I have a really old mountain bike.
 
It’s red, and for a long time it had one black tire and one blue tire, and everything on it was once laying around the mechanics’ area of The Pedaler and the Packer, a bike shop in Athens, Ohio.
 
My college boyfriend was a bike mechanic. I met him when I took an old Schwinn in for more reflectors, because I was riding home from class and it was dark and everything I wore was black. (It was 1995, and even all my hippie girl corduroy was dark colors. Also, I still dress like that. It’s an issue.)
 
He invited me to sit in the back with him, and I did, and then we ate ice cream together, and then we dated for several years, and then we broke up, and did that a few more times.
 
But he was an avid mountain biker, biked everywhere, through the Andes one semester and through West Virginia the rest of the time. At some point he asked me if I liked red or orange better, and I must have said red, because a carbon-fiber frame showed up that he outfitted with spare parts from the shop. We were in college, after all.
 
We rode all over the place. Roads around Athens, fire roads in West Virginia, carrying gear out and camping with friends. I was never an amazing mountain biker. It required more coordination and fitness than I had at the time. But I had a sense of adventure and he had a lot of patience, and we had a ton of fun.
 
We rode to grassy areas and he showed me how to clip into pedals, learning in an old loose pair of his, then how to balance myself in a standstill, try to hop in slow circles. I could make it about halfway before I did a slow fall, the insides of my knees black and blue from the bike landing on me over and over while he hopped up and down on picnic tables, balanced on whatever he could find. I don’t have the vocabulary to describe it all, but in my memory it was hours of patiently trying things.
 
Eventually, he put new brakes on for me and warned me not to hit the front ones.
 
“You’ll flip,” he said.
 
“I’m fine,” I said, as we crested a hill near Snowshoe, West Va., “Just go.”
 
“OK,” he said. “I’ll see you at the top of the next one.”
 
He was off, hands in the air for some of it, then tucked in and flying down, rolling halfway up the next one before he had to pedal again.
 
I stared down the hill. It was dirt, some loose gravel. I started to get a little scared – it just seemed … steep. I told myself to just ride the back brake and everything would be fine. And it was. It was going well, I wasn’t too freaked out, and then I thought, well, maybe I can just … and I tapped the front brake and the next thing I saw was my bike going over my head as I flipped and slid down the gravel on my side.
 
I laid there. Looked at the sky. Heard footsteps coming.
 
“I hit the brake,” I said, when his face came into view.
 
He helped me up. We finished the ride. Later that day the road rash covering one side of me crusted over and bruises bloomed beneath it. Someone at a gas station on the way home gave him a dirty look.
 
It’s a long story to tell to say that I loved it. I loved being out in the woods. I loved riding my bike. It was a good life when it was good, great when it was great. And then things change.
 
But I still have that bike. I bought a road bike about 12 years ago, and for a long time, that was what I had. I rode my mountain bike with a Burley attached to it. Flipped over the handlebars in Newton Hills in 2001. Loved it. I’ve never done anything to it – I can’t. It’s trapped in an era for me that I can’t change, wouldn’t want to.
 
It’s a piece of crap covered in spare parts that reminds me of a house I lived in with three guys, where we paid $1,000 a month in rent, and in return had no keys, no screens, no dryer and a sump pump that you had to go plug in when it rained, standing on a cinder block in a flooded basement, hoping it would pump out all the water so you could relight the pilot light on the water heater and take a shower before your form and function of poetry class. When I left college, I left everything in that house. Dishes in the sink, food in the fridge, all the furniture. I took some of my clothes and left, never saw the deposit again.
 
The back porch was full of bikes – several mountain bikes, commuter bikes, the BMX bikes one of the guys still rode.
 
I love that bike.
 
And on this past weekend, Patrick took it to Spoke-n-Sport for me, and Peter Oien did something magical to make the rear derailleur actually work again, the first maintenance its seen since 1998, and I drove it over to Elmwood Park for the cyclocross race that Falls Area Bicyclists puts on every year.  The week before, Patrick and I had gone out and he had made me practice getting on and off my bike while running. I was back in Athens for a moment, just trying something, in a field with my bike, someone riding slow circles around me.
 
