SCOTT STOREY – Running for animals – Runner’s World, Nov 2025 issue
Scott Storey sometimes works at the zoo. He’s not a keeper though. ‘A bench and a phone and a laptop, that’s all I need,’ he says. ‘I get a few jealous people on my Zoom calls.’ As a patron fellow of ZSL, the Zoological Society of London, Scott can visit London and Whipsnade zoos whenever he likes, whether it’s to have a day away from the office in his role in IT security at the University of Manchester, or just to give the animals his full attention. ‘I get lots of ideas when I’m there, really focusing. Most “normal” people will look at an enclosure for a few minutes and move on. I’ll pick a random animal and just sit there for ages.’
The Sheffield resident’s lifelong love of the zoo made it his obvious focal point when his much more recent love of running developed to the extent that he started thinking about a charity challenge. Throughout 2025 he’s been entering as many races as possible, totting up the miles until he reaches 567 in December – one for every species that lives at London and Whipsnade. He’s not counting his regular training runs, just races, which means a hectic schedule that included eight different competitions in April.
He hovered mostly around the 10k distance in the first half of the year but things are getting more serious. When we speak, in the space of six days he’s completed both the Rasselbock Marathon in Sherwood Pines Forest and the Manvers Dusk Til Dawn – a 3.21 mile lap of a South Yorkshire lake that carries on through the night. He managed 10 laps in the mist, his new distance record, and his time PBs have been falling fast this year too. Next he’s getting ready for all three Rat Race Sea to Summit events, a trilogy of ultramarathons up and down the highest peaks in England, Wales and Scotland. All this, and his first child was born in the summer too. ‘My wife is logging all my race hours, which she’s going to claim back later!’
‘I still don’t think of myself as a runner,’ Scott says, which sounds especially odd after he sends me the 140-line multicoloured spreadsheet showing everything from the Yorkshire Marathon to the Great North Run in his diary. He’s also the race director for his local parkrun, Hillsborough, and a busy member of Hillsborough & Rivelin Running Club. He blames his imposter syndrome on his size – he’s 6’4”and ‘built like a rugby player’ – and the particularly sporty school he attended, where he didn’t shine on the field. Jessica Ennis (now Ennis-Hill) was in the year above.
He also arrived at running in difficult circumstances. He had been experiencing some health scares with diabetes when an old friend suggested taking him to try a parkrun in February 2024. He did it in 48 minutes (‘And that was me running!’) and found it extremely difficult, but it happened that Hillsborough & Rivelin Running Club was having a graduation event for its Couch to 5k programme at the same race. He decided to sign up to the next group, and after finishing that, went straight onto their 10k programme. ‘If you’d told me last year that I’d be running what I am now, I would have laughed in your face,’ he says.
He’s also finding that both running and animals are helping him with the longer-term problem of depression, which has afflicted him since his teens. ‘It got particularly bad in 2023 when lots of things happened at once. I had my poor health results, I was made redundant, and my mum was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s,’ he says. He’s now in the process of coming off antidepressants. ‘I like trail running for the same reason I like the zoo: it’s being close to nature and it gives me a bit of perspective.’
Scott’s earliest memory of going to London Zoo was on a family trip to see the capital’s sights when he was about seven. They were what he calls ‘A sterotypical Sheffield family: dad was a steelworker – made redundant – and mum was in manufacturing – made redundant.’ They couldn’t afford big family holidays so this counted as a major excursion. He threw a tantrum until they agreed to return to the zoo for a second day.
He developed a deeper connection to the place when he read an information sign about a particular bear that had been brought over from Russia, where it had been abused. ‘My passion started from that rescue side,’ he says. ‘It was never “Look at the funny penguins.” I thought they were doing good things.’
Now, having decided that paying to become a ZSL patron fellow was actually saving him money, given how often he and his wife were visiting (‘I am a Yorkshireman at the end of the day.’) he’s found a way to give even more to the conservation charity. His JustGiving page has a target of £2,000. He’s torn on what the year’s grand finale race should be – possibly Sheffield’s popular Percy Pud 10k – but it doesn’t really matter as he isn’t stopping there. It’s the 200th anniversary of ZSL next year. Look out for him running 200 miles from Sheffield to Whipsnade to London.
