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5 January 2025 - Washington, er, Northern Virginia

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After reading Carissa's 2024 recap on doing epic shit I felt inspired to write one of my own. I also have like 9 hours to kill here in the airport.

The year started off with me still searching for a job, so busy with interviews and applications. Iwona & I drove up to Heidelberg to meet her sister Jola for a long weekend.

I climbed Hörnli in the snow with Anita and our dogs.

For the race of the month I ran the 13.3 km Dietiker Neujahrslauf. I also introduced dumbells into my training regime, but it didn't last.

The Iwona & I traveled to Bergen to enjoy snow and sauna and the hytta.

I finished off the month crossing off another canton by running a race in Solothurn.

This month saw me knock out a couple more sections of the Via Jacobi, from Waldstatt to Wattwil and from Siebnen to Lachen.

March started off with the 11.4 km Laufsporttag Winterthur and another segment of Via Jacobi from Lachen to St. Meinrad.

The big trip for the first part of the year was to Bosna i Hercegovina to run the half marathon in Mostar.

I visited Ticino and Gruyères to do some some really epic hiking as well as completing a number of segments along the Via Jacobi, Flüeli-Ranft to Brünigpass, Brünigpass to Interlaken, Nyon to Versoix, and Versoix to St-Julien-en-Genevois.

I also took the German B2 exam, which added a bullet point to my résumé.

May saw me hike the last 5 segments of the Via Jacobi to complete my walk across Switzerland from Rorschach on the Bodensee to St-Julien-en-Genevois on the French border. Now I have a big chunk of France left to complete and I'll have walked from Germany to the Atlantic coast of Spain!

June started with a trip to the Taminaschlucht. Then I knocked off two more cantons running hillclimb races in Zug

and Uri.

We saw the opera Carmen outdoors on the shore of the Zürichsee and I finally saw Megadeth in concert at the Summerside festival.

June also saw me find a new position with Augmedi to start after our July roadtrip, which we actually started June 30th.

The first half of the month was our epic roadtrip to Nürnberg,

Wrocław,

Warszawa, where we saw Chopin's birthplace and a Metallica concert,

some more Polish cities and then finally Slovakia.

July also marked 20 years of this blog. Oh, how time flies!

In August it was back to Gruyères.

And then three straight weekends of races, first in the canton of Appenzell Ausserrhoden for a trail run.

Next was a hillclimb in the freezing rain of Appenzell Innerrhoden.

And finally the last canton, Obwalden, completing my goal to run a race in every Swiss canton with a half marathon around the Sarnersee.

I celebrated with a trip to Mallorca, where I got injured in addition to getting some sunshine.

I finished up the month with the Redde Run in Ticino.

I started the month with a trip to Skopje to run another half marathon, but significantly worse than the prior month's due to injury.

Trouble with my Swiss papers also led to an unplanned trip to Kosovo to visit the Swiss embassy so I could get a sticker in my passport to travel home.

More travels in November led me to Waldshut in Deutschland along the Rhine where it meets the Aare and Tirano in northern Italy on the other side of the Bernina Pass.

I finished the month running a trail race from La Neuveville in the mountains above the Bielersee.

The last month of the year saw me travel to Bergen where I got together with one of my old running groups.

Then it was on to Cyprus where I ran a 10K in Limassol and soaked up the sunshine. It was there that I got the heartbreaking news that my childhood friend John Caruthers died suddenly at 44.

For the holidays I then traveled to Atlanta, where I spent Christmas at Grandma's and we all got terribly sick. I went to bed at lunchtime on Christmas and literally got up two days later. But in the end it was a refreshing trip and I got to catch up with some old friends.