Beginning Again
It's been a long, long time. 2021 & 2022 left me a little burned out on the Over the Hump series. Rolling around the same dirt course again, chasing mid-pack results just didn't hold much excitement. A disappointing day at the 2023 Belgian Waffle Ride made me want to go back in 2024 & prove to myself that I could do it. And I did.
But that ride absolutely demolished me physically & sapped my motivation. I decided to take a few weeks off to recoup, and that turned into the whole summer. And when fall rolled around we were prepping for the arrival of our second child, and riding had to take a back seat.
But to everything there is a season. I've been getting back in shape, riding more, and now I've got a proper gravel bike that I'm really enjoying.
So I'm planning to head back to the BWR in 2027 & take a proper crack at it this time. And I'm registered for Hyrox Anaheim the week after Thanksgiving. And I'm realizing that nutrition is going to be absolutely critical. My fitness is moving along, but I'm not getting any leaner.
In short, I feel like a lot has happened, but not much has changed. I'm still enjoying bikes, still trying to figure out how to balance my sweet tooth with my athletic goals.
So my initial plan here is to "self coach" like I did a few years ago when I was training for the Tahoe Trail 100. (Which I ended up not doing.) I'll set some process goals & give myself a weekly grade on how well I hit them.
I'm also keen to do some more tech-centric stuff here. Generative AI tools have caused absolute upheaval in the tech world and beyond, and I've started to feel the same sense of "holy shit!" that I felt when I first got started coding. I feel like I've got a unique angle on the intersection of AI tools like Claude Code, personal automation, and personal productivity systems that I'd enjoy writing about. So I'm going to do more of that here, too.
Something I want to be absolutely clear about: any words here will be mine. I read blogs for the personal voice & individual perspectives. I write mine mostly for myself. (Nobody reads this, and I have the analytics data to prove it!) I like coming back and reading my own thoughts or referring to my own notes later. I simply don't see machine-generated text as useful here. The whole point is that I wrote this.
I will however, use AI tools to collect & collate data, or to provide features here that I think will be interesting to build (often with AI tools). After all, that's why this site is built the way it is. It's as much a forum for me trying new coding ideas as a creative writing/journaling outlet. I think it'll be really interesting to see where this trail goes.
Welcome back.