2016 was, for many, not great.  Countless celebrity deaths, political and social turmoil, and ultimately a lot of bad that threatened to outweigh the good.  For some, the darkness was too much.  For others, it balanced out.

Count me among those who found it to be a mixed bag.  Here’s a brief rundown of my 2017 year:

• January – Business as usual, except for Alissa being 9 months pregnant (surprise!)
• February – Annika Catherine born on the 19th at 10:10am; 7 pounds, three ounces.
• March – Returned to work after a two-week break to adjust to our family of four.
• April – Annika suffers a herniated ovary and has surgery at barely two months old.
• May – While biking to work, I’m hit by a car making an illegal left turn.  The diagnosis?  A deep muscle contusion and lower back sprain.
• Summer – Weddings!  Babies!  Paternity Leave!
• Fall – Back to work, back to reality.
• Winter – Christmas!

Clearly, the back end of my year was an improvement, but gosh, what a start.  And with all these new challenges, both my writing (which has been at a standstill for a few years now) and my fitness began to suffer.  Between Annika’s birth and my crash, I was off my feet for four full weeks, to say nothing of just being too tired to run on other weeks.  Save the Boxing Day 10-miler, I didn’t race for the first time since 2013.  I doubt I logged more than a kilometer per day, all said.

2017 will be different.  I’m signed up for 5 races, with some lofty goals for three of them.  And I’m hoping to use that as a chance to get this old blog up and running again, if only to provide something resembling a training log.

So welcome back, faithful reader.  I hope you don’t mind that my movie reviews have been replaced by shoe reviews, and I hope you’ll stick around.