19 October 2026

Running over Christmas is not about training hard. It is about keeping one small thing going while the week around you comes apart. Parties land on weeknights, school holidays stretch across the days, family fills the spare room and plenty of people spend part of the month somewhere else entirely. The plan that survives all of that is not a new plan. It is one easy lap a week, at a club run that is still there on the calendar.

Why the festive season breaks the week

A running habit is built on an ordinary week. The same evening free, the bag packed the night before, the same start line in the dark, the same faces at the finish. From December onwards, the ordinary week disappears. Nothing has gone wrong. The month is simply busier than the rest of the year, and the routine that carried you through the cooler months suddenly has nowhere to sit.

Most people react in one of two ways. Some try to hold the whole week together, miss two runs, feel behind, and quietly drop the rest of the month. Others write off December entirely and plan to start again later, which usually means starting from scratch. There is a better middle path: decide in advance that this month will be light, and then protect one run inside it. A light month still counts.

One lap is a whole run

This is the detail that makes a festive month manageable. At our runs, one lap is a complete run, not a warm-up for something longer. The Thursday Morning Run is 2.5 km or 5 km, which is one or two laps of the same 2.5 km loop. The Tuesday Night Run is 3 km or 6 km, one or two 3 km laps. Choosing one lap is choosing a full run, and a full run is a much easier thing to fit between a party and a family lunch.

Walkers are welcome at both runs. If the month has flattened you, walking a lap with the group is still showing up, and showing up is the whole point. You are not chasing a personal best in a fortnight full of late nights. You are keeping the thread so that January does not feel like a fresh start.

Choose your one lap before the week chooses for you

What swallows runs in December is rarely the running. It is the decision. While the run is still undecided on the day, everything else in the week wins by default, because everything else has a time attached to it and the run does not. So put the decision at the start of the week, while the week is still mostly empty.

• Pick the run early in the week, before the invitations are in
• Register for it in HRC+ the same day you decide, so the plan is real rather than hopeful
• Choose one lap and let that be your run for the day
• Put your gear somewhere you cannot miss it the night before
• Stay for the coffee and the chat afterwards, because that part is what makes the week feel normal again
• If you are travelling, keep one short solo run in the week instead, and come back to the group when you are home

What a light festive week can look like

Every December week looks different, so the run that fits will be different too. The trade is always the same: keep one lap, and let the rest of the week off the hook.

Notice that none of those weeks look like training. That is deliberate. A festive week is a holding pattern, and holding patterns are supposed to be easy. The fitness you built over the rest of the year does not vanish because you ran once a week for a few weeks.

The club runs, and how to register

The Thursday Morning Run is on every Thursday. Meet at 5:45am for a 6:00am start at Glenhaven Oval, 78 Glenhaven Road, Glenhaven, with coffee and a sweet treat afterwards. The Tuesday Night Run is on every second Tuesday. Meet at 6:45pm for a 7:00pm start at Castle Hill Showground, under the lights, and enter via Doran Drive, the entrance closest to the metro. Take the first left, follow the road to the lit oval, and you will find the group at the large shed, with plenty of parking around it.

Running with the club is free. Members make a free HRC+ account and register for each run there, and every upcoming run is listed on the runs page. Registering takes a moment, and it turns a vague intention into a plan you have already made.

Keeping the thread, not the totals

If the festive season is one light month in a busy year, that is fine. What matters is that you arrive at the other side still running, still knowing the way to the start line, still recognising the faces at the shed. Motivation through a season like this comes from turning up small and often, which is a theme we have written about in how to stay motivated to run all season. If you are wondering how one lap a week sits beside the rest of your running, how often should you run each week covers that ground.

Then, when the parties slow down and the visitors head home, you are not starting again. You are picking up a week that never fully stopped. Run together. Belong together.