20-year-old athlete in bid to become youngest female to run length of the UK in 20 days

A 20-year-old athlete from Bradford is bidding to become the youngest woman to run the length of the UK in 20 days.

Ellie Horrocks, who already holds a Guinness World Record for completing 8,321 chest-to-floor burpees in 24 hours, has announced her next challenge Project 20-20-20.

The endurance event will see Ms Horrocks run from John O’Groats to Land’s End in just 20 days, clocking up around 44 miles per day. She set off on the 880-mile journey on Friday.

She is aiming to raise £30,000 to buy 20 defibrillators, which she will place in UK gyms across the country, and to fund her challenge.

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Her GoFundMe fundraiser has already hit over £15,000. She said: “I chose defibs as, as much as I don’t want the machines to be used in the first place…if they need to be used they will potentially save someone’s life and keep a family together for longer. I’ve had investigations on my heart for the past couple of years due to an abnormal electrocardiogram (ECG) I had a triathlon event.

“I have realised how important it is to have defibs close by. I want to buy as many as possible, the more defibs I buy the more lives we save.”

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Ms Horrocks, a qualified CrossFit coach and triathlete, found scar tissue and inverted T-waves on her ECG, a test that records the electrical activity of the heart. She added: “Cardiac arrest can happen to anyone, anywhere. Only 8.3 per cent of those 85,783 out-of-hospital cases in England in 2023 received a defibrillator. I want to change that”.

Her father Michael will be supporting her along the way, and Ms Horrocks was fuelled on the first night of her challenge by his spaghetti bolognese.

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Speaking in a Youtube video describing her new challenge, Ms Horrocks said: “My dad always used to say to me if you’re living in my house you’ve got to do sport twice a week, so I went into cheerleading and did swimming lessons. Swimming lessons was were I found my love for sport.”

Referring to how she discovered she had scarring on her heart, she said: “They were doing this thing called cardiac risk in the young and everyone was coming out saying my heart’s fine. I went in and they said ‘oh Ellie sit down for me’, I was bricking it thinking something was wrong.

“My T waves were upside down…I had to go and have tests. They basically said you can’t do sport if it carries on getting worse…having that in my head when you’re training is pretty tough.”

She said that the hardest part of her John O’Groats to Lands End challenge would probably be if she gets any injuries, but mentally she would be fine on the over 880-mile journey.