On Tuesday morning May 25th our Syntax students embarked on a 24hr run with the goal of running an accumulative length of Ireland. They would run in groups around the athletics track over the course of 24hrs, including through the night.
This was all in aid of this year’s Duck Push, with all proceeds going to Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital, Crumlin.
Oscar Ramsdale and Paddy Cosgrove have written a brief piece explaining where the inspiration for the event came from and how the boys got on during the event.
Why a 24-hour run?
Most of us started running over the lockdown so when we came back to school I thought about how we could put our new running skills to use for the Duck Push and I came up with running for 24 hours non-stop because no other year in the school had ever done it before.
This year already we had raised money through our online shop duckpush.clongowes.net selling Clongowes branded items such as baseball caps, phone cases, rugby gear, Christmas baubles and even delicious marmalade. We also had experience organising the Virtual Fun Run and the Colour Run so we followed the theme!
For the 24 hour run, we repainted the running track lines, hired floodlights for the nighttime section and got the essentials like water and Nutrigrain bars sponsored by our friends in Four Star Pizza. We were all set to start on Tuesday 25th May at 9 am with six runners running for an hour every hour.
Originally our goal was to run 486km which is the length of Ireland. But after the first four hours, we hit 200km and knew we would smash our goal very quickly. Some of my fellow students really excelled; Toby Griffin ran steady for three hours solid covering 30km, Finn McGarry ran a marathon, Harry Martin ran 63km, Oscar Ramsdale and Paddy McMahon each ran 50km and many others ran half marathons. Our tallymen were Felix Felton and yours truly.
At the end of the 24 hours, we reached a total distance of 1411.4km and raised €3,585 for Children’s Health Ireland Crumlin through our GoFundMe page (https://bit.ly/2QYrjPS). We are still collecting funds and would be very grateful for your support.
The weather was a concern in the days before the run as there was plenty of rain in the days before and the track was soft. But we got very lucky and the day was mostly dry with only 2-3 hours of rain. At one point we were running in blistering heat then the heavens opened up and there were hailstones!
There was a great turnout from everyone in the year group as well as the teachers and prefects over the 24 hours.
We went through about 200 water bottles in the day and 100s of Nutrigrain bars.
We ran through the sunset and sunrise which was really nice and there was a full moon as well.
Thank you and well done to everyone who took part and helped us achieve our goal. We are very proud of everyone!
