17 and counting where will it go from here.

January so far has been full, action packed and a slight blur. My life as a stay at home father has returned after a short break as I returned to work. I joked at the time when I returned to work that I came back for a rest, and after a couple of weeks of school runs, baby feeds, after school clubs and countless parties the joke has defintely lost its punch line. 

The first week back coincided with the start of Jantastic, a website for runners to join a running community, log their runs, set yourself targets and achieve those goals for the first 3 months of the year. It's designed to help you keep to your New Years resolutions or to get back into the routine of running after the Christmas break. As well as that it's a very helpful tool to push your training that little bit extra and with the added social element of running teams and rivals it adds a little bit more fun into the cold winter months.

So during the day in the first week I was cruising around almost zombie like but on auto pilot and then on an evening I was pounding the pavements trying to get my running back on track and the training for the big runs of the year started. With a few 10k and 10m runs planned and my first half marathon all before the end of April I needed my training runs and my routine back. The second week has been a lot smoother and I even managed to find a bit of time to do a bit of shopping and planning for the up coming Shepley First School fun run. 

The boys have settled down too from the change from Mummy to Daddy during the day and we've had a lovely time almost getting to know each other again. It's a strange change for them too having just got use to Mummy and her routine and way of doing things to then have Daddy do things slightly differently or at different times. Just a slight change can throw them and that was all to true with Clark taking a couple of steps backwards with toilet training, luckily he seems to be gaining those steps back again already.

My running is also back on track and with the added pick me up of new shoes thanks to Nana and my birthday present I have managed to meet my Jantastic targets fairly easily. As ever the routine and awesomeness of parkrun is going strong and this weekend was another record breaking for Huddersfield parkrun. 621 runners, breaking the record by 9 and only 3 weeks into January is such a fantastic start to the year, keep up the good work guys. This parkrunday we also had 4 new parkrunners join in, Becky joined us a couple of weeks ago but this week her husband Paul came along and ran with their sons Zane and their new arrival Travis in his buggy, thus creating Team Horsfall. Along side Team Pattison and Team Horsfall was my sister Jessie and she had brought with her and all the way from Liverpool, her boyfriend Matty who was running his first parkrun and being a parkrun tourist as well. We've already talked about plans for us to do the return trip to Princes' parkrun (Liverpools parkrun), as I've already said to a few people 2014 is the year of parkrun tourism. 

I then got thinking about how many people I have directly or indirectly introduced to parkrun and how many of them have really enjoyed it and continue to take part in parkrun. When I say indirectly in kind of mean the butterfly effect, I.e. They registered because they came with someone I introduced to it via word of mouth or social media. Roughly counting I think I got to about 17 people that I know of that have taken part in parkrun resulting from me taking part for the first time back in June of last year. Only 7 of these are family members and the rest comprise of friends or friends of the family, and this is just the start, I wonder how many of these 17 will end up encouraging others to take part too. This is one of the main reasons for the success of parkrun and why Mr Danny Norman gets wildly passionate about parkrun when talking stats and growth on The parkrun show podcast. I enjoy Danny's passion and I hope that it rubs off a little on everyone, then hopefully the stats and growth will continue.

I hope to increase my tally of people I have help to discover the joys of parkrun in the next couple of months and with the Shepley First School fun run being held at Huddersfield parkrun this year I could easily double my number if not treble it. Only a few people at Dexters school have heard of it never mind take part in it, so with the possibility of about 30-40 people taking part in the fun run, my number should increase a lot. However It's not about how many I can introduce it's how many of them continue and return on a regular basis to increase their fitness, better their times or just as a regular fun and social event. This is usually due to the fun friendly atmosphere and people that run, volunteer and organise Huddersfield parkrun. So a big thanks to Simon, Mark, Kerry, Kev, Jo and many others sorry I don't know everyone's names, keep up the good work and let's keep breaking those records too.

How many people do you think you have encouraged and introduced to parkrun and all its awesomeness?

Keep running everyone