December 25th - Christmas Parkrun

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Today it was a Saturday which means it's a parkrun day, it also happens to be Christmas day so the parkrun happens to be rather special.  I've spent the last few weeks building myself up to running the event shirtless and now the day had arrived.
 


There were a few things I was keen to find out, firstly whether my times would improve at all as I have a theory I run better without a shirt on.

Secondly I wanted to know how people would react, this was going to be a bit easier being a Christmas fancy dress optional run so I had made myself a few tinsel accessories and worn a Santa hat so I figured people would see it as a bit of fun.  



The first thing that happened literally seconds after leaving my car I passed a fellow runner who looked at me, smiled and said "class", this was an instant confidence booster for me. I soon met a running friend minutes before the start and then we were off. 

There were lots of smiles on the run which was great, not one single negative comment and no one even mentioned about me being cold, most of the comments were around the "you're brave" type of comment. 



Now to my performance, was I faster? Did I run better? My Strava decided to pause half way through the run so I didn't have an accurate time until my parkrun results were emailed through to me later this morning and I did indeed achieve another personal best. Is my theory about running better shirtless correct? Maybe it is.

Anyway here is a short video of my parkrun, today was brilliant and I look forward to my next run, whether I'll do it shirtless is another story. 





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