Life on the Run (31 page)

Every now and again, as if to flex their muscles, Sport England works to disband and run down one organisation, and then pumps in a great deal of money to start up something very similar, and often with the same people involved. I have been involved with three organisations that have suffered from ‘the treatment'. The first was Disability Sport England (formerly BSAD), the next was the English Federation of Disability Sport, and lastly SportsAid, both before and after it changed to a charity. In all of these organisations there has been a huge waste of money. Disability Sport England was a good organisation that slightly lost its way, and suffered from poor management and lack of control by their funders, Sport England. It did however continue to provide a sound structure for sports clubs for people with disabilities, and some very good regional and national events.

The whole question of the disabled and sport is very complex, and my view is that the theory cannot be matched by practical considerations. A great deal of work has been done to put disabled athletes into a classification system that levels the playing field when in competition with each other. Although the opportunities should be there for the disabled to compete in the sporting events of their choice, they should accept that there are limitations for them as there are for able-bodied sportsmen and sportswomen. A person who is five foot nothing, does not expect to compete seriously at the high jump. An eight-stone man does not compete in the shot or discus, nor does a fifteen-stone man or woman take up distance running. We cannot all take part in every activity; it is “horses for courses”. The same restrictions in sport have to apply to the disabled, and this means that depending on the disability, they may not be able to take part in every athletic and sporting activity. In my association with disabled sport, I do not think this message has got across to the various Disability Sports Organisations and some individuals.

The English Federation of Disability Sport is making a brave attempt at pulling all these organisations together, so as to strengthen their arm in negotiating for more money and support. It is beginning to work, but some of the large cracks between different disability groups are still there, and may be getting wider. I do believe that there are very specific problems with all disabilities, and the best people to deal with them are the specific disability sports organisations with the support of EFDS and Sport England.

Chapter Twenty-Four: People I Admire

Somebody once said to me “How many really smart people have you ever met? I bet you could count them on one hand.” I suppose this is true of any of us, but there are people that you admire for many different reasons.

My all-time sporting hero has to be a runner that I followed, Emil Zatopek. He was a great man, athlete, Olympian and example to all.

There are a number of people I know who have suffered either from ill health or disability, but have survived to lead full active lives. One of these would be my secretary of many years, Gladys Daly, who suffered from a number of very serious periods of cancer. She survived for a long time and was instrumental in getting me to a doctor in 1988, when my diabetes was diagnosed. She was also one of those people who said I should write this book.

I also had the pleasure of meeting another hero, Terry Waite, when he was the starter of the London Marathon in one of the years when I was in charge of the wheelchair racers. He met and spoke to all the competitors in wheelchairs before sending them on their way.

Another person I have already mentioned, my old next-door neighbour and the man who got me involved with the Nabisco Fun Runs, Mike Paxton OBE. He suffered from multiple sclerosis, cancer of the liver and heart attacks from the age of late fifties, but still carried on with many activities helping others.

In terms of survival and courage, Sir Ranulph Fiennes has to be in my list as a survivor and extraordinary explorer.

Then there is Philip Lewis MBE, the man who took me into disabled sport, and who was largely responsible for many of the special initiatives that have helped disabled people have the opportunities to take part in sport at all levels. He himself had been in a wheelchair for over thirty years, but had still been able to enjoy sport, both as a competitor and supporter.

It was through him that I met Peter Hull, the young man I first met while he was at school outside Reading, and who later competed in the Reading Half Marathon as well as the London Marathon. Peter is an example to anyone with a disability. He has no arms or legs, but he won Paralympic medals for swimming, drives a car, and has a full-time responsible job. I suppose it is people like him that have kept me interested in sport for people with disabilities in spite of the politics that go with it.

