THE FINAL COUNTDOWN
As we hit Sunday morning it is time to swap Bon Jovi for the power rock of Europe so we can stand up in our best Ultrakazy power pose and declare “IT’S THE FINAL COUNTDOWN”
Saturday saw some of our toughest runs to date. Rob led us off with the zombie shift 12-4am. We have all found these hours to be the toughest, Rob didn’t disappoint, his tour of Edinburgh racked up 46km. And he finished with a fairly profound video to the team which I hope we can share after the event. Not only is he fast with fabulous hair but he does eloquent videos at 4am in the morning.
Kazco (Kaz and Marco) took on the split morning shift, Kaz had a fresh dump of snow to deal with but simply responded by getting Frozen’s “Let it go” on the playlist and knocked out 12 miles. Marco meanwhile continued his epic hill reps session racking up 1654 feet and 16.2 miles on his favourite local hill which at last count he has been up over 60 times.
James ran another blistering session - this time on the canal, and racked up his biggest distance yet!
Paul took over for a rare civilised 8-12pm shift and was blessed with some deserved sunshine after his previous run in an epic downpour. He comfortably knocked out 28 miles taking us to within touching distance of the 1000 mile mark.
It looked all set up for Grant to take us through the 1000 mile mark however he decided to celebrate his last run by taking a trip round some of his favourite Campsie fells. Miles are not earned easily up there especially in the snow so Grant missed out on the glory as he could only take the total up to 998.34 miles. Grant tried to claim Campsie miles count double but was over-ruled. This kind of near miss is standard behaviour from Grant who once missed the qualifying standard for the GB 24 hour team by 208 metres.
THE VIEW AT 1,000 MILES
It was set up for John Connolly for the glory of taking us through the 1000 mile mark. Although with a calf niggle to contend with nothing was certain. John also got out into the hills to enjoy a spectacular winter’s night in the Kilpatrick hills and toughed out 21.7 miles and 2963 feet of ascent. A mid run visit to the foam roller was needed to keep him motoring. All of our bodies are starting to feel the wear and tear of the weeks running.
Connolly number 2 took us into the next zombie shift. Some stats from Graham’s run are telling- 3 jackets, 2 hats, one slice of toast, one oat milk hot chocolate. 22 miles banked. 12-4am is never a fun slot!
Rob was back out again at 4-8am, he looked slightly more fatigued in his finish video to the team this morning describing himself as feeling like a “burst ball”. His hair still looked fabulous though. The burst ball managed a pretty decent 27miles though.
THE RUNNING ISN’T OVER
We are delighted to have hit our running targets early. It was much tougher than we expected it to be despite reaching our goals with some hours to spare. Before we started, we said we’d run for the full week and the whole team are committed to making that happen even if some have to walk parts of their final sections through injury. We still have one target to reach - and that’s our #MentalHealth SAMH target of £5,000. We are so close now, so we will keep on running until midnight to see if we can get over the line. If you can help at all, your donation will make a difference. Donate now.
Sunday 08:00 totals:
Hours run: 152 (of 168)
Distance run: 1069.4 miles
Elevation Gain: 113,694 feet
Donations to SAMH: £4,534 (90% of target) Donate now
Get Involved!
RUN: you can support us, just by donating some Endeavour Support Miles of your own. It would motivate us if our community could get close to (and beat) 1,000 miles across the week. Just let us know how many miles you run by posting on social media, tagging @pyllon and using the hashtag #PyllonEndeavour - you can also log your miles on our Strava club - Pyllon Endeavour.
TALK: It’s not always obvious when people are struggling or suffering mental health problems - so ask, and listen. Just creating a safe space - free of judgement for people to talk about how they feel can be life changing and life saving.
FOLLOW: we’ll do our best to update you on the event through the website and across social media. We’ll have someone running at all hours day and night for a full week
SUPPORT: we’d love it if you could send us burritos again. We’re joking - we haven’t eaten another since the last event! We will be running for 168 hours straight - so feel free to send some messages of support at any time. It’ll make all the difference at 2 in the morning to know someone is following!
SHARE: clearly we cannot get together in person, so if you do want to support us please share our messages, leave comments and likes on social media and let others know more about why we are doing this challenge
DONATE: SAMH are our charity partner again and we are hoping to help them continue the great work they do by raising funds for them - awareness of mental health saves lives. So if you can spare any money, we know it will be used wisely, and it will make a difference. Donate now.
Thanks!