Santa dash

Today I ran the Liverpool Santa dash, a 5k fun run where all the participants dress as Santa, full on Santa outfit, beard, hat and the rest.

Until may, I hadn’t even run for a bus. It was actually a running joke when I was 18 that I didn’t run for a bus, and used to flirt with the bus driver so he’d come to pick me up from wherever I was on the road!

In May, I was pissed at Danny, and needed to do something to get myself out of the house and out of my head. I wanted to swim, my sister wanted to run, running won and that’s where it started. My dad came home from hamburg one weekend a couple of months ago, and told us entry had opened to the Santa dash, and it what seemed a moment of madness, there we were signing up for it.

It was amazing. 10,000 people dressed as Santa, all lined up by the Albert Dock, right outside the liver buildings – look them up! – running throughout the closed off streets, in unison. Amazing atmosphere, and to be honest, something I thought I’d never do.

The weird thing is, now I’ve done it, 10k doesn’t seem that far off. We’ve hit 5k a couple of times in training, and it was hard going, but doable. I know that today, we were glad to finish, but if someone had said we had to run another kilometer or two we could have pushed ourselves and done it. We shaved seven minutes off our best time over 5k today. Seven minutes!

So yeh, six months til the port sunlight 10k and I think I’m gonna do it! I barely recognise the person I’ve become, an actual honest to god runner! I’ve even bought running pants for crying out loud.

I’m not gonna lie, I’m so proud of me and my sis for finishing today, we’re definitely not natural runners, but we did it, and we did it in style!

Xx