As the calendar flips to Jan. 1, 2016, I have a wide variety of things on my mind about the holidays, running, and life in general. Four years ago I posted a lot of “12 things” lists in the 12 months of 2012, so I thought I would get back to that idea for at least my first post of the year.
1. It’s the end of the day Jan. 1 and my Christmas tree is still up. In the past couple of years I have said I wanted to leave it up until Three Kings Day (aka the Epiphany), but I do miss the space in my living room. It may come down this weekend though because it stopped taking water today.
2. A couple of weeks or so ago I started posting holiday songs every day in hopes of spreading some positivity. What’s happened is me enjoying this season much more than usual. Having two kids helps, but I really feel better listening to more Christmas music and focusing on simple things this year. Here’s one of my favorites:
3. My son has had an amazing winter break, including a round of Putt-Putt on one of those strange warm days before Christmas. It’s been amazing to me this year to see how much can happen in 2 weeks.
4. We love the “tacky lights” in Richmond and this year we went out a few times to catch the best ones around.
5. I’m really going to miss Christmas, can’t you tell? That said, I have so many other things coming up that I’m excited about, including the fact that I started my new job on Wednesday (after being sick, traveling the day before, and having only one vehicle temporarily).
6. Next year is Dave Matthews Band’s 25th anniversary. I can’t wait for the tour announcement.
7. Moving on to several running items … I’m REALLY tired of running in the rain.
8. I think I wore gloves only three times in December.
9. Back to item No. 7 … with the rain, I discovered that one pair of my shoes is squeaky …
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10. As I mentioned in No. 5, I got sick early Tuesday morning prior to traveling home from my in-laws’ house in Ohio. Even though it didn’t last long, it made me miss a couple of runs to close out the year like I wanted.
11. The Shamrock Half Marathon is 76 days away … that seems so long in the winter, yet seems so close.
12. My “Make a Pledge Week” items are going well, except for the plank streak. The streak ended sometime in December, then restarted, then stopped.
13. I know at some point again in my life I’ll have a dog and go for runs with a dog, but I’m still not ready to get another one.
14. I’ll continue to log my miles on paper in 2016. Now that I’ve been doing this again for a couple of years, I can’t imagine doing it another way.
15. 2015 started well, but ended better — there was a lot of weird stuff in between. When it comes to running, I’m glad to be done with 2015.
16. My first day of 2016 was spent making a to-do list, running with the family at the park, doing some cleaning, eating some kielbasa and sauerkraut, looking at holiday lights one more time, and thinking about what’s ahead.
Real David H. 
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