Endure 24 – through the eyes of Matt Thornton
The end of June can only mean one thing, it’s time for Endure24. A festival style camping weekend which consists of 24 hours of constant running. Many of us were returning for the 2nd 3rd or 4th time, but plenty were Endure24 virgins.
This year the club entered 4 teams all with their own goals and objectives, and Manjit Mander as a solo runner.
One team had a desire to win it all. Team “12 balls and a bucket” consisting of Jo Horan, Tom Collinge, Gary Rowling, Matt Thornton, Andy Sudall, Si Taylor and Chris Bartle calculated that even with Matt’s current lack of endurance due to his inadequate training abilities could churn out enough laps to potentially finish victoriously and Matt could be the eye candy for the world to see.
Quick summary of the event:
Friday – everyone set up camp and started on the beers, Gary cracks out the Jäegermeister then Glenn cracks out the Whisky, eventually most realised we had to run on Saturday apart from Tom who carried on in to the early hours, drawing unwanted attention from neighbouring campers trying to sleep due to his incessant use of obscene language informing the other teams that he and his team shall be victorious and the others will merely pale in comparison.
Saturday – Tom is quiet – Tom quickly discovers he’s gravely misjudged his alcohol consumption and appears full of regret.
The race begins at 12pm with the first runners setting off. Tom is a first runner.
Tom is quiet.
Sunday – Early hours of Sunday, its raining, it wasn’t expected, getting up to run around 2:30am after already running at 11:30pm is a low point.
Tom is still quiet.
We constantly check the live results and we fluctuate between 1st and 3rd many times.
By daybreak it looks like we might be pulling away with a half lap lead.
Tom is quiet but now has stomach pains.
We all have stomach pains. Likely the combination of consuming an unnatural quantity of Pot Noodles, spending excessive time in portaloos and running every 3:30hrs does that to you.
After lap 5, Chris Bartle tells me I had a tantrum and refused to run; debatable, but I didn’t run again. I calculated that one runner wouldn’t have time for a 6th lap so sacrificed myself like any national treasure would.
We timed our runs perfectly to allow us to finish 1 lap ahead of 2nd place. We ran 41 laps (205 miles) in little over 24 hours and everyone was in *awe.
*They might not have been in awe.
The other teams consisted of –
Carry on cramping
Jamie Hill
Ryan Tinker
Laura Taylor
Gillian Jago
Michael Peel
Philip Lee
Lee Hipwell
Completed 31 laps
Up all night to get lucky
Glenn Thornton
David Bean
Emily Greenhalgh
Zoe Hipwell
Nicole Jagger
Rob Glover
Completed 27 Laps
Nikki’s non-stop nutters
Nicola Lee
Bev Morritt
Jane Skudder
Amanda Pears
Elspeth Whittaker
Colin Sutcliffe
Completed 20 laps
Manjit completed a massive 18 laps totalling 90 miles!
