November 7, 2024
Albert Road Community Hub, 199 Albert Rd, Queensbury, Bradford BD13 1QB

Endure 24 – 2024

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!

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