Oh I didn't know that there was a run button lol. I totally understand not having enough time to make a parallax background and resorting to a premade asset instead. If anything, the game would have looked worse without a background at all.
I didn't finish the game because it was too hard so I can't give you a death count, but now that I know that I can run, I'll definitely give it another go and tell you my score ^^