I look back on a hard but enjoyable life with a number of careers; delivery grocers boy; policeman; soldier; salesman; sports writer; retailer; importer; event organiser; charity worker and administrator. I have never been wealthy but have always got by, even when income was virtually nil, I have never had to use State help, and have never been afraid to change direction, hence my multitude of careers. Life has been exciting, challenging and never boring. I have met many interesting people; some honest and hard-working, and some a little less than that, and I believe in maintaining standards, but I certainly have never had any time for snobbery whether connected with social standing, art, music or whatever. Sport has been my life, and all my careers have had sport as a major part of it, from the police through to charity work. I have been “On The Run” for fifty-four years, as a runner and with organising running events for others. I have the satisfaction of having a long happy marriage and our wedding in 1957 only seems a few years ago. We have five children and six grandchildren, although the family name will not be continued through to the next generations as our two grandsons are the families of our daughters. In general I have always been able to do the things that I have wanted to and enjoyed doing them all. I have only really had too much to drink about four times in my life, and one of them was on my fortieth birthday, when we had a big party at our old home on St Peter's Hill. I enjoy wine occasionally, but my main enjoyment is a glass of fine malt whisky. My musical tastes range from organ and church music, to brass and military bands, as well as classical music, in particular Handel. If I had my life over again what would I do? Would I make changes? I suppose if I was to have chosen a profession, it could have been as an accountant (it would use my talent for figures but oh so boring). I could have stayed in the police, where I was told I had a promising career, but I am not sure I could live with the politics of the job or all the other changes in recent years. I might have even entered the Church, but with a large family, I don't think I could have afforded that career. If computers had been around when I was younger, I would have enjoyed a career in that industry, as I have enjoyed working and using them now for over twenty years. On the whole I would not have changed very much, just a little tweak here and there, and perhaps I would rather like to have said I did compete in the Olympics in 1960! But
Life on the Run
continues...

The Final Lap or Hopefully Laps

After the publication of
Life on the Run
at the end of 2002 I continued writing for the
Reading Post
and kept up my involvement with sport for disabled people and athletics in general. But health became an increasing problem.

In 2002 while I could still run I carried the Commonwealth Games torch through Abingdon, Oxfordshire and then appeared on stage at the Kassam Stadium, Oxford, where the run that day finished, with Sir Roger Bannister, who was the special guest.

My pacemaker continued the job of keeping me ‘ticking' and it was replaced in 2006 as the battery was very low.

The heart was not behaving as it should and after several sessions at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford it was decided that I needed surgery to replace arteries to the heart and the aortic valve.

On Sunday 31
st
December 2007 I arrived at the appointed time at the JR. The operation on Monday 1
st
January 2008 did not go too well and I was rushed to Intensive Care where I stayed for nearly a week and can remember nothing of that time, except a real ‘out of body' experience. Family were told they could visit any time and Marion knew what that meant although she was shocked to see me linked up to eleven different machines including a ventilator. As soon as I came to I was taken back for surgery to tidy up the wounds left after the first op including the removal of my breastbone. Then several weeks later, which included some weeks in a single room, isolated from others because of infections and after living with a vacuum attached to my chest for five weeks, I had plastic surgery to rebuild my chest with a muscle from my abdomen, what is known as a muscle flap. I had several delays with this, sometimes having the operation cancelled at the very last minute. This and suffering four infections made my stay much longer than it should have been and it was ten weeks before I left hospital. During my weeks in hospital I continued to exercise by walking up and down the long corridors pushing my trolley with the special vacuum pump connected to my chest, a few lengths building up to dozens of out-and-back walks from the ward, much to the surprise and amusement of patients and staff.

On my sixty-sixth day I was told I might be able to go home, but then they thought I had yet another infection. I insisted I was going home and it was agreed that I could if I could learn very quickly how to treat myself with antibiotic injections, which included mixing what was required and washing through the vein in my arm before injecting. A very patient specialist nurse gave me instruction, but I did not get it right first time and I was told if I could not do it there would be no exit for me. During the following night a young nurse spent some time with me and next morning when the other nurse returned to test me I passed and could go home. I was also told that many nurses took a lot longer to learn the procedure than I did. Marion came to collect me and we left with three large boxes of medication and equipment as well as an infusion stand. I always did like a challenge and carried out the procedure for some weeks before signing on at a gym to improve my fitness.

Not all bad news in 2008 as in May I received a letter advising me that I had been recommended for the award of an MBE for services to athletics and sport for the disabled. I had to agree and then await the actual date and venue for the investiture.

In November the letter arrived and it gave me the date - 12
th
December - and the really good news that it was to be at Windsor Castle in my home town, where I lived for the first eighteen years of my life.

It was also within two days of the date in 1958 when the Royal Borough of Windsor presented me with an Illuminated Address for my contribution to English sport.

There is always someone behind such a recommendation, and my grateful thanks to blind runner Bill Gulliver, himself an MBE, who I know did the work of getting support letters and completing the application.

We decided to stay in Windsor the night before and to have a lunch for the family after the event in the Royal Adelaide Hotel where we had our wedding reception fifty-one years earlier.