I couldn’t do what he wanted me to – sort of swing myself over it while running, balanced on my upper body.
 
“I want to do it in the dark, in my yard, where nobody can see me,” I said.
 
“OK,” he said, and we slowly rode the course. He took out a piece of paper in my kitchen later and showed me how to try to take any of the turns, warning me not to go too tight or I would fall over.
 
It proved to be the most helpful thing he told me, besides, “Have fun.”
 
I’m no stranger to races – I’ve run 10 marathons, two ultras, dozens of half-marathons and 10K and 5Ks, triathlons, spelling bees. I like competition, and I like being outside, and I like trying new things. But still – it’s been a while since I did something I have no real frame of reference for, in front of everyone I know, in loops around them, my kids with cowbells and what little respect they have for me.
 
“You’re doing the beginner’s race. Sign this,” Patrick said when I got there, and handed me some paperwork and a number. Shannon Parsley pinned it on for me.
 
The anxiety peaked. “How do I get to the start,” I asked Gene Noble, as I stared at the rows of tape and couldn’t make sense of it. “Just ride the outside, and you’ll get there,” he said. I did and I did, and there were two other women in the back – Claire and Christina. Claire knows what she’s doing.
 
“I’ve never done this before,” I said to no one, and to them.
 
“Me neither,” Christina said. “I’m more of a runner.”
 
“Gah, me, too,” I said.
 
Solidarity. They were so nice. I felt better immediately – these people were friendly. They weren’t laughing at me. Patrick had assured me, when I asked him about 100 times, “Am I going to embarrass myself?”
 
These women didn’t care. There were only three of us among the 20 racers.
 
We went.
 
Friends, it was fun. It was more fun than I’ve had in a long, long time. I was reminded of how horrible I was at mountain biking, of how godawful my depth perception and vision is – yellow tape on yellow leaves was not kind to me – of how I should have honestly paid more attention to Patrick telling me how to get off my bike. Turns out, in the race I pretty much just hit the brakes completely and got off it like I was heading to the library.
 
We rode across the park, into the woods, over some roots, dodged some pumpkins, carried our bikes up a set of stairs and tried to get back on not looking like idiots. I feel like I couldn’t stop smiling, couldn’t stop thinking about how much I love trail running, how much I loved mountain biking, how much this was like both of them, smashed together on a pile of memories and a little bit of hope and a lot of people being really nice from the sidelines.
 
I passed Claire at some point, waited the rest of the race to see her again, because she knows how to actually turn her bike. Me? I just basically spent the entire 30 minutes with yellow caution tape touching some part of my body, forgot to move my feet and dug my pedal into the dirt while turning, nearly collided with barriers I struggled to see against the leaves, tipped straight over in the sand.
 
Toward the end, you ride up and down on the levee, and my poor turning got the best of me, and I got my pedal stuck on tape or a stake or something that made me feel like I was going to slide back down.
 
It didn’t matter.
 
I came through the finish, rode over to the pavilion where the kids were. Viv gave me part of her oatmeal cookie. Patrick gave me a hug. Jack ignored me, instead riding all over the little obstacle course with all the other kids. Claire and Christina both found time to come and talk as the day went on, fast friends from the starting line.
 
And for the rest of the day, I felt happy.
 
I did something I’ve never done before, and nothing terrible happened. There are a ton of things I’ve never done. I’ve never been to Europe or eaten sushi or been on a sailboat. I’ve never successfully ironed a shirt or picked the correct amount of change to feed a parking meter.
 
It doesn’t matter.
 
I had fun. I watched Jack borrow a bike from Harlan’s Bike and Tour and ride it all over all day. I watched Viv take her bike and actually pick it up and run up the stairs, doing her 6-year-old best to be her most awesome self. I watched my friend Kelly’s son Sam, 8, win the kids race, and beam all day with pride. I watched a dad chase his daughter on her bike with training wheels. I watched really fast men and women blow past, loop by loop. Watched those same people yelling for guys on fat bikes and people on tandems in the fun race at the end.
 
