had a time-lapse video of Sunday morning.
 
It would start with me laying in bed, hitting snooze every 9 minutes from 3 a.m. until 3:40 a.m., eliminating something on my to-do list with each push of the button.
 
Take a shower? Why bother.
 
Eat breakfast? I’ll take one of the fig bars with me and eat it in the car.
 
Brush my teeth? OK, that one I have to do. Time to wake up.
 
I reported to the Denny Sanford Premier Center at 4 a.m., one of the early group of volunteers to help with the Sioux Falls Marathon, Half-Marathon and Miracle 5K. I’ve served on the race advisory board for several years, and marathon day is always exciting. I know the folks at the Sports Authority work really hard to make the races the best they can – and they do it within the confines of city permits and allowable road closures and bad weather and runners who can be demanding.
 
I never thought that hard about it until one day when I was talking to Bryan Miller, head of the Sports Authority. It was soon after he took over the job when Wes Hall left, and we were chatting about his various experiences in putting on events – tournaments and meets and everything in between.
 
He made some comment about the race – it’s not directing a race that’s that hard – it’s the sheer area of it. Think about that. It’s 26.2 miles of event, at least. Plus an expo the day before. Volunteers the day of. The possibilities that someone might get hurt out on the course.
 
The early wave of volunteers was there close to 3 a.m., driving the mile markers all over town and setting them up, hoping this year’s iteration would withstand the South Dakota wind. They didn’t. I sat at mile 22 of the marathon course, in basically a wind tunnel, and propped my sign back up over and over, eventually parking my golf cart on the edge of it to keep it upright, leaning against the top of the cart.  I was so aware of not moving it too far from the mile marker – as a runner, I know how annoying it is when the mile markers are off. But I also know it matters to see that sign in the distance, able to anticipate hitting the split button on your watch. After a while, I gave in and moved it to the other side of the trail and leaned it against a structure, hoping the runners would forgive me the variance in distance for the ability to see it.
 
But that’s the kind of detail that Miller and those of us on the race committee think about.
 
It’s a heavy task, and as a runner, I’ve done my share of complaining about races. Heck, because it’s me, the way I complain I’ve probably done your share, too.
 
I’ll tell you, though, that this group keeps trying to get it right. They’ve enlisted a committee of short and long distance runners to offer advice. The Sioux Falls Area Running Club. The Sanford Sports Science Institute. The 605 Running Co. People who know, and who care, and they listen to us, and we listen to you.
 
Almost every runner I worked with this weekend was friendly and thankful and understanding. And that includes almost all of the people I had to tell couldn’t come onto the main floor until the race before them had taken off, or who learned their race was delayed 15 minutes because of lightning.
 
People understand.
 
Once the runners took off, Greg Koch and I set off in our carts to man our miles. My cart was maybe the world’s slowest golf cart. I actually stopped to make sure I didn’t have some kind of brake engaged (I didn’t). I was just north of Sertoma Park, near the Sioux Falls Women Run water stop and the zoo. My job was to monitor those miles, and make sure people were taken care of. It was mostly easy – the SFWR group did an outstanding job, and I didn’t have to worry about them. In retrospect, I should have let them know when the last runners were coming, as the crowds thinned, so not all of their members had to stay at the station.
 
But I think they would have stayed anyway – they all looked like they were having a pretty good time, and I know the runners there were taken care of. I saw them as they came toward me with little bags of ice the crew had handed out, to cool them on a very humid day.
 
Greg ended up sitting at the water stop ahead of me, which meant mostly I had to just hang out with my blowing-down sign.
 
I cheered on runners, took photos, Tweeted a bit. Cursed the wind, the neverending wind. I ate the pretzels I brought. I gave my water to some guy who looked like he really needed it. And I gave a ride to woman from Romania who lives in Denver and had taken a $20 Frontier flight here with a friend for a girls weekend because it was so cheap. She wasn’t part of the race – she was staying at the hotel across the river – but she had mistaken the suggestion of a bridge for an actual bridge and had walked far more than she wanted to. I advised her to skip the Corn Palace and go to Falls Park instead. I hope she did.
 