On the day, dressed in my hired morning suit and top hat, I drove up the Long Walk, where I used to play as a youngster, to the castle entrance. I was accompanied by my wife, Marion, eldest sister, Janet, and eldest daughter, Caroline.

I parked the car and was met by castle officials who told Marion that the Queen was carrying out the investiture (such decisions are often made on the day). One of the castle staff on duty was Francis Holland, who had lived almost opposite me in Elm Road, Windsor when we were boys. Prior to moving to the castle he had been a sailor on the royal yacht for many years.

It was a great experience; even the music that played me in and out was significant - ‘My Heart Goes On' and ‘Candle in the Wind', which I had heard in the abbey when I attended the funeral of Princess Diana. The Queen was fantastic and we had a nice chat.

Then it was a bow and turn out of the chamber where my MBE was quickly taken away from me. I thought, ‘That was short', but it was only to give the box that it can be kept in. The press were waiting as I was one of several they wanted to interview and so it was out into the quadrangle for photographs and chat.

We left the castle via the Frogmore Gate on to the Long Walk, where all the family were waiting, all very cold as they had been there some time and it was a very cold day.

We had family photographs in front of the castle and a drive back down the Long Walk to the Datchet Road that crosses the park. The police stopped the traffic to allow me to leave the Long Walk. Many years earlier I could have had the job of stopping traffic there and now I was getting the special treatment.

Then it was back to the Royal Adelaide Hotel in Windsor where we had our wedding reception in 1957, for lunch with the family. This included our son Neil, whom I had found after twenty-plus years (in the book).

At the end of 2010 the man who was a great influence on my running and who wrote the generous foreword to this book, Len Runyard, former secretary of the Windsor and Eton AC (as it was then) sadly died. Later a memorial bench was placed in honour of Len at the Thames Valley Athletics Centre, Eton, the home of the Windsor, Slough, Eton and Hounslow AC.

In June 2011 Marion and I went on the maiden cruise of the
Queen Elizabeth
to the Baltic for fourteen days, visiting many of the places I had run at or visited in my earlier life - Stockholm, Helsinki, Oslo, Copenhagen, and St Petersburg. In life you often meet people in other parts of the world who have a connection to you, and the cruise was no exemption. When we were allocated our table in the restaurant on the first night we met a lady who it transpired had been at the same infant school in Windsor as me during the war. Near the end of the cruise we were due to make a trip to Flanders to visit the war cemeteries.

In August 2012 we attended a special service in St Paul's Cathedral before the start of the Paralympics. We had a special seat under the dome and just behind the Lord Mayor of London, where during the service a basketball demonstration was performed.

We now have eight grandchildren and in 2012 two of them were married, one in March and the other in October.

In May 2012 there was a special exhibition at the Reading Museum to celebrate the Olympics which was titled ‘Bikes, Balls and Biscuitmen' to celebrate ‘Our Sporting Life', showing the history of Reading sport and sporting individuals. I was well featured in this and had worked with the curator to ensure as much as possible of sport in the town was covered.

Good news came in the middle of 2013 when Marion and I were told that we were to be great-grandparents, but the not-good news was that after a lifetime of being fit and well it was my wife of fifty-six-plus years who was to end up in hospital.

On Saturday 31
st
August her problems started after a week of not feeling well; she was suddenly much worse and at about 11:15 a.m. I called 999. They were very good and asked all sorts of questions and said a doctor would ring me, which he did straight after. We went through the questions again with some extra, and he confirmed that help was on its way. After thirty minutes the paramedic arrived and started checking Marion. Then the ambulance and she was off to the JR. At about 8 p.m. they decided after discussion with Marion and us that the best place to be was at home as there was no guarantee of a bed in the ward!

That was not the end, but the beginning of a health problem for Marion. When two weeks later she was taken ill on the Saturday night, she could not get out of bed and by the morning was much worse. She could not stand and told me she thought she had suffered a stroke. Another call to 999 and I was asked to check for all the usual symptoms of a stroke. Apart from the weakness in her left arm, no strength in her left leg and the pain in her shoulder/neck which she had been suffering from, she did not have other symptoms such as loss of speech or distorted face.

Again the ambulance was called and she was off to the John Radcliffe Hospital again, where she stayed for nineteen days. Marion has made a great recovery; she quickly ditched her walking frame and seldom uses her stick although she still has some discomfort.