Mostly what I watched was a small festival pop up at a city park, watched a food truck do what I hope was a really good business, watched people get introduced to each other and dogs get petted and babies get held.
 
For me, it was a reminder that everything you do is built on something else, but it can still all be new again. To not be afraid to try. To remember that people really just want you to come on out.
 
It’s not what I’ve always thought of the cycling community. But it’s what I got on Sunday, and I’m pretty sure I’ll regret this when a dozen women show up and I come in dead last for the rest of my life, but I hope cyclocross can get some of the love that trail running has been getting the past few years.
 
As for running, I’ll do the same thing next week at the Newton Hills Ultra, where I really hope there are some new faces, some people who are doing this for the first time, who have never run a trail or never gone over whatever miles or have never done a race. And I hope I can be as kind to them as these people were to me, as encouraging and friendly and welcoming.
 
See you Saturday.
 
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 coffee tastes weird,” he said to me.
 
I tasted mine.
 
“It kind of does,” I said. “Maybe it’s the cup?”
 
I had taken out a rarely used travel mug for him, and I thought maybe it just tasted a lot like metal. “You can have some of mine.”
 
Patrick and I were driving south of Sioux Falls, making our way through Canton and down into Newton Hills State Park. I heard a friend earlier in the week describe life outside right now like living in a painting, and that’s what it felt like, everything orange and red and crisp, with NPR on the radio and a shared cup of coffee between us.
 
“So, are we running together,” Patrick asked me.
 
I didn’t say anything, stalling. I didn’t know what I wanted to say. I’m not in some amazing racing shape, not even mediocre shape, but I had that feeling you get, where you want to go and run as hard as you can, even if in the scheme of things it’s not that hard. A benchmark. A breathlessness. A something that makes you want it.
 
“What, do you think I’ll slow you down,” he said.
 
I stayed quiet. I don’t know. Maybe? He’s not in great shape, either. We’re both a long way from where we were several years ago, when he competed in Ironman races and I competed in everything. At the same time, we’re a long way from where we were even a year ago, when the thought of doing any of this was nearly unbearable, crushed under the weight of a hundred other things happening.
 
We never resolved how we would run the race, the Newton Hills 10K that the Sioux Falls Area Running Club puts on. We drove into the park, and I went inside to get a sticker. “How many people are in the car,” the clerk asked. “Two,” I said. “That’s $6.” “I only have a $5,” I told her. She said it was OK and waved us on. We pulled into a spot near the start and began taking an inventory of all the gear we had thrown into the car. I debated a T-shirt and arm warmers, annoyed I hadn’t brought a different pair – these slide off my upper arms all the time. But my long-sleeved shirt was really tight, and I knew I would get hot after a while. I brought gloves. Patrick put on a half-zip and a T-shirt over it, a trail series buff and a hat.
 
“It’s not January,” I told him.
 
People around us were doing strides along the road, others walking toward the bathrooms and others doing what we were doing – trying to determine the right mix of clothing for standing around and then running.
 
At the pavilion for the race, we ran into everyone we knew. It’s one of the best reasons to go to a race. I talked to Luke and Barry and Adam about their recent trip to St. George, Utah, where they and our friend Erica all just killed it. To Russ and Nancy, a biker and runner.
 
“It’s cold,” Patrick told them. “Maybe I’ll just sit in the car.”
 
“I don’t think she’ll let you,” Nancy joked back.
 
I met Nancy at the Good Earth trail run a few weeks ago, where she won the master’s division, and we talked about how she’s going to Boston next year and about some longer trail races she’s considering next year. I told her I wanted to run the Black Hills 50, and she said she was thinking about it. I encouraged her, thinking it would be fun to do that with her, even if we aren’t together on the race course. I like her, and I’d like knowing she was out there. It’s another person to know, making the racing community feel tightknit.
 
