I felt completely at ease as I lined up at 5th and Harrison to start the 2023 Seattle Marathon: my only expectation was to have a good time.

Two weeks prior I had strained my right calf while hustling down a steep section of Discovery Park’s loop trail; I blame it on the two would-be Arizona Iron wo/man at my heels.

I hadn’t run in two weeks and had no idea what my calf would do; I had not “tested it” (although I lightly jogged from the car to the Westin to pickup my packet, and felt great.)

After several years using Google’s firebase, I’ve decided to return to S3/Cloudfront.

Ultimately, I never took advantage of any of Firebase’s capabilities, and now it’s easier for me to lean in on what I use regularly then have an odd ball.

https://www.nick.org and https://www.kirsch.org/ are both CloudFront’d again.

It took a long time just to start typing this … as I realized that I’m not sure what I want to talk about.

Why am I talking at all? Who are these words for?

One clear beneficiary is my future self. My older self. Will you find me naive or prescient? How many other things will you wish I had talked about?

My children. They certainly don’t look at this now, but perhaps someday they’ll have questions about me that this could answer?

I briefly described the shock of realizing that Zack was moving to California.

Two years later, and … he’s back!

It’s not quite the same, as they will be living in Woodenville and not three blocks away - but it’s still thrilling to have the opportunity to see each other more than 2-3 times a year.

• Get the kids together
• Attend the recitals and the big games
• Celebrate moments together
• Sneak out for a few nights on the town
• Meet up for a rainy, muddy run
• Family camping

The list is endless.

That was hard.

My body wasn’t quite prepared for the descents. I was in good spirits and all else was a go.

I look forward to training up to this being easier, and pushing past.

Happy New Year!

Another trip around the sun. I had fun explaining to my niece this morning our system of time tracking tied to celestial bodies. It all started with: “I have a question. How many Christmases in a year?”

This was the first full year of triathlon training, and there were many ups and downs. I entered the year having completed my first 70.3 tri and nervous for my second (in March). I exited this year with full confidence in my ability to finish, but growing desire and curiosity in my ability to compete.