9:05am, Lee and I ran to the starting line. Tees Barrage had very kindly waited and we were introduced to the other fellow parkrunners. We just had time to grab our Santa hats, thanks for waiting guys!

The atmosphere was brilliant at Tees Barrage and we lost count of the number of bridges we ran over! Val continued to do the parkrun on her bike and the runners were very kind with our collection bucket. Made by my wonderful Wife and kids.

I think because we made this parkrun on time, we took the foot off the gas and rightly so. We had made the official parkrun at 9am and the length to run each parkrun was starting to slowly increase. We had two more runs in Middlesbrough to do before we headed back up North. We were starting to struggle already but we dug deep. We were eating loads between runs and drinking loads of water. Well I thought I was.

Val couldn’t remember were she had parked the car, I got the giggles! It did mean that cars drove past us and threw even more money in the bucket. We were starting to collect quite a bit now which spurred us on even more.

Five down and seven to go!