We began to gather at the start, and race director Nathan Schwab, who put together the three-race series this summer, gave the final instructions, reminding people that the course fairly quickly drops into single-track, so line up where you belong. He thanked the sponsors and volunteers and told us all to have a good time. Patrick and I still hadn’t talked about how we were running this race. When the gun goes off, we all know it’s every runner for himself. Still, we’ve done enough races together where we’ve run every step side by side, there for the fun of it and the pace of whatever seems to work. It’s a great way to experience an event, and I love it.
 
The course begins in a small field and then drops onto the trails at Newton Hills. I’ve lived here for 17 years and probably gone to this park two or three times a year, and I still can’t figure all the trails out. I’ve run this race before and still can’t figure them out. I just know there are railroad ties here and there, the hills are steep and to watch out for anything left from a horse in some spots.
 
The only discussion we had was when Patrick asked me where I wanted to line up. “Somewhere near the back of the first third,” I told him, and that’s what we did. It sounded better than “the front of the middle.”
 
We ran.
 
We ran close together, with me in front of him, for a while. I could hear him behind me, told myself to run as close to whatever edge I had without going over. You know how it is in a race, you try to start out not too fast, but not so slow that you let yourself slide into an easy jog for the duration. It would have been easy to turn and say, let’s just enjoy this day out here. I wanted to. But I knew what that would feel like later, wondering why I’m so lazy, so just pathetically lazy sometimes.
 
Just like when we bike together, Patrick passed me on a downhill, and I tucked in behind him.
 
We ran.
 
Luke and Adam were the course volunteers at the top of a small hill, yelling for us, and I made a joke as I did my best to sprint past Patrick up it. “He’s going to beat me,” I yelled at that. “I can’t let it happen.”
 
The joke that isn’t a joke.
 
And maybe that’s where it all began. We are two very competitive people, when it gets down to the wire. We’re the kind of friends who can’t ever really get into a fight, because we’ll be so hurtful to win we may never recover. I know this. I know this about myself, and I know this about him. We stay within our limits, and we did the same on these trails, winding through the park, leaves crunching, jumping over roots and our hearts pounding.
 
This is what it feels like to race.
 
I wasn’t racing for a place (I finished 8th woman overall and not even top three for master’s women). I wasn’t about to set a PR (my time was 15 minutes slower than my fastest 10K). There was no glory beyond domestic bragging rights to be had in this race, but that’s what it was.
 
We ran.
 
Patrick picked it up on every downhill. We came through the 2-mile mark, and he swung over to drop some of his gear off, and I kept going. We climbed up onto the bridle trails, and my chest hurt, stepped onto the sandy uphill and I began to power-hike. He was right there. We didn’t speak. The trail evened out and I began to run again, felt him do the same.
 
I ran every flat as hard as I could without bottoming out, took the downhills seriously, wishing I had worn my contacts so I could see better – bifocals are a terrible choice for trail races, I know that. Don’t fall, I told myself. Don’t lose because you’re clumsy. I power-hiked the uphills as fast as I could, usually passing Patrick on them, silently, trying to hold it on the top and then feeling him come up and past me the next downhill.
 
Just relax, I told myself. He’s barely been running – and we have miles to go. He can’t hang on. Cyclocross practice and bike commuting aren’t enough. He’ll fade. Wait for the fade, and hold on until then.
 
He wasn’t fading.
 
We ran.
 
We came through the sumac in the last third of the race, and I saw Patrick do a few surges, look behind him, check where I was. I had fallen back a bit, and now there was someone between us. It’s now or never, I told myself, and I began to pick it up. Just pass that guy, I thought, the same way any of us pull ourselves toward the finish line. Click off one runner at a time until you’re at the clock.
 
We hit a downhill.
 
Let’s go, I told myself, and I began to run, really run. Most of my running the past year has been a slog. But in the last few weeks, I’ve gone out with some of the guys I used to run with at noon and been reminded that somewhere deep inside me is some speed. Not a lot, and not for a long time, but there’s still something, one more gear, and I searched for it at Newton Hills. I couldn’t let Patrick beat me, not badly, not because I had given up when I realized I would have to fight for it. Where’s the fun in that, for either of us? A victory is sweeter when you know it isn’t a given. Otherwise, why had we done any of this today? We could have admired the leaves and talked the whole time, like usual.
 
