Real David H.

In the first 12 days of 2020, I’ve thought a lot about how I want this year to go, in particular the first few months as I train for the Blue Ridge Marathon.

On nearly every run this month, I keep coming back to one thing – I just want things to be better than last year.

That’s pretty generic, but for now I’m focusing on a few things: running more and eating a little bit healthier.

It’s not anything new or drastically different than anything I’ve done before. It’s really the same thing that I think the first few days of a new year, but don’t really stick with for very long.

Right now, though, feels a lot different. Every run – even the bad ones – feel better than just a few weeks ago when I was eating a lot of Christmas cookies. The miles are quickly adding up too as I am keeping pace for a little more than 100 for the month.

I’m also running a lot more hills than I have in years. It’s been so easy to avoid them, but I’m finding it even easier to venture out a little farther to get in much more than usual.

It’s early in both the month and new year. I know that I can get off track easily. A derailment can happen at any time. But this intense focus on running and doing things better than before feels so right, and I know that I will be pretty upset with myself if the Blue Ridge Marathon isn’t better this year than a year ago …