Well when the Xmas weekend report writing landed with me I thought I might have an easy week with most normal people resting and overindulging on food and drink. How wrong could I be? Then I remembered runners are not normal people and of course you lot were going to make the most of the time off work to get as many races in as humanely possible! I mean when else can you run 2 parkruns in as many days?  I apologise in advance if I haven’t included a photo of everyone but there were just so many it would have made this report 20 pages long.

Whilst I was busy doing all my Christmas Dinner preparations 60 of you were taking part in 12 different parkruns all around the country.

Firstly I want to mention Clacton Seafront where Emma Welham hit her 50 milestone, accompanied by her biggest supporter Albie on his first 5KM (and 15 other blues). Fantastic achievement Emma – now wear that tee-shirt with pride! It was quite a momentous day as Sam Plummer beat his own CR – 15.39 – this meant Mark Jasper had to settle for 2^nd place.

Martin Owen took on Wendover which sounds like hell on Earth to me! He describes it as uber hilly and he course description states that there are fast downhill sections and some significant uphill sections – he completed in a very respectful 25:22.

Now to Somerset where Anna Lyon took on Street parkrun in Somerset with her little sister. They were both 1st in their respective age categories (26.10). All other Xmas Eve results can be accessed here

33 of you thought running an Xmas morning parkrun was more fun than checking out what Santa had left in your stocking (unless you’d all been naughty this year)? Sticking with Martin Owen – Xmas Day marked his 50^th parkrun this year (amazing!) which he did at Banbury and he ran it with his sister in a leisurely 40:50.

A massive 20 of you ran at Colchester Castle with Richard Heath finishing in 3rd place (19:22)

Mark Jasper took the crown with 1st place at Harwich and scored a course PB (18:12). He was joined by Dave Jones (26:35)

All 3 Hallahan children ran at Colchester Junior parkrun – I am in awe at how any parent can entice young children away from presents and chocolate on Xmas Day – I would not stand a chance with my two!

We also had runners take part in Ipswich and Maldon.

Now on to Boxing Day…

Witham 5 Miler “Run your Box Off” normally sees a fair few blues but this year our sole representatives were Mags and Frank. Frank finished in 54:49 and Mags thought she’d sneak in one last PB before the year is out with a stonking 36:43!

It looks like 12 blues took part in the tough and muddy Runners Versus Riders event at Friday Woods  and it got rave reviews– as far as I can make out we had two riders with our very own Martin Steinward being part of the winning team! It was a family day out for the Preslands (Vicky, Paul and Millie) with them loving nothing more than a mud bath. Shout outs to our other participants Belinda Palmer-Barnes, Paul Carlisle, Paul Hollidge, Paul Davison, Tomasz, Tim Ballard, Rob Ferguson and Joshua Beaumont.

Now for the 27^th and the Twixmas Trail….this is another event organised by our very own Craig and it saw many blues self navigating themselves around either the 4.5 or 8 mile routes (or 9.6 mile routes In Phil Presland’s case!) As I am writing this I still haven’t seen the results but have included some photos to show some of you who took part – it was nice to see some canine friends accompanying you too. Well done to everyone who made that finish line.

Another event (or series of events) on the 27^th was the ATW Christmas races at the Northern Gateway. This included a duathlon, 5Km and 10Km and we had representatives in each. The straight runs took place on the track and the duathlon took place on the bike circuit as a 2 mile run – 10 mile bike – 1 mile run. Claire Poole did incredibly finishing the duathlon in 1:00:55 – 1st in age category and 2nd Female! As for the 5Km we had 2 ladies- Charlotte Hammond and Lisa Briggs. Lisa smashed it with a new PB – 21:11 which was good enough for 3^rd overall, 1^st female and of course 1^st in age category. Charlotte got a post-baby PB with an impressive 28:12. We also had Charlotte Mills run the 10Km, just sneaking over the 1 hour mark with 1:00:03

And that my dear readers is a Christmas wrap (sorry not sorry!)