Want to know a killer way to wake up your sleepy self on New Years Day? Run a race. When it’s cold. Damn cold. Like, 15 degrees with a wind chill.

Welcome to the Northeast.

I ran my first race this morning. It was the annual Freezer Run put on by the Central Mass Striders. It’s a really simple course, down the street from the school where it starts, under 190, past the Sterling Airport, up around a hook in the street and back the way you came.

I finished around 49:15. That’s unofficial, since the formal race results haven’t been posted yet. But that’s the time I saw when I crossed the line, which puts my pace around 9:11-ish. For my first race, I’m extremely pleased.

Some of the highlights of the race include a guy running with two large US flags and a tri-corner hat, donuts as the post-race refreshment, a single prop plane landing one hundred feet from the road, another single prop taking up a glider, a really terrible selfie (at the request of my wife), and finishing.

Enjoy some pictures below.

The Almost part of the title of this post refers to the fact that, as of about 2PM today, I have a whole circuit upstairs that is no longer working. My wife plugged in a vacuum, turned it on, poof! No power. Not only no power, the circuit was still on, never tripped.

So I’m off to Lowes first thing tomorrow to buy a new ground fault interrupter and install it. The one the vacuum was plugged into has been running hot recently. Hopefully that solves the problem, and that I don’t kill myself replacing it. Otherwise, Day Two of the new year will be spent calling electricians.