Life on the Run (22 page)

Later in the year, after the first Reading race, the mayor did invite me to one of his mayoral lunches which he held several times a year. It was a very enjoyable occasion, with other guests including Robert Morley the actor and raconteur, the Bishop of Reading Graham Foley, and a few others from the commercial life of the town. It was at a time when all mayors of the town were able to hold these very good special events. I was to be invited to a few more of these special lunches, but I think that first one is my favourite memory.

In 1983, John London, my partner in Running Management Services, and myself decided to try and open a branch of the famous Athlete's Foot running shoe shops that were growing very fast in the United States. They were a franchise organisation, and we thought that we could make it work in this country after the modest success of my Sporting Feet. Senior executives flew into Gatwick in their private jet, and we had a meeting to discuss the possibilities. They were very keen, but unfortunately had a legal problem over the registration of the their trading name in the UK. Another UK business had registered the name some years before, and although it was not being used, the advice was that Athlete's Foot and ourselves would not be able to extend the franchise into this country, so it never happened.

After that first Reading Half Marathon, there was a lot of fine tuning to be done, and there was much discussion before the 1984 event could be up and running. I remember a quote from Terry Harding, who was the Reading Borough Council representative on the committee after that first event, it was “If the Borough had given its full support, the event would have been much better.” These words had a ring of truth for many years.

Work started straight away, and the support of Digital was again confirmed.

People had been so impressed with the first event, that they were waiting for the entry forms to come out for 1984, and when the launch was held in September of 1983, there was a rush of entries that was only held back by the lack of entry forms. By the beginning of November 5,000 entries had been received, and within a month the 6,000 mark had been passed. The route had been confirmed as the same as for the first year. The total entry for the 1984 event was a staggering 6,801.

The office for the race was above my shop in Caversham (now a branch of Boots), and the workload of dealing with this number of entries was enormous. In particular the mailing out of race numbers and programmes a month before the race. On one occasion there were twenty large mailbags packed with the packages to be collected by Royal Mail. My own staff helped when they could, but there was only one person to carry out much of the work, and that was a newly-retired member of Reading Joggers, who had taken up running in his sixties; Dave Hutchins was the father-in-law of the late Alan Taylor, the footballer who became an athlete.

By now Digital had been working on their own results system instead of using a bought-in service as in the first year.

The huge field lined up at Whiteknights for the start of the 2
nd
Digital Reading Half Marathon, on Sunday, 25
th
March 1984. The weather was not as good as that first year and there was a lot of rain, but the race not only attracted a large field but it also started to draw in better class runners, following the success of the first year. It also attracted some undesirable youngsters, who kept creeping under the side of the large marquee that housed the various giveaways including oranges, and in particular the Mars bars. Fortunately we had some good stewarding and they did not get away with very much.

The winner Mike Hurd, from the RAF, set a new record of 64:39. The women's race was won by Karen Goldhawk, who was coached by Hurd, in a new record of 73:56; and so was the wheelchair event which was won by Gordon Perry in 87:24. Reading AC repeated their team win of the previous year with a great team result, which included Rob Watt in second place with 65:21, and Peter Mitchell third with 66:37, Ron Tyler fourth in 67:30, Pete Sugden fifth 67:39, David Gilbert seventh 67:46. In 108
th
place there was an Eldon; son Jonathan ran in with 76:07. The race had attracted some big names from the world of athletics, including Ron Hill, Britain's most prolific and successful marathon runner, and John Whetton the UK's most successful miler and 1,500 metre runner. They had their own private battle for the vets' prize and Whetton won by finishing in tenth place in 68:25, with Hill in thirteenth place (and second vet) with 69:15. Bob Allden (Reading AC) was third in 70:39 (twentieth in the race). The winner of the men's fifty plus group was Albert Patterson in 75:16.