My Rotary Club of Caversham closed in 2014. Sad as I had been involved with it for thirty-seven years, and put a lot of time into working for it and its projects. It did have one good result for me: I was able to take possession of a gift the club received from the twin club in France to mark my two 176-mile runs. It was a Greek bust, the ‘Head of a Victorious Athlete' from the Louvre in Paris, where the original is held. On 1
st
July I became a member of the Rotary Club of Didcot, so my link with the organization continues.

I also resigned as the representative for the South East to the English Federation for Disability Sport after thirty years of being involved with sport for disabled people, although I still maintain my interest.

Not all negative news: the next generation are now being born, so we have five children, eight grandchildren and now we have had three great-grandchildren born in November 2013 and January and September 2014. I am very proud of all my family.

At the get-together of athletes from the past on the weekend of the London Marathon 2014 I met many of my old friends from athletics in the 1950s and 1960s. I also met an athlete that I had never met but whom I had watched and admired in my formative athletic years, miler Bill Nankerville. He used to wear brightly coloured satin shorts that showed up very well under floodlights, so what did I do? I copied him and wore similar when I progressed in the sport. At the same meeting I also met Basil Heatley the former world record holder for the marathon and Olympic marathon silver medal winner in 1964 and discovered that we had very similar health problems. He also had the same view as me, that there is a question over distance running and its effects. Keeping fit is obviously beneficial, but can the body stand the greater exertions put on it by intense training in any sport? Many top athletes have died early in life and others live with the problems of diabetes, heart disease and/or cancer. Little research has been done to find out if this is a fact. Overexertion of the body will become a growing problem for all sports people as there is more and more pressure to perform, very frequently for financial reasons.

I recently read a book,
The Ghost Runner
, about runner John Tarrant, who was banned from athletics events because he had accepted £17 in expenses as a teenage boxer. This made him turn to ultra-distance events where he ran unofficially, setting records at 100-mile-plus events, but he died in his forties with cancer. He joined a long list of runners who died early, like Gordon Pirie, Lillian Board, John Merriman, Peter Driver and many more. These were not in the generation that used drugs to enhance performance, just hard-training athletes. Others like me have suffered from heart disease - for example, David Bedford and Gerry Stevens (an international steeplechaser from Reading) - and they are not all international athletes like a very good veteran runner Tim Hughes. These are still living, but have had a problem from an early age.

In October 2014 my heart was giving me problems. I get very tired and breathless and very weak in the legs, which makes walking even just a couple of miles difficult. I also had other problems and I was booked in for urgent hospital appointments. One of these was for a prostate examination at the Churchill Hospital, Oxford which resulted in being diagnosed as having prostate cancer. Then I went through various tests and procedures to check the rest of the body, had a CT scan and full bone scan as I could not have an MRI because of the pacemaker. I went up to the hospital again one week later expecting to be told what treatment I would be having, but the news was good: the cancer had not gone into the bones and no immediate treatment was advised. I would be monitored regularly to keep an eye on it.

I had a thorough examination at Cardiology in the John Radcliffe Hospital re the heart problem. I had two ECGs and an echogram before seeing the same doctor who saw me back in 2007/8, and he booked me in for another procedure at the JR. Both Marion and I have been very well looked after by both hospitals in Oxford.

In November it was announced that the
Reading Post
was to close and I had my last column published in the final edition on 17
th
December, 2014. So it was my last ‘job' after starting work when I was eight helping out at the Royal Albert Laundry in Windsor, where my father worked. So my working life had matched his as he started on his father's brewery dray at about the same age and worked until he was nearly eighty.

My main occupation now is the family tree which I have been working on for the last two years. It has proved to be very interesting, looking back on the various lines of the family as far back as the 1600s. The family Eldon has served in the army during three centuries, including my grandson James, who is serving now and has had tours of duty in Iraq and then twice in Afghanistan. I can find the records of most of my family, but my own father is still a bit of a mystery. Several of my ancestors were bigamists; one finished life in a workhouse and another in an asylum. I now have nearly 900 family members in the tree, covering Marion's family and my own. My family has not been easy as the names were
Aldwin
in Chertsey in the 1600s then
Alden
and later
Elden
before my father, who was born as Alden and was Elden for part of his life, finally adopted
Eldon
after World War 1. The early family in Surrey were carpenters and wheelwrights and then tailors for two generations before military and other careers. Both my father and my grandfather used all three names.