So, I came up with an idea for the club to do a 24 hour relay event for charity. For life of me, I don’t know why but thankfully the club is full of like minded people (nutters) who agreed that it would be fun! So, we planned it in….
After much excitement in the week leading up to the day, I turned up at the sports hall for 5pm ready to get set up and get the game plan together, there had been quite a bit of discussion in the WhatsApp chat on how we were going to work the teams, so we decided that it would be best to discuss it in person rather than things getting buried in text. So, I suggested that we get together at 5:30pm. Because I’m incredibly anal, I got to the sports hall for 5pm. Of course, nobody had opened up the sports hall and I sat in the car park waiting. Thankfully, Rachael suffers from the same impatience as me and arrived not too much later! After waiting a while, Sindy arrived to open up, by which time most of the gang had turned up.
By 5:30pm most of the team had turned up and instantly got to work establishing a base in the pavilion room. Sarah (or “Kitchen Sink” as I’ve come to think of her, because it’s the only thing she doesn’t bring with her) turned up a little later (standard) and got to work moving house into the pavillion room. As you can see, there’s not much she didn’t have!
The teams were decided and we had our teams B & R (see what we did there?). The idea was that we were matched with ability and would go out together particularly through the night when it was safer to run in pairs. Later on, after receiving some heckling from a passing car, between Mark and me we decided it would probably be best that we ran every other time so that we ran with Sarah & Donna, at least through the night, so that we gave them some company.
We got started a tad late at 6:05pm thanks to Sarah’s monumental kit setup required 😂 and headed out for our first lap all together as one team.
They’re off!
I set off with Mark for the next loop, we started off steady but the heat was something else, it was fairly still so it felt like running in an oven! I finished off that first lap looking like I’d just got out of the shower.
I have been acutely aware of the need for body salts after my last ultra. I did The Lap which is a 50 mile lap of windermere, it was the hottest day of the year and my body just wasn’t prepared for it. I overheated and sweat out so much of my body salt that I was really dehydrated, my muscles cramped up and I struggled just to run at an easy pace. The race was probably my worst ultra performance. By the time I finished my urine was the colour of tea, my leg muscles moved of their own accord and anything I drank or ate I threw up. Yep, I was pretty badly dehydrated.
So, naturally I made sure that this wouldn’t happen again and packed plenty of Trailwind, active root and other bits and bobs that I have come to rely on in these situations. However, this was overcaution in this case, the breaks between heading out for laps allowed me enough time to eat, drink and replace any lost salts. AND our in-house chef, Lak, was on hand cooking Thai food for us 😍
Whilst we were all stuffing ourselves with Thai cooking from Lak (yes, that’s me eating a spring roll), that character Mark Morris decided to get dressed in a Snow White outfit! Not a clue why, perhaps he was just waiting for an excuse 🤷♂️ Needless to say this generated a lot of banter in HQ. It also instigated a few smirks, laughs, shouts and horn beeps as we ran round the course together. I suppose that lifting his dress to everyone he passed may have encouraged it….
Lak has an uncanny ability to cheer people up and get them to join in. She managed to round up almost all of the kids hanging about at the park to go and run a lap with her & Rachael. It was fantastic to see her inspiring these kids to do even a little amount running!
The support we had through night was awesome from the Red Lion, the punters had gone out in the blazing heat to enjoy the sunshine in a beer garden and steadily get more drunk and were incredibly amused by us weirdos who chose to do something so crazy! As the day turned into night those cheers got steadily louder and before we knew it this is what were hearing on most of the laps (see vid below). In fact, it really helped us know when the others were close to finishing their laps because we could hear the cheers & whoops from the sports hall!
As the night wore on, things started to get harder. The 20 min breaks were a good opportunity to sort myself out but they soon became a chore, I would sit down and try not to fall asleep. My eyes were rolling whilst I tried to change my shoes or socks, but I didn’t dare fall asleep out of fear of not being able to get going again. I began to wonder if running constantly would be easier because I didn’t feel tired when I was out running.
At one point Sarah’s slightly inebreated husband, Sean, popped in to to see how we were doing. He must have been quite drunk as he managed to do part of the lap with us (he doesn’t normally run) with his laces undone! Not long after, Sarah popped out to get TeamBR mascot Tiggy to go for a lap with us because silly o’clock in the morning was the only time when it was cool enough for her. The dog is crazy and I seem to have a way of giving her the zoomies which made for a bit of fun through the night as everyone sheltered their belongs from being sent flying by a barrelling bunch of fur! Although, poor Donna was asleep on the floor only to get rudely awoken from a wet slobbery dog’s toungue!
I found night time the hardest, it was during the night that the aches and pains began to surface and, as if she could hear our bodies complaining at us, Bex turned up with her massage table!
Bex is a brilliant sports therapist and she turned up to ease our aches and pains throughout the night, she was an absolute Godsend! During the night we all developed various niggles and pains, I think it could be due to the body going into sleep mode, and Bex was there to sort us out. We all had a stint on the table at some point throughout the 24 hours. These stints on the table breathed new life into my body and really helped me keep going.
As the night turned into day I could feel my spirits being lifted again, it was fantastic to see the change of night to day. I went out with Mark for a lap at about 3:30am and I could see a lighter patch of sky to the North East that became steadily lighter throughout the lap. The next time that I went round, the sun hadn’t quite breached the horizon but it was really lightening up. When I finished the lap, I sat outside and watched the sunrise. The morning was tranquil without much noise, just bird song and the occasional cockrel crowing. I sat there enjoying the moment until Nathan & Matty returned and it was my turn again. I found that moment quite invigorating.
When we hit the half way point at 6am, someone thought it would be a good idea to sing Bon Jovi’s “Living on a prayer” because we were “half way there”. I think that someone might have been me 🤦♂️ You can tell by the enthusiasm coming from the others 😂
As the new day got started I was surprised that a lot of people began to turn up to do a lap with us in support. Rachael & Lak who seem to know just about everyone in the local area appeared to have an endless amount of people coming to run with them. All the new activity around HQ generated more banter, laughs and cheer which made the day go on easier. Then, Lak went off to run Ancholme Valley parkrun, before coming back for her next lap!
Around midday, Matty popped out for a short while to bring his wife Adrianna to come up and support us for a couple of hours too, it was ace that she was able to make it up to see us. Matty is quite a reserved person and a really good runner and it was great to see him pushing for this event, I think Nathan may have underestimated him a tad!
I may have mentioned the fantastic support earlier, but that support didn’t stop on the next day. We will still receiving cheers of support and some of those people at the pub managed to wake up inspired enough to come and do a lap with us! On one of our laps, Mark started chatting to a man called Paul at the top of South View and when he heard what we were doing, he put out water on his wall in an ice box for us to help ourselves to, it was a fantastic gesture and the water really came in handy.
On the last lap we all went out as a group just like we did at the start, we were all elated to finally finish the 24 hours and even more elated at the prospect of a nice bed to sleep in!
The whole 24 hours was an incredibly awesome experience and , Donna, Nathan, Sarah, Rachael, Mark & Matty did absolutely fantastic. I always find that these type of events really bring out the true grit and character of the participants and this event proved me right. These people are absolute legends.
In the end when we totalled up the amount of laps that we had done, including those done by our supporters, we totalled 411 laps which stands at 822 miles in total! Absolutely amazing! And to top it all off, we raised over £2000 for Lindsey Lodge Hospice.
