60 karma · joined December 15, 2016
Doh!
I am very impressed with how little electricity they use!
For the summer, the heat pumps have replaced our terribly inefficient whole-house central AC. We have a PV solar electric system, so we can use the electricity we produce to run them, and once I started paying attention to energy use in our home it was clear that the old central AC had to go.
The modern mini-splits are pretty much maintenance-free, and are warrantied for 12 years. Best off all? The compressors are very quiet. You can have a normal conversation standing right next to them.
I always loved that the biggest leverage point in any system is to change the system itself!
There are a LOT of other factors. Who's on top in the ultrarunning world is constantly changing, and, the ultra races are extremely vaired: 100 mile road races to the Barkley Marathons.
Just last year, Karl Meltzer broke vegan runner Scott Jurick's Appalachian Trail speed record. Obviously, they had very different diets.
I think the real requirement for ultrarunning (and other long-term thinking activities) is grit. Grit includes will power but also the ability to endure.
"When we look at our two largest markets on Hired’s platform, San Francisco and New York, the average African-American candidate on the Hired platform is 49 percent more likely to get hired than the average white person. [...] It's unclear if African American candidates are receiving more offers because of diversity initiatives, a lower preferred salary, or a combination of those and other factors."
As a developer, I find that taking a mid-day break from coding to run for an hour or two in the mountains refreshes my mind and clarifies my thinking in the afternoon. I often end up solving coding problems when I stop thinking and focus on the moment in running, and then--BAM--out of nowhere a solution will pop into my head.