As I sat there, I was inspired by the men and women in the front, giving it everything they had to win or qualify or at least hang on to whatever they were after. By the relay runners, some of whom had connected with strangers and agreed to do the race because why not. For the people in the very back of the pack, with the sweep just behind them, still plugging along and smiling.
 
This is what it looks like when your dreams come true. Or when they come falling down around you at mile 20. Or when you find yourself, as we all do, in that horrible no man’s land at the end of a race, when you’re talking yourself out of whatever you set out to do because my god, it just got really hard, and what’s the point.
 
I know those people. I’ve been that person. And my job on Sunday was to keep looking up and saying, “You can do it. Looking good. Nice work, runner. You got it.”
 
And every time one of them started running instead of walking, every time I watched someone massage out a calf cramp and then limp along and try a jog here and there, I was reminded of why I love this sport, and especially this distance: Because it’s just you. And the wall. And then whoever you are when you get through it.
 
One guy asked me jokingly for a ride to the finish.
 
“You’ll never forgive yourself if I give you one,” I said, once I made sure he wasn’t serious.
 
And it’s true. You show up in a marathon. Who you are comes out at mile 22, and you wrestle with it until mile 25, every painful footfall until 26, and the tiniest euphoria those last 0.2.
 
I watched many men and women I know out there, some who don’t know me but that I recognize, some who said my name and I couldn’t place. These are my friends. These are my neighbors. And at that mile, staring straight ahead, arms pumping, holding on for third place or a PR or whatever it was, they were so deep inside themselves.
 
Think of how intimate that is – to be able to see someone’s pain and hope played out across their face, pulsing in veins on their foreheads, in the despair of their footfalls before they started running again as they passed you.
 
Sioux Falls, I saw what you were made of out there, and I fell in love with it all over again.
 
This is my city now, and this is our race. And we’re going to keep making it better. 

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.

​Editor’s note: Not all athletes responded, so this isn’t the complete field.

As race week continues, we’re featuring some of the elite runners in the half-marathon.

When you start running, a 5K seems like a reasonable goal, and it is. And after you do that a few times, you move on to the 10K. The next jump is to the half-marathon, which brings a certain sexiness to it just because it has the word marathon in it.

But don’t be confused: It isn’t half of one race. It’s a distance all its own, and when you race it, it can feel like a sprint, whatever your level is.

Meet some of the men and women who hope to come in first on Sunday in the half-marathon.

Name: Pasca Myers
Age: 31
From: Fort Dodge, Iowa
Family: My husband, no kids, 5 brothers 3 sisters in Kenya.
Occupation: Nurse
5K PR, year, race:  16.05 2010 NCAA outdoor championships 

Your story: I began running in 2005, and running has brought me thousands of miles away. I have traveled to every U.S. state as a collegiate runner and now a professional runner. It paid my school fees, allowed me to meet new people and make new friends Running is my drug – without it, I couldn’t be where I am today.

On the half: I love to run the half marathon and marathon because it’s fun to race the distance and it’s not demanding like shorter races. My goal for race day is to run 1:17 to 1:18. My training has been long runs of 10 to 14 miles with 8 miles every day during the week, plus temp runs or track workouts.

How do you stay motivated? Everyone wants to stop at some point in a race. For me, that’s mile 10 and 11, and I tell my brain, ‘I only have 2 or 3 miles to go, keep pushing.’ In training, I remind myself that my patients and clients need me healthy so I can take care of them. After running, my brain is alert so I can face challenges.

What do you read? I like to read about healthy topics and research to keep me up to date for my patients.

Name: Keegan Carda
Age: 23
From: Sioux Falls, South Dakota
Occupation: Public relations representative
5K PR, year, race: 14:27, Grand Valley State University Holiday Open in 2015

How long have you been running, and what keeps you motivated?
I have been running since I was in middle school, but I really fell in love with it my senior year of high school. Thinking about future races and my competition keeps me motivated. I set goals for myself and try to give everything I have to reach them.

Favorite race to run and why?
My favorite race has been the 10k, but this will be my half marathon debut, so it may change!

