On the weekend of 5th-7th June, Hillingdon Athletic Club once again descended upon Wasing Park to take on Endure24! Always a hugely popular event for us, the 24-hour trail running extravaganza has often been dubbed “the Glastonbury for runners”
An early start on Friday morning saw many of us heading down to Wasing Park near Reading, with one clear objective: secure our usual camping spot and get the tents set up before anyone else could claim out patch! Vicky and I were deployed to get as far up the queue as possible, armed with multiple rucksacks and a trolley that was far over capacity…
Come 9am, the gates were opened and, in the famous words of David Croft, it was “Lights out and away we go!” ‘Endurers’ (as we’ll call them) raced out the blocks and through the fields in pursuit of their own camping spots, and just like ourselves, we knew exactly where we were heading to!
In an attempt not to cause an pre-event injuries, running was technically discouraged. Instead, picture a race walk where participants were handicapped with multiple tents and trolleys… This won’t be implemented at the Gosunder!
The weather forecast for the weekend wasn’t particularly encouraging. Rain was on the cards, but at least we were spared the scorching conditions we had been experiencing leading up to the event!
As we marked out our area, club members trickled onto the campsite, assisting in setting up the vast number of tents, which may’ve been the most we’ve ever been tasked with! As you can imagine, this isn’t an easy task, the more people that arrive on Friday morning, the faster those tents get set up!
Fast-forward a few hours, we were verging the completion of this task, it was around 1pm – perfect timing for lunch and a trip to the event village.
As many will know, Friday night is party night at Endure24 (at a 24-hour endurance event, yes…) and the majority of participants can be found throwing shapes in the Runner’s Rest Bar with the DJ! Last year we took the dancefloor by storm in as minions. We try to go one better every year, did anyone guess our theme?
We were crayons! We took the party tent my storm with our array of colours and we had a great time. I won’t spend too much time on this section because, truthfully, my memory of it isn’t great – but if you arrive on Saturday, you’re definitely missing out!
Come Saturday morning, reality hit: we’ve got a 24-hour relay upon us. Great. As if the 8km course wasn’t enough punishment, a handful of us ventured off to a local parkrun. There, we bumped into Darren “1000 parkruns” Wood (this figure has increased somewhat since), who was also in the party tent the night before! Clearly, some people are powered entirely by running and questionable life choices.
With 30 minutes until the race took place, the sun was shining, glorious! I made the wise decision to apply sun cream, as I was running a double lap to kick things off. We headed to the start line, with around 10 minutes to go, and then, in a spectacular display of timing, the heavens opened and treated us to a downpour. Perfect. Just Perfect. This downpour continued in intervals until around 11pm!
We continued throughout the day and into the night, clocking up the laps!
Spencer was captain of ‘The Banana Splits’. Here’s an event summary!
When Dan Nolan stepped in for Zoe, who had taken over from Adam, we formed team 'The Banana Splits' alongside Andy Murphy, Iain Betson and me. Being a team of four meant we had only about two hours’ rest before running another lap, which quickly took its toll. The wet and windy conditions, coupled with a lack of sleep (only four hours!), made it particularly challenging. And let’s not forget ‘Heartbreak Hill’! Despite these obstacles, we managed to complete 30 laps between us and finished 68th out of 1,230 teams, covering a total of 150 miles!I was quite proud of myself for maintaining a reasonably consistent pace throughout the event and managed to complete 40 miles. I was also surprised to discover my step count exceeded 90,000 over the weekend, although I had done a sneaky parkrun with Dan beforehand (where we met Darren ‘1001 parkruns’ Wood)! Even though I was very broken, both mentally and physically, I’m probably going to do it again in 2027! 😱
HAC Party Bus
Alice
Martyn
Jackie
Jenny
Lucy
Ruth
Angela
Nina
Jeremy
Vicky
Happy HAC Runners
Nigel
Deepak
Martin
Jolyon
Jodie
Hillingdon Allsorts
Mel
Paul
Christina
Sam
The Banana Splits
Spencer
Dan
Andy
Iain
Team HAC
Brian
Mukesh
Solo’s
Gary
All in all, we had another fantastic weekend. I certainly said I’ve done a team of 4 enough times to not do that again, I’ll do a team of 5 next year. Come Thursday’s training race, I had signed up as a team of 2 with Zoe, funny that!
If you’ve never experienced the Endure24 action, now’s the perfect time to get involved! We’re slowly making progress on entries for next year and early-bird entries are still available. Get in touch with one of the participants from this year and we’ll get you involved (if you dare)!
There’s simply no event like it.