I passed the guy between us. I don’t know what it felt like to him, but for me, I honestly felt like I blew past him. I felt like I was on fire. I felt like I was running faster than I’ve ever run. I felt amazing, like a gazelle, like I was having the most fun of my life.
 
Like I was gaining on him.
 
I watched him know I was coming. Friends of ours were along the fence, yelling, watching the two of us race each other for the middle of the pack. Is it pathetic? I don’t know, maybe. When I see people surge like that at the end of a race, I always think, you know, why didn’t you do that steadier and move up in the pack earlier? If you have that much energy, you could be placing somewhere. Still, I heard our names being called. “Go get him, Jacqueline,” Eva yelled. They knew what was happening.
 
At the corner back into the field, I fell back. What are you doing, I asked myself, don’t look like an idiot racing across this field. He pulled ahead, and I watched him slow down, knowing I wasn’t right on his heels.
 
Damn it, I thought, let’s go, and I went, and we crossed the finish line within a second of each other. There’s no actual finish line, just a clock and a chute. I stepped ahead of him, in an annoying move. “I should have thrown an elbow,” he said later. “I should have worn cross-country spikes and taken you out in some kind of Tonya Harding move on the course,” I replied.
 
We laughed. I could barely breathe. Patrick pulled me over into a hug, both of our chests rising and falling with the effort of the past 58 minutes.
 
It was fun. The only conversation on the course  a few “You’re killing me” comments I made, met with a “Good” from him.
 
When is the last time you raced? When’s the last time I did? I can’t tell you what it felt like on Saturday. To run hard against someone else, to know we’re fairly evenly matched, to know neither one of us has any business trying to do anything out there but run for the fun of it. And the truth it, this was the fun of it. It was fantastic.
 
“I didn’t want you to say later that you could have run harder,” Patrick told me on the drive home. “I wanted you to give it everything.”
 
And I did. I’m a little embarrassed to say that – my everything should result in a faster time. But it didn’t. It resulted in that time, and that experience on that course and that day. That’s how it goes sometimes, when it goes well, in whatever you’re doing. Those tiny moments when you really know, just know, you did everything you could to hang on, and you hung on.
 
There was no medal for me. No line about a personal best in my running log. No glory in having dropped him somewhere along the course. And he knew I slowed down at the corner.
 
“What happened,” he asked. “I was hoping for an all out sprint to the finish.”
 
My friend Owen always advises to run within your limits, then open it up and see what you have. I did that, and what I had was one of the best races I’ve had in years. Not for time or place or anything except the satisfaction of knowing that I really did the best I could the entire time, that my best friend was a rabbit for me, even though I know it hurt him – he can still barely walk two days later. “My hips and back,” he whines when he stands up.
 
(Secretly, that’s the real glory for me, as I go for a run. Also: I’ll get my comeuppance on the bike soon enough. We know that.)
 
There’s something to be said for racing against another person. It’s not the same as racing against the clock. It’s more visceral, so much in the moment, so much listening to how someone else is breathing and watching their calves ahead of you, knowing as the course changes when you can gain and when you better just hold on. To turning to someone in the chute and laughing about the absurdity of it all, even better when it’s someone you know, when all the fire is friendly.
 
Even better when hours later a friend texts you.
 
“You did beat him,” she says, a photo of the results with me one second ahead in the next frame.
 
“Hey,” I said to Patrick. “Remember when I beat you in a race this morning?”
 
“You know, this just makes me want to crush you next time,” he said.
 
“I know.”
 
We ran some errands. Made dinner. Watched a movie. Listened to the rain.
 
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.
 
 
 
 
 
 

So ​I’m sitting at a bar on a gorgeous Saturday afternoon.
 
OK, technically it’s a lovely neighborhood restaurant and I’m just having a very late lunch at the bar and doing some writing and other random details while a friend yells at a USD football game. It’s not a bad way to spend a few hours. We already tooled around on our bikes for a bit this morning, and it’s a day off running so I have less guilt.
 
