Welcome to our first of three festive editions from Roundup Towers – find out more over the jump!

Warmup
As it is Christmas Eve, let’s take a moment out of the hustle and bustle to have a look at what we’ve been up to as a club over the last week – it is fair to say that we have covered a lot of ground in that time. Before we get there, I need to tell you that I finally caved and cut down a Christmas tree – the missus asked if I was going to put it up myself. I told her “No, I was thinking about it up in the living room!” Let’s get going with this jumbo pre-Christmas edition:

Christmas Market Run
Let’s be honest here, the weather on Thursday can only be described as horrific – the rain just would not stop. Luckily though, either do we – and we wouldn’t let it dampen our spirits on our annual Christmas Market Run! Well done to everyone who made it out – by all accounts it was a cracking wee evening!

Sunday Social Mince Pie Run
We have our regular club jaunt around Belvoir Forest every Sunday at 10:30am. Once a year, just before Christmas, Andy & Mary Wells invite us to the Boat Club after the run for some lovely, home-made mince pies! Thanks to Mary and Andy for feeding the club on Sunday morning, but also for your dedication and commitment to the club throughout the year!.

Hazelbank Christmas Run
Hazelbank Park plays host to a number of popular Leg It Events during the year – and the last is always the Saturday before Christmas! Beginning with a tour of the park before moving along the coast towards Loughshore Park before looping back to Hazelbank Park. It is a mostly flat, fast, five-mile course with around 250ft of elevation change (mostly in the parks). We had a Dub duo racing in this one:

Great running Brendan and Stacey – another awesome race from the two of you with some cracking times posted too. Brendan obviously likes this route – as once again taking home the spoils of first place, that’s a nice wee unexpected Christmas present! What’s even better is that they sent through some photos for us to use:

Back to Basics
Seriously, what?! Yeah, so if you missed this one, this was the no frills race. Timed, no medal, no tee – just pure running. Set in Victoria Park, the 5k option was a familiar three lap circuit of the park, the 10k option – double it – six times around Victoria Park. If you feel dizzy reading that, then imagine how our two Dubs felt?

Nice running guys – impressive performances in a reasonably smaller field. We have to ask, on behalf of the club just how you managed six laps of the park?! That must have been an incredible challenge, but no better men for the job – and a job well done too!

parkrun
For a change, it wasn’t frost and ice on the ground, instead it was some freezing fog hanging over the various parks on Saturday morning. If ice doesn’t stop us, then a bit of fog isn’t going to stop us either! With 24 Dubbers donning the cold weather gear and making a break for the start line for 9:30am:

Cracking running everyone, and cool number of club members out running – it is great to see. Grab your Santa hats to doth this week, as celebrating a century of parkruns was Jula and Steven, mega work! Podiums this week with first place for Niall (at Stranmillis College) and second place for Steven T (at Colin Glen). Finally, we had some brand spanking new course personal bests set by Julia (at Queen’s) Fra (at Queen’s) and Roisin (at Ormeau).  Kudos to Nuala (at Victoria) who made her first visit to the course. Enough waffle, photo time:

Useless parkrun Stat Klaxon
As has become traditional on a landmark parkrun occasion we take a look at some cool, yet totally useless and pointless stats collected by the runner in question! We had two one hundredths this weekend:

Julia Orr

Steven Todd

Warmdown
With a special extra Christmas Day parkrun and a certain Cracker race coming up over the next few days, means while most of us will be on holidays, that does not mean that we’re going to be taking things any easier than normal! Basically, there is plenty to look forward to in next week’s Weekly Roundup! Did you know that Santa does not have to pay to park his sleigh? It’s on the house!

Live long and prosper.

Disclaimer: Every effort was taken to ensure the results above are correct (you’ll be called Scrooge forever more!) If you’d also like to make a complaint, then you’ll automatically volunteer yourself for writing duties