Describe your training leading up to the Sioux Falls 5K?
My training for the half marathon has been similar to what I was doing in college, but mostly I've been focusing on getting in consistent mileage and at least one workout a week plus a long run.

What's your goal for race day?
Come race day I want to run the best race I can, run for my family and friends, and earn some prize money.

Everybody wants to stop at some point in a race -- where is that point for you, and what keeps you going?
In college during 10Ks, it was always a little after halfway. I focus on staying mentally strong and positive to get me to the finish. 

Racing is hard, but training sometimes can be harder. Tell me about what you think about to keep pushing yourself day after day?
During difficult periods of training, I remind myself that this training is going to be worth it come race day. I also think about professional runners that I look up to, which reminds me of the hard work it takes to be successful.

What's the last book you read or movie you watched, and what did you think of it?
I just read "The Unwinding" by George Packer. It is the story of American politics in the last 40 years told through several people's lives. Packer is able to tell such big stories through small lenses.

What's the funniest thing that's happened to you on a run?
About a mile into a long run, my buddy came across an unopened Budweiser on the sidewalk. We can only assume it was left there after a house party the night before. He chugged it without breaking stride and tacked on another 12 miles. 


Name: Christian Karels
Age: 26
From: Milbank, South Dakota
Family: Single
Occupation: Engineer
Half Marathon PR, year, race: 76:00, 2012, Fargo
How long have you been running, and what keeps you motivated? 
13+ years starting in 7th grade, through high school, on to the D1 collegiate level at South Dakota State (GO JACKS!!), and now as a passion/hobby a few years removed from a competitive team structure. My motivations include seeing friends and old teammates continue to have success in running as well as the SDSU XC/Track team as they continue to make themselves known on the national level, watching Team USA at the Olympics & World Champs, and lastly, my next race.
 
Favorite race to run and why? 
I grew to like the cross country 8k in college. At first it was quite an adjustment from being used to running 5ks on golf courses in high school, but later realized it catered to me much more being a longer distance-oriented runner. Also part of the adjustment was the mental focus it required to be successful, especially in the later part of the race, but I was able to overcome that and had successful races and times in it by the end of my collegiate career.
 
Describe your training leading up to the Sioux Falls Half Marathon? 
One of my best friends from the team in college helped me lay out a plan. My training has consisted of getting back to structured weekly mileage with workouts and doing a race every 2 weeks as was typical for the XC season in college. The racing portion of that training regimen would normally be tough to find and make work, but The 605 Running Co. of Sioux Falls couldn't have made it easier with their Summer Race Series. These series of races were purposely planned to help one train for a Sioux Falls Marathon weekend event. It is great that the guys over there recognize what it takes to prepare for such an event and how to schedule it appropriately to make it easy for someone to fit it into their training plan.
  
Everybody wants to stop at some point in a race -- where is that point for you, and what keeps you going? 
I find it hard to continue to push if I get isolated late in the race, meaning there's no one around for me to try and latch onto or run with. I get through it by reminding myself that I'm still racing for myself and a goal time even if a particular placing has gone out the window. Keeping my eyes up and focused on someone in front of me also helps because chances are they're hurting, too. We had a pre-race chant/breakdown in college that went: "What are we running through today?! Pain! I can't hear you! Pain!! Again! PAIN! Again! PAIN!!"
 
Racing is hard, but training sometimes can be harder. Tell me about what you think about to keep pushing yourself day after day? 
Getting out the door is the hardest part of training; especially if you train solo like I do. Losing the team atmosphere definitely made that tougher. I keep myself thinking about my goal and how each day of training is another opportunity to get better. The feeling of accomplishment and success after that race I've prepared for makes it all worth it.
 
What's the last book you read or movie you watched, and what did you think of it? 
I recently went to see Dunkirk in theaters. I enjoy anything to do with the history of the World Wars. The movie was very humbling as it provided a good perspective of what the Allied troops went through being pinned on that beach just waiting and hoping for an evacuation. It truly was a miraculous event rescuing far more troops than they had thought would be saved.

​​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.