Some of the other local characters and runners included Kathy Tayler, the Reading girl who was a former World Ladies Modern Pentathlon Champion and later a TV Holiday programme presenter, and Roger Smee the then Chairman of Reading FC and his sixty-five-year-old father Don, who went on running until he was nearly eighty years old. One of my running contemporaries from the 1960s, Brian Bacon, a long-standing member of Reading AC, ran the race and finished in 78:01. This was to be the last time he ran the race without pushing a disabled young person, which he did for the next fifteen years, as he was to continue running with a wheelchair until he was well into his sixties, and still recorded very respectable running times of around ninety minutes. A local police sergeant, Michael Burgess, had entered the race but was injured before the day, and was pushed around by Brendan O'Dowde. Everyone wanted to be there and take part whatever the circumstances.

As the
Reading Evening Post
put on its banner headline after the race
“WET, WINDY AND...WONDERFUL! Marathon Mania gripped Reading yesterday. Six thousand ignored bitter wind and driving rain to run in the Digital Reading Half Marathon...”

A new results system had been developed by Digital and it had a good test. The system depended on bar codes, but when they had to be read after the event, the wet conditions and the sweat on the numbers made reading difficult. So 7,000 numbers were put to one side for a day to dry out before they could start to process the results. A large number of people were involved, probably about thirty, in producing results that a few years later could be produced by one or two people.

In 1984 we started training sessions for new runners at Palmer Park. Most of those attending were new runners who wanted to have a go at the half marathon, or wanted to improve their times. They were interesting sessions and I recall that even when the track was covered in snow, at least fifty people would still be there to carry out some sort of training. John London and myself developed a training programme and structure which helped many runners improve their times in subsequent half marathons. After we stopped running the sessions in 1987, many of the runners stayed together and kept up their training at the Park, and it was from these sessions that the now very large and successful Reading Roadrunners was formed.

There were problems before the third race could take place in 1985. In July 1984 there was a row between two Reading Council committees. The Leisure Committee wanted the event to continue over the route used for two successful years, but the Transportation Committee wanted a new route, which may have excluded Caversham which had always given the event massive support. The matter went to the Policy-making Committee and rumbled on for some time until a slightly revised route was found, but the race was the last to be held at the University of Reading before it moved to a leisure centre to the south of the town, which required another rethink. Even if the council were playing about with the event, the success of the event was now assured with the continued backing of Digital, Barclays Bank and other powerful supporters, including the media, even though the battles with the local council continued as they did right through until 1994, when they suddenly decided it was a good thing. Before the final decision was made about the route, I had to address a full meeting of the Borough Council, after detailed discussions with the leaders of all the political parties to convince them of the importance of the event to the town, and why some of their options would be no good for the wheelchairs. I won that battle and the event continued to grow.

The entry was huge again, and there were over thirty wheelchairs entered.

The third winner of the Digital Trophy was Kingston Mills (Shaftesbury AC), who took the winning time below sixty-four minutes for the first time with 63:55; in fact the first three all beat sixty-four minutes in the very close race, which was only settled as the runners hit the grass at the finish. Second place went to Keith Penny (Cambridge Harriers) in 63:56, with Mervyn Brameld third in 63:59. The winner from the previous year, Mike Hurd was fifth in 64:09 and Steve Brace (Bridgend), making his first of many appearances, was seventeenth in 66:28. Veronique Marot won the ladies' race in 72:56. In the wheelchair race, Mike Bishop took a huge chunk off the record with 76:31, and Basildon AC prevented Reading from taking their third team title. Aldershot Farnham and District were second with Oxford City AC third, and Reading AC next with Pete Mitchell (twenty-second), Pete Sugden (twenty-eighth), Rob Watt (thirty-eighth), Dave Gilbert (thirty-ninth), all under seventy minutes, and the team results were very interesting in retrospect. London Irish, a future winning team, were fifth, Maidenhead sixth and Reading Joggers seventh; their team included Dave Lancaster who would feature in the race many times over the years, but running for other clubs. The Maidenhead B team which finished ninth included Duncan Hurdwell. The individual age category winners were, David Clark in the over forties men with 66:48, from Taff Davies (Aldershot) 67:34 and John Whetton (the vet winner in 1984) 68:34. Brian Shave took the over fifties with 80:32 and Paul Norman the over sixties with 94:49. In the women's race, the thirty-five to forty-four years winner was Margaret Lockley in 77:02, the forty-five to fifty-four years Esme Thompson 84:28 and the fifty-five plus Joyce Smith in 101:22, with ‘guinea pig' Eileen O'Neill runner-up.

