Week Ending - 2021/01/24

DOGGED ASHLEY COMPLETES HIS CHALLENGE

With coronavirus placing no end of limitations on day-to-day life as we once knew it, Badgers have taken a wide variety of approaches to the challenges facing them. Some have spent their spare time honing a new skill, learning a language or cracking on with a steady jigsaw. Others have sat under a cloud of gloom, waiting for things to pass. One figure who has really stood out at the club during the winter has been the iconic Ashley Taylor, who decided to do what he has always done since joining up. Run.

Taylor is one of the most popular characters in the club and is no stranger to adversity. Late in 2018, the Warton man broke his neck in a freak accident at home ruling him out of the following year’s London Marathon, for which unbeknown to him at the time, he had gained entry for by being the lucky beneficiary of one of the two prized club places drawn at random from a ballot. After a lengthy stay in hospital and an even longer period of rehabilitation, “T-Dogg”, as he is affectionately known at the club, took his first tentative steps back into the world of running. His famed sense of humour undoubtedly helped him keep his chin up through some of the darkest days, Taylor is well known for his vast array of jokes and one-liners and it remains one of life’s great mysteries as to why he is cruelly overlooked in the club’s Humourous Badger award each year.

With his marathon goals some way off, he targeted events in the spring of 2020 but as with so many other races, these were kyboshed thanks to the spread of Covid-19. Plucky Taylor kept running however as a means of keeping fit and in late 2020, he signed up for the Land’s End to John O’Groats challenge where runners have to run 874 miles, the equivalent distance of the length of the land. Bit by bit, the brave bachelor ate his way into the daunting total, running from home in all weathers to get the job done. 141 days later, he made it, completing the final stretch with a 10K that theoretically circumnavigated the uninspiring coastal town of Wick.

Where most runners would thereafter enjoy a little rest for a few days, Taylor bucked convention yet again by continuing to run daily and thereby initiating a running streak like he had never done before. He received his commemorative medal and t-shirt through the post a week afterwards as he set his sights on his next challenge. To say he used to be indecisive but now he is not so sure would be something of an understatement. The determined 30-year-old has run in a number of different countries in his career (two – the UK and Spain) and may possibly look to extend his geographical range furthermore, only time will tell. One thing is for sure, he will give it his best shot trying whatever he attempts.