Run Daddy Run: Merry Christmas and a Happy Double parkrun 2014

Happy new year everyone and I hope Santa brought you all some amazing gift this Christmas. Most of our Christmas was centred around parkrun ands it's many holiday events. As well as the runs there were plenty of presents and food and lots of family time.

At last count in the past 15 days Dexter has done 4 parkruns and 19 in total (almost 2 and a half marathons and for a 5 year old that's incredible), SJ has done 5, and 15 in total since giving birth to Flynn (just as incredible) and I have done 6 because of the double on New Year's Day and 26 in total since June.

These runs have been some of the best parkruns I have done with various fancy dress and festivities involved. So much so that the parkrunday after Christmas Day when I was running in just my usual attire it felt strange and is almost felt a little naked.

This wore off by New Year's Day as my focus was on the excitement of doing the double parkrun of Dewsbury then Huddersfield. There was a good number of regular Huddersfield parkrun runners at Dewbury parkrun doing the double including the EDs Simon and Mark, and the rest of the Huddersfield running bunnies.

Then this parkrunday it was completely back to normal but with a few extra faces and some new gear to run in. It had been my birthday this past Thursday and SJ had got me some new running clothes which I immediately donned for this parkrunday, all matching colours too. Plus I was trying out a new toy I got for Christmas from Santa, a video camera in a pair of sunglasses which can record in full HD and for a good couple of hours too. I asked Santa for them specifically for the Yorkshire Warrior in April but knew I needed to get used to them so why not try them and film my parkruns now and again.

There was a few mishaps with the glasses and I didn't manage to record he first 3km of the run but the last 2km or at least most of it was and I was impressed with the quality and ease of use once I had it going. I also took some footage of my after run, where I had a chat and rest with my friend Steve before I went off to catch up with the rest of Team Pattison. Plus we had a new face running with us this week, it was Becky, my sister Jodie's best friend. It was her first parkrun and she did a brilliant sub 40 time as her first PB, a good bench mark to start off with. Brilliant job Becky. When we got home I looked through what I had managed to capture and made this short video as a test video for what could be a regular thing.

Now at this time last year I was setting myself a mileage target to hit based on what I would usually run around Shepley. I had set myself a target of 1000km but I didn't even get close I think I'd be lucky to have got 800km and if it wasn't for parkrun I don't think I would have gone past 500km. So this year I won't set a distance target instead I have come up with a different target. Whilst organising the New Years Day double parkrun I posted on Facebook that 2014 would be the year of the parkrun tourist. For those who don't know what that is, it's a person who travels to other parkruns other than the Home parkrun they have designated online. So my target for this year will be to do at least 5 more different parkruns, not including Huddersfield, Barnsley and Dewbury as I have already done these. There are at least 10 that are within 1 hrs drive of us so fairly easy to do. So I have no excuses on completing this target this year, plus I have at least 3 10k runs, a 10k obstacle run, a 10 mile obstacle run and a half marathon to train for and all before august. So mileage shouldn't be a problem this year, the test is breaking the usual parkrunday routine to go to a different parkrun.

Here are a few photos from the Christmas period that I have liked from the Huddersfield parkrun Facebook page and a few of my own when I remembered to get the camera out.