This year Christmas was different for us. For the first time in 12 years my son had been invited to spend Christmas with his dad. Now although I knew I’d miss him, I was also pleased he would have this opportunity. It did mean that we decided to have a total shake up on what was becoming a ‘routine’ at Christmas time. We normally host on Christmas day, which as I’m sure most of you are very well aware, means running round preparing food / drink / tidying / making up spare beds etc etc ! With different people arriving and leaving at different times of the day it generally results in a very exhausting day. Now don’t get me wrong, I love to host – but also don’t want it to become so routine that people presume we will just do the same year after year.
Christmas 2016…….
Christmas Eve, being a Saturday meant parkrun. My son decided to not go to his dads until late morning in order that he could join in the fancy dress fun. A friend visiting in the area also come to try our local course – all in all a great day. The weather was very wet and cold which put a slight dampner on proceedings, but fun was had by all.
Afternoon and evening was spend curled up on the sofa in front of the tv. I can’t remember the last time that we did this.
Christmas Day. For the first time in 15 years there were no children in the house. No guests. Did we have a lie in? Of course not ! We’d decided to visit Hull parkrun for the first time for their Christmas day run. And very pleased we did. A flat, tarmac course, around the lake in East Park on an unseasonably warm day, added up to a very pleasant way to spend the morning.
We spent a few hours with family in the afternoon for Christmas Dinner, before coming back home to watch a film.
On Boxing Day we often have visited one of our local hunt meets, but this year I had been reading about a local group of bloodhounds – Highmoor Bloodhounds. They use runners as the ‘quarry’ for the hounds and are looking for more people to be the quarry. Now this sounds like fun to me, so we decided to go along to their Boxing Day meet to see what it was like. I definitely think this is something that we will try to organise in the new year. Seemed like a nice bunch of people, gorgeous hounds and a different way to get some trail running in !
Was I happy with this Christmas? Loved the running, and pleasing ourselves (that sounds selfish doesn’t it….). But I also love to host. What have I learnt? That it is good to mix it up – do different things each year.
What do you do at Christmas – always the same routine or do you mix it up? Do you manage to still fit in your normal running?
a mile run 
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