Looking back fifteen years later, it is amazing to see how many runners, especially local runners, were able to beat seventy minutes and a whole host more sub seventy-five minutes.

There were a total of fifteen team categories in those early years, and hundreds of teams took part. There was a separate category for Jogging Clubs, and in 1985 Reading Joggers B team took the trophy here. The Gurkas took part in the race and their band provided musical entertainment on the day; their team won the Sports Clubs category from Palmer Park Plodders, which was the forerunner of Reading Roadrunners. Reading FC were sixth in this group, with Ian Branfoot, Brian Roach, Stuart Henderson and Glenn Hunter. The Motor Trade Trophy went to Reading Garage, who were led home by Reading AC's Ron Tyler. Slough Casuals won the very large category for Civil Servants and Local Government. The Banking Category went to the Co-op Bank; Courage took the Industrial;
Reading Chronicle
the Media; the Computer/Electronics award went to Burroughs Education Centre; Helen House, Oxford, won the Charity; the pub winner was the Pig and Whistle; and the family team winners were the Bookers, from the Gosneys and the Smees. I mention both these latter families as they continued to support the event very strongly in different ways over the years. Advertising category was won by Fericon Press; Transport by Cab Running Club; and Retail by Heath and Watkins.

When races like Reading started up in the early 80s little was known about computerised results, and Digital put a lot of resource into developing a satisfactory system for the Reading race. Working with their software company, Cambridge Online, and with a hand-held Psion Organiser that had been specially programmed by Will Chapman of Serpentine Runners, the work of producing fast results became much easier.

From the start we had used tags on our race numbers, and these were carefully collected at the end of each funnel where the runners finished, and put on spindles (knitting needles with corks) in strict finishing order. This still required race times for all these finishers, which was a massive job for those on the finish line, and it was also very time-consuming transferring these times into the results system. The Psion saved all this and cut down on time and manpower.

At the finish a couple of confident people would each have a Psion, and as a runner approached them before the line, they would punch in that runner's number; as the runner crossed the line he would hit another key, and that runner had an accurate time. Obviously in a race with 7,000 runners coming across the line at over 200 a minute, not every time would be taken. The Psion handlers would then look at a group of four, five, six runners coming towards them who were very close together, and pick the simplest number to read from that group and use that number for the accurate time; if he had time he might put a plus four or five runners in with the identified runner. This did not matter very much as the accurate finish tag collectors would provide the finishing position, and the computer was clever enough to allocate times to runners between the clearly identified runners with sufficiently accurate times.

I lined up for the London Marathon in 1985, and Digital had progressed to producing the results for London in that year. I had a reasonable run on inadequate training, but finished in the first 10,000 with an official time of 3:45; but allowing for the few minutes to cross the start line, this was probably a couple of minutes faster.

It was around this time that I got involved for the only time in a campaign. It was to save the grammar schools in Reading, and my youngest daughter was a pupil at one of them - Kendrick Girls' School. I joined a protest with banners and hundreds of other supporters at the Berkshire County Council building, Shire Hall, where we made out feelings known to the county councillors as they attended a meeting there. We won the day and the schools still exist at this time.

In the same year I got involved more and more in the organising of other running events. One of the first of these was the Courage Half Marathon, that ran from their Brewery in Reading. The company itself organised the race, and my involvement was producing the results on the Digital computer system designed for the Reading Half Marathon. It seemed strange that Courage set up their own race, when they could have had the main Reading Half in 1983 before Digital emerged as a sponsor. I remained involved with this race until Courage finally gave up the event in about 1990.