Running Twice as Hard

Gets you a brandy glass sometimes

I genuinely don’t think I have a thread of a story to hang this on, but here goes a slew of observations, a sort of midsummer goat’s stew meant to be a little rancid and difficult to digest. Kind of how I feel as the weather turns muggier.

But today, you might want to know, was the 38th annual Bradford, NH 5k.

The first ever Bradford 5k I competed in was the 14th in 2001 after we moved to New Hampshire for good and I had started work as a teacher in Manchester. I wanted to do something to stay in shape as I transitioned to a more adult, respectable stage in my life. With a kid, a mortgage and a real job with time off in the summer, I took up training a few days a week in order to make a decent showing in a 5k or two in the summers.

That first 5k was run in a heat wave, but this morning I drove up the road fifteen minutes from the house in a cool rain to the town hall to register, There was a small knot of runners there before me. I picked up my bib and the teeshirt and headed to the door, just remembering to ask where the start was.

Down the road and across the highway, in a parking lot in front of the church, there were stands of vendors setting up and groups of runners of all ages. The beauty of the local 5k is the amiable nature of the contestants and the chance encounters that may be forthcoming. I struck up a chat with a gentleman from Beverly, MA stretching on the sidewalk, who said he was running in honor of his father, a former townie, who used to make the Bradford 4th of July 5k a regular part of his summers before he passed away, which I thought was a nice tribute to his old man.

With little fanfare as befits the small town vibe, we set off, and soon enough I pegged myself behind a man about my age chugging along at a good clip. He pulled me along almost the entire way, but I did move up alongside him on the third and fourth mile just to be fair since he had been doing all the work and was starting to flag.

I was impressed with my pace, and my oxygen deficit was not too bad, but striding hard up to the finish, glanced at the clock and saw that my time was right in the range of my usual, and I finished in a flat 24:14.

I guess that’s what defines old age, running twice as hard to stay just where you are. Good enough for a 1st place in my age group, though, 7th male, and 13th overall, and a prize of a brandy snifter, which I thought was an odd choice for a prize in a local 5k, but there you go. Cheers!

After the race I saw someone who I recognized as a local activist, and we had a long conversation about the sad state of political affairs and the need to keep a mental balance despite the seeming downward turn of the nation and the world. We agreed that the energy transition would continue despite the Trump administration’s worst efforts to derail it.

There is this long winded debate about levelized cost of energy and whether it’s the best metric to base energy planning on. It’s part of the argument about whether solar and wind should be a larger or smaller percentage of our electric mix. I’m no expert and that’s one of the reasons that I don’t focus on energy issues on here, but suffice it to say that I’m generally suspicious of think tanks coming up with policy analysis that conveniently aligns with the random quirks of an obvious madman who has gotten himself into a position of unparalleled power.

At the end of the day, wind and solar plus battery storage has a lot going for it: it’s dispatchable, the newest batteries provide grid inertia services, and the wind and the sun are free.

Its going to take more than Trump and a couple of think tank position papers to make advanced nuclear, geothermal, and/or carbon capture more cost-effective and doable. Natural gas combined cycle plants need pipelines which will not be built in New England. And we need the power to switch on now, not in thirty years. So there you go.

For fans of fiction, here’s my video book trailer for Alias Tomorrow now available for pre-order as a Kindle.

Just go here and sign up to get yours.

Also if you want a free copy to read and the chance to post a review, let me know and I will be sure to make that happen for you!

Let’s support each other as we go into the full swing of summer and head into the dog days.

And lastly, go Zohar!