Let’s Talk About Christmas

Worden Park Boxing Day 10k.png

Race: Worden Park Boxing Day 10k
Distance: 10k
Date: 26th December 2017
Supporting Runners: NA
Fundraising to date: £1,060
Finishing Time: 00:56:24

6 races in and I have already broken my one rule of publishing the race write up blog on the day of the event… But hey, it’s Christmas and I’ve been busy doing other important things such as eating, drinking, sleeping and watching films that don’t take too much concentration. It’s been a great few days and I hope everyone reading this has done much of the same.

I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised to receive a text message the day after Boxing Day, asking where my latest blog post was…people are actually reading my ramblings!

So, before I get into the latest race breakdown, I wanted to talk about CHRISTMAS🎄 – my favourite time of year.

In the past, Christmas to me meant sitting around with Adam doing absolutely sweet nothing, playing on the latest games console or new game we had unwrapped whilst demanding to know when the prawn cocktails would be ready (we were nice kids, I promise).

I miss Adam very much, every single day, but grief is always heightened at Christmas time. But why? It is literally just another day in the calendar and on the build up to this Christmas, I kept trying to tell myself that.

We don’t have a big family, so Christmas has always been the 4 of us – now down to 3 + a dog.

I was mainly worried about the 3 of us living under one roof experiencing different aspects of grieving and feelings and how this could impact us on Christmas day with a major eruption of all the emotions…

So I did what anyone would do and try to win Christmas by treating Mum and Andy to some much deserved presents that would distract us all a little bit longer than the usual “thank you very much” from a pair of socks.

However, little did I know, my legendary stepdad had also been busy trying to win Christmas and presented me with this:

A beautifully handmade and personalised memory box for all of my 30for30 medals and t-shirts etc. for me to store and look back on in memory of Adam.

And just like that Christmas was won and emotions were out…but in a good way ❤️

I still spent the day playing on Adam’s PS4 and making demands to the joys of Mum and Andy, and we made the most of the day.

It got to about 7pm and I was festering and becoming a bit more emotional and over it. I was ready for this run the next day and I was so happy I had booked this particular race for me to get up and out and doing something positive.

I’ve touched on how running gets me out of that kind of dark place in previous blogs – it really, really does. And everything was riding on me getting up the next day and shaking the Christmas emotions.

It’s race day and I woke up with the usual feeling of being tired and can’t be arsed, but was looking forward to the post race achievement feeling and getting home to a hot turkey and stuffing sandwich.

I grabbed a nutritional breakfast of 5 celebration chocolates (which I would later regret) and we were on our way with plenty of time to spare….and then we saw the blue flashing lights. We were at the front of the queue of a motorway closure about 5minutes away from the race start line.

5mins passed – 10mins, 15mins, 20mins. OMG we are going to be stuck here for hours, for the whole of boxing day. Everything was riding on this run and now I just want to go and get into bed (not like me to be dramatic or anything 🙄)

Someone a few yards away was having a worse Boxing Day than I was in a crash on the motorway (thankfully just a bit of ice on the road, no fatalities).

I was just texting a friend back who had wished me good luck to tell them that I wasn’t going to make it….then the motorway reopened…

The race was on. The arrival time on Sat Nav was 10am (the race start time) and I still needed to register.

I think the biggest spoiler alert is the image and info at the top of this blog…..we made it in time.

Luckily, the race itself was 10mins behind schedule because the queue for registering was so big – I wouldn’t be saying luckily if I was on time and stood in the cold – but for that day, it was lucky🍀

So, HURRAH I made it in time to run 10k on Boxing Day!!….said no one ever.

There isn’t much left to say now about the actual race. I was just grateful to have got there in time after the effort of getting up early the day after Christmas Day. I just wanted to get out in the fresh air to make myself feel better, so I just put one foot in front of the other and enjoyed the 6mile plod.

I did alright considering the rushing to get there, the food coma from the day before and the not-so-breakfast-of-champions. I really need to get up earlier and eat better before races.

I really don’t know where I stand with the whole people watching down on you thing… I’m confused myself with what I believe in since losing Adam but for the first time, over the past few days, I have really felt his presence and that he has had our back.

This isn’t the first Christmas without Adam. Last year felt like a day we just had to get through as it was all very fresh and new to us. This year has been different but we have all said we feel very fortunate and are looking forward to the year ahead, to make more memories for the 30for30 memory box…