parkrun at Christmas

As we all know, parkrun is brilliant the whole year through, but I for one believe it becomes just a little bit more special around Christmas time.

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve and (as far as I know) every single parkrun around the country (and beyond) is intending to stage its weekly event as usual, subject to the weather of course! Thanks to a core group of fantastic volunteers every parkrunner knows that they can turn up at any one of these incredible events and enjoy their usual parkrun fix. All these volunteers are giving up the morning of Christmas Eve willingly and free of charge so that others can run. That in itself is pretty amazing.

Now if you are as lucky as we are at Coventry parkrun, you may find that your local parkrun is putting on a Christmas Day event too. Please check the Crispy Christmas Compendium to be sure. Now, if a parkrun on Christmas Eve wasn't amazing enough, you can also run on Christmas Day! Not only that, but you will find that there will be people there to volunteer just so that others can run. These people, volunteering for free for the good of their local parkrun community are just brilliant! and we should all be very grateful to them.

The fact that we get these parkrun events so close to (and during) Christmas isn't the only thing that makes me think parkrun is a bit more special at this time of year. All you have to do is look around at parkrun this weekend and you will notice how happy everyone is to be there. parkrunners are always happy to be at parkrun, but the smiles will be a little broader and the banter even more friendly. There will be people in fancy dress, whether its an official Santa run or not, and everyone will be having just a little bit more fun than usual. I'd even go as far as to say that the friendliness and Christmas spirit that you see at parkrun at Christmas time can put you perfectly in the mood for the big day.

If you do manage to make it to a parkrun on Christmas Eve and especially so on Christmas Day, please do remember that the volunteers are giving up their time so that you can run. So if you can spare the breath during your run, or alternatively before or after the run, do try to say thank you to each and every volunteer or possibly even a shout out a "Merry Christmas!" as you pas them. The volunteers will be happy to be there anyway, but this little gesture of goodwill will go a long way.

Finally, I'd just like to wish everyone a very good parkrun for tomorrow and Christmas Day (if you are lucky enough to be doing one) and a very Happy Christmas and New Year!