Not a park run 3 — Reading Endure24
Ever wonder where getting the running bug through your weekly fix of park run might take you to?
Well for me the answer last weekend was the 24 hour running relay event Endure24, at Wasing Park west of Reading. My daughter Anna had organised entry for a team of six, and it took all of 5 seconds for me to agree to take up the last slot on the “Nifty at 50” team when she offered it to me a few months back.
The only complication was that Louise and I were away on holiday in the week leading up to the event, flying back from Sardinia on the Friday evening. Our flight was delayed meaning we didn’t get home until 10pm, so it was a quick transition to be ready for camping at Endure for the weekend. When Anna and Mark picked me on Saturday morning I said I felt a bit like royalty — all I had to do was turn-up, with the rest of my team mates having setup camp the day before!
The event is run by Threshold Sports, who I know well from my Lands End to John O’Groats cycling challenge back in 2017. They are amazing at putting on large scale endurance events — at Endure 24 they had 2,000 participants, which is probably nearer 3,000 people in total when you add in supporters and event crew. It’s easy to see why this is the UK’s biggest 24 hour Ultra trail race, and the equivalent of Glastonbury for runners!
The other thing I really like about Threshold is their slogan — More is in you — which I think has to be the best description of an event challenge ever.
It was my first time at Wasing Park, where they carve out a 5 mile / 8 km loop amongst 33 acres of lovely parkland surroundings. The race starts at 12 noon on the Saturday, continuing non-stop for 24 hours, with teams handing over between members at the completion of each lap. The course is best described as undulating — with three distinct hill climbs on trail paths with some technical off road sections. At 5 miles, each loop is longer than a park run, and then in our group you got 4 hours of down time before going and doing it all again. Run, eat, rest, repeat.
But unique for this year was the 30 degree heatwave on the Saturday, meaning the first lap was absolutely brutal. Everyone got round okay but it took quite a while post run to cool off and recover. And then at night you have the added complication of waking from your sleep to go out and run again.
We had a good system going based on updating a board with everyone’s lap times.
That made it easier to predict when you were next likely to be out on the course, with a further nudge created when you finished your night run and came back to camp to wake the next person to get ready. This avoided the jeopardy of a runner completing their lap to have no one ready to exchange to.
And the significance of our team name? Well three of our group celebrate their fiftieth birthday this year — with Anna and myself as the outliers at either end of the age range spectrum — but it also equated pretty much to the average time to complete a lap. In total we managed 28 laps (140 miles) which works out at 51 minutes per loop.
I ran each lap in my British Heart Foundation top.
There was a PA system by the exchange area, which had background music playing during daylight hours. As I was completing my first lap, the song being played was YMCA by the Village People. And so I started making out the shapes of the letters, which got spotted by the announcer which was a prompt for him to make an announcement with an acknowledgement of the charity fundraising. I had originally thought that wearing a bright red top would make me visible to team mates, but it also served a secondary purpose.
So at 11am on the Sunday, I was the anchor leg completing the final lap for our ream. For me personally that was 5 laps in total, so just shy of the full marathon distance — in a heatwave. And so if you would like to recognise this achievement and donate to the BHF charity then here’s the link.
Thanks to all my team mates for their company and support over the weekend — Louise, Steve, Kate, Anna and Mark. The connecting thread across the team is parenting the same school age kids, where I was the Papa (grandparent) link. Some of the team members also starred back at the start of my Park Run Challenge as Anna’s training partners when she was doing her marathon training runs.
Over the course of the weekend I also bumped into other teams who I knew through the TVT triathlon club and the local gym. And I saw several people relaxing in camp wearing their PR T-shirts — park run truly is a feeder into a much wider running community that this weekend brought to life.
I loved it — it was special — and made everyone involved (not just me) feel like running VIPs.