While I’m here, I’m tracking my friend Karen as she runs a 100-mile race in Arkansas. Refresh, refresh, refresh. Last weekend it was with friends who were in the Twin Cities, my Facebook feed a running list of dreams made and crushed. Earlier today, one of those social media memories popped up from five years ago, showing me and Owen Hotvet near the finish of Twin Cities, his arm over my shoulders as I celebrated and thanked him for getting me a PR.
 
Recreational running is the only sport I follow, and I really only follow it through the everyday folks I know who are doing it. As I sit here in this bar, I realized my shared experience of sports is very different from the people around me. The USD game is on a TV in the bathroom, for the love of god, lest you miss a minute while you wash your hands. It’s not my world – but there are many times when I’m envious of those who care that much.
 
Another friend told me this week that the last words he said to a dying family member this spring were, “I think the Twins are going to have a good year.” And they did – and he teared up as he shared the story, unembarrassed to say he thinks there was a reason for that.
 
It’s OK to believe the universe aligns like that sometimes. It probably does. The best part is maybe just seeing someone so vulnerable to their emotions and their hopes that this is how one life ends and maybe another begins. I don’t know what I believe or don’t believe, so to me, anything seems as possible as it is impossible.
 
He went on to share how someone else he knew took a radio and sat on his dad’s grave to listen to a Cubs game one time, some game that mattered in some year I don’t know. Think about that – still a shared experience, between him and his memory, between him and who the heck knows what out there in the world, sitting and listening and being alone and not alone.
 
It’s all been part of the past few weeks – everyone I know obsessed with the waning baseball and the start of football and fall road and trail races. This sort of collective excitement.
 
I often wish I could gin up any interest in professional or college teams – in any sport. I mean, I hear Cleveland is still doing OK. It would be nice to be thrilled for my hometown. I have a Cleveland shirt I keep thinking I should put on in solidarity, but then I worry someone will ask me a question, any question, about baseball and I’ll show myself as a fraud.
 
Instead, I just stick to what I know – the friends I have doing the things they love.
 
It can be intoxicating, following along. Thank goodness for online tracking – how did we survive before we could stalk people we know and people we’re just curious about as they make their way to the finish line. Wondering what the weather is like, how much it’s contributing to someone’s pace. Checking the course profile to see if the inconsistent splits are from terrain or wheels coming off and slowly getting put back on again, or a mismeasured course casting an inaccurate scenario.
 
As I write this, I don’t know how Karen finishes, and I won’t update with her time when I find out. Suffice to say she began running today before I got out of bed, and my belief is she’ll still be doing it when I go to bed, still be doing it when I wake up tomorrow, getting closer to being done and being more amazing.
 
My shared experience isn’t the same as these folks, who are yelling at the televisions and pounding on the bar. I type. I hit refresh. I surf upcoming races and dream about what 2018 could be and the many ways it can roll over much of 2017 with different memories. It can be awful to see different anniversaries sometimes – the day when this fell apart or that unraveled.
 
In solidarity I signed up for a trail 30K in a few weeks, remembering doing it last year and hoping that this year I’ll be as undertrained yet less hungover, maybe fall fewer times, get up anyway.
 
I want Karen’s memory of today to be the day she did it. The day she conquered whatever she was trying to wrestle with. I want to see a picture of her, cheeks sunken with dehydration and hair spiraling around her face in unkempt curls, eyes crinkled up at the corners, an exhausted smile on her face. And to be honest, it doesn’t matter where that is – if she times out on the course or just gives up or is triumphant at the finish. I just want her to do what she’s meant to do, whatever that is on this day.
 
When I walk out of here in a bit, three Diet Cokes and a house salad later, I want people to know how strangely intimate my collective experience is. It seems like a good game in here, judging by the comments and the noise, by the continuous trade of beer bottles next to me.
 
But the truth is, my athlete is still competing. My runner is still going. My friend is still trying, and we all hold our breath until she tells us otherwise.

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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