What is a Christmas Run and Should You have One?
Question: How do runners celebrate the holidays?
Answer: We have our own Christmas Run, of course!
– After our Christmas Run this morning, me, Annie, Jun, Ton, Trixie, Angel, Miriam, Jun, Lit at Sentro –
What’s a Christmas Run?
A Christmas Run is defined as any activity done by an individual or group moving at a speed faster than a walk that is executed anytime during the period of December 20 to 30.
The run can be done at any location, at any time, and at any distance but early morning—4:30 AM to 6:30 AM—is highly recommended for participants to 1) feel the cool Christmas air and 2) possibly partake of Puto Bumbong from Simbang Gabi.
Pace must strictly be easy, non-competitive, and preferably one that allows the runner to laugh at senseless jokes the entire time. Stupid jokes that are associated with Frosty the Snowman or Rudolp the Reindeer, although relevant for the season, are strictly prohibited.
Who Can Join a Christmas Run?
It is recommended but not required that all participants have been running together for over 6 months and have accumulated a total of 300 kilometers together.
It is a non-negotiable that all runners sincerely enjoy each others’ company. If there’s one rotten egg in the bunch (e.g., no sense of humor, makes too frequent stops at the restroom, too pacute, the list goes on and on) then the runner may be expelled from the group after a consensus is reached (preferably before the Christmas Run invitation/SMS has been released).
Why Consider a Christmas Run?
TBR highly recommends a Christmas Run among your best running buddies. It’s the one time of the year that you do exactly the same thing you’ve been doing with your running group: you wake up the same time, meet at the same place to see the usual faces, run more or less the same distance, and have breakfast at the same restaurant to order the same ol’ breakfast meals, but without cheesy words exchanged and just by showing up on this special weekend, you essentially tell each other that running together has been one of the greatest gifts you could’ve received this year.
Merry Christmas to everyone! Enjoy the Holidays!
Jaymie is better known as The Bull Runner in the running community. She is the founder of this award-winning blog, TheBullRunner.com, and the first and only marathon in the world that caters to first-time marathoners, TBR Dream Marathon. Jaymie has run 16 marathons all over the world and finished Ironman 70.3 twice. She dreams of running the world... literally.
