“One more lap” – the battle cry of SUP Twelve

By Sarah Thornely of SUPjunkie and Simon Hutchinson of SUPfm
Simon Hutchinson of SUPfm Podcast and I were asked back for a bigger and better 2024 race, having covered the 2023 event. From our perspective, we realised last year the benefits of working together and feel we have good chemistry and a tremendous amount of knowledge of all things SUP and racing. Simon has produced over 100 podcast episodes, with the great and the good of the industry on his guest list, and Episode 114 was a wonderful chat between Simon, Brendon and me.

Our thorough preparation, including in-depth research on the paddlers and enticing social media posts, sparked a wave of excitement and anticipation among the paddlers and organisers. Their enthusiastic support was palpable, adding to the vibrant atmosphere of the event.

Over 12 hours of live coverage fills most with dread, but Simon and I love the challenge. Most of the ‘show notes’ did not even get referred to as it’s a pretty organic live feed, with guests on the ground being included as and when and chats with paddlers en route around the course never being taken for granted. Simon had cleverly asked guests to join us from afar, so we had Jordan Wylie of The Great British Paddle and race director of Last Paddler Standing, Greg Wingo. Jordan has just started his Tower Power 2024 Challenge and has some inspirational words. Greg talked enthusiastically about how SUP Twelve was inspired by his very own endurance race, LPS. 

The day flew by for us both. We were well fuelled by coffee and cake brought to us by helpful runners (probably all that we ate and drank all day!), but the adrenaline was running high, especially for the last 1-2 hours when the mantra was ringing out all around the land part of the course! “One More Lap, One More Lap!”

And indeed, those paddlers did paddle “one more lap” with some incredible results. Simon and I delivered what we think was our best ‘work’ yet. We’d love to thank the organiser, Brendon Prince, for trusting us so implicitly with his event and the volunteers and paddlers who made our job easy – they inspired us! We hope you have the time to look through some of our live feeds, especially to find Jordan and Greg and to watch the drama unfold. We apparently have a ten-year contract for this event, so we know exactly where we will be next year.

You can watch the live feed here: https://www.facebook.com/Supjunkie.co.uk/ and find SUPfm podcast episodes here: https://supfmpodcast.com/