Endure24

It seemed like a good idea at the time. The idea was very simple: get together a team of 8 runners and then run as many laps of the 5 mile circuit as possible in 24 hours! So we duly turned up at Wasing (its very near Aldermaston for anyone old enough to remember the "Ban the Bomb" marches in the 60s) on Friday afternoon to put the tents up.

Me, David and Nathy trying to look as though we know what we are doing!

 

Luckily David did.

 

Once we had the three tents up we went home, taking advantage of the fact we live near the course to get a good night's sleep in our own beds.

 

Saturday was hot, with the temperature well into the 20s, nice for lounging about with a cold beer but not too good for an endurance event. The rest of the team duly appeared and we worked out our running order.

 Now this might seem like a simple operation but not everyone wanted to run as many laps as possible. Indeed the only way to get the team together was to give in to the demands of anyone who said " I only want to do 2 laps". In the end we settled on some sort of system - best runner off first and then the next best etc- and when the gun went at 12, Pete K set off on the first lap for our team. We had decided that as we were not likely to be in the hunt for prizes, we would all jog round at 10 minute mileing. Now having got a degree in sums, I was able to compute that 5 miles at 10 minutes per mile, works out at 50 minutes per lap; so when Pete duly re-appeared in 38 minutes, we had to hurridly rewrite our schedule! He said he got carried away, which assumingly was the case with all our team, judging by our times. By the time I ran my first lap (going off 4th for our team which shows you that we not exactly an elite team) the temperature was 25C and no fun at all. Luckily, it was an off road course and much of it was shady so apart from the last mile, it wasn't too bad.

 

We all completed one lap and started on our second round. By this time it was much cooler, but we were down to six runners as the two 2 lappers had decided on one lap Saturday and one lap Sunday. The knock on effect of this decision, was a shorter rest between laps, so having run at 2.30 and 8, I found myself running again at 1am! Now I have run off road in the dark before, but never raced - it is an odd experience, especially at 1 am. By the time of my next lap at 6am, it was light again so the only problem was fatigue.. By now, we were beginning to struggle as a team; ok we had both the 2 lappers back, but against that, Peter M had pulled a muscle in his leg, Neil had hurt his knee and Carolyn's hips were very sore. A quick council of war ensued; Pete K and Nathy volunteered to do a fifth lap, and we decided that if Nathy got back before 11.30, then someone would have to go out for the last lap. As that someone was me, I spent the next three hours hoping that fatigue would set in and the fast lads would slow down. Luckily for me, it did, and Nathy completed our 29th lap with about 20 minutes left of the race.

The End!

After that it was food and photos then home to sleep.

The Team

 

A great event and great fun. What about a WFDBWGUA team in 2014?