Letter From a Board Member: Geoff Dunbar
(Photo Caption: TNT from the early days of UVRC)
Dear UVRC,
Way back in 2011, I was one of the founding members of the Upper Valley Running Club. It was a group effort, with many involved, and lots of hard work; I will not attempt to name everyone in fear of forgetting someone important. For me, there were two main inspirations for starting the club.
The first inspiration was the running club Nancy (wife) and I were members of for a year in California; the Tamalpa Runners. My idea of a community-based running club comes from Tamalpa, and many of the features of UVRC are more-or-less copied from there. A group run, a race series, a newsletter, a social committee, etc.
The second inspiration was that the Upper Valley had an existing track workout, organized by Kim Sheffield. That’s right; TNT pre-dates the UVRC! TNT was long on enthusiasm and knowledgeable coaching, but a little short on organization and promotion. I’d like to think we succeeded admirably in adding some formality to TNT as we’ve kept it going strong for the past 15 years, even when Kim retired off to Florida.
My memories of the early years of TNT are running with a pack of middle aged men, unwilling to accept the reality of age coming on; mostly in our forties with a couple of quinquagenarians mixed in (people in their 50s, thanks Google!) We were generally the first or second fastest group at TNT, depending on whether a couple of faster young guys showed up. I will note with some pride that back in the day, my 5K pace was a bit under 6:00/mile (not anymore!)
Nowadays when I show up for TNT, I love the big crowds, the large faster groups of young women and men. However, it makes me feel a bit old, and I wonder where the old group went. There are still a couple of others that come out occasionally (nice to see you this week, Alden!), but on a week-to-week basis it’s thinned out a lot. Don’t 40 year old men still want to come out and seek to reclaim the good old days?
Then, I was at TNT this week and “young, fast” Shane Greene brought me my prize from the BarnArts race a couple of weeks ago. I happened to glance at the BarnArts results, and was horrified to find that Shane is 42. He would have fit in nicely with my TNT group, back in the day. It turns out that I’ve aged (and slowed) out of the group I used to be in, though the TNT demographic has probably skewed a bit younger,.
Luckily I’m an optimist, so I choose to believe the following. I’m still lucky to be out there running pretty fast, even if not as fast as once upon a time. And, I’m so happy that the UVRC has continued to grow, bring in new people, and promote running in our community.