A marathon for Blog

Dear Blog,

I thought that you might be interested to read about a Commemorative Marathon which took place in 2008 to celebrate the centenary of the 1908 Olympic Marathon, or at least to celebrate one of the trial races.

  There were several trial races held in different parts of the country to help to determine which athletes should have the honour of representing GB in the 1908 London Olympics. Of all the trials, the Coventry Trial was deemed to be the ‘first British marathon’ by Roger Gynn in his book ‘The Guinness Book of the Marathon’. It appears from the table (see below) that two trials were over the distance of 25 miles, but one is discredited. This was the reason for Gynn’s assertion that the Coventry Marathon was the ‘first’, as it was the nearest to what was then, the accepted marathon distance. It was not until the IAAF Congress on the 27^th May 1921that today’s distance (i.e. the same distance as the one covered in the 1908 Olympics, 42.195km) was officially adopted. 

  Anyway, I thought it would be a good idea to celebrate the Coventry Trial, like the Hastings marathon,  on a date and over a course as close to the original 1908 event as possible. The Coventry Trial set off from the railway arches in Spon End, in front of the pub whose licensee was Coventry Godiva Harriers first athlete of national standing. 24 runners faced the starter. The race followed the course of Thomas Telford’s Turn Pike Toll Road, through the village of Allesley, through Meriden who’s residents claim to live ‘in the centre of England’, and on towards Birmingham, finishing at the West Bromwich Albion Football Ground, an athletics meeting, not a football match, having been staged there in the afternoon of the Trial Race, the finish of the marathon being the grand finale of the afternoon’s proceedings. It hurts me to record that it was Birchfield Harriers, not Godiva, who organised the marathon event! Birchfield, among other clubs, had a branch in Coventry at the time. ‘Sport and Play’ (May 4^th 1908) reported that ‘One never knows, but it is only reasonable to suppose that men will not persist in this sort of thing as a hobby. The work is too laborious and exhausting .. and occupies too much time.’ I make the assumption from this that not too many people in East Africa subscribed to the magazine? 

  Having organised races over a number of years, I have experienced first hand the huge problems local event organisers have had with the negative attitudes of the Road Traffic Management Department of Coventry City Council. I was therefore pleased to have the Centenary Celebration take place ninety nine years three hundred and sixty one days after the actual Trial event, and a mere fifty metres from the original course, thereby succeeding in my quest to achieve the date and course requirements for a Centenary Celebratory Event! Please pass the salt cellar! The original course is now crisscrossed with trunk roads and motorways, besides being covered in urban sprawl, so a little lateral thinking was required. Ideally the race was to appeal to runners who might think of themselves as being of incapable of finishing the whole marathon in one go (I know the feeling well!). To make the idea attractive to the target entrants, the marathon was therefore split into five manageable stages to be held on successive days thereby keeping the marathon challenge alive. In the event, practicalities forced the ‘prologue’ to be held on the Sunday before the May Day Bank Holiday; the other four stages taking place over the holiday weekend. The whole commemorative ‘N.P.Aerospace Marathon Tour of Coventry and Warwickshire’ was to end with a BBQ at the presentation. To add a little historical flavour to the proceedings, it was thought to be a good idea to name each stage after a local historical character. Well, I thought it would be a good idea to name each stage after a local historical character. As Bas Heatley, Brian Kilby, Dick Taylor, Bill Adcocks and Sheila Carey did not quite seem old enough (Well Sheila didn’t), Lord Leofric, Lady Godiva, the Black Prince, and Peeping Tom kindly agreed to act as stand ins. Now the brighter Road Runner Club members will have spotted that there is a shortage of one name? Well done! Because one of the Godiva club members, butcher Andy Smith, provided free, and cooked all the meat for the BBQ, prepared the salad and sweets, and organised the tents etc in front of the Godiva Harriers Clubhouse at the Coventry Track on the University of Warwick Campus, it seemed churlish not to acknowledge his huge contribution to the success of the proceedings. He would in no way contemplate the ‘Andy Smith 10k’ or anything similar; hence, at his suggestion, the Breakfast 10k Run came about!!!

   Stage One was the prologue, (Sunday April 27^th) named the Lady Godiva ‘5’, actually it was 8 kilometres. [Easier to work towards the required 42.195km in metric rather than imperial units.] Held in the Coventry War Memorial Park, on tarmac pathways lapping around the park perimeter for two and a bit laps. The park opened in 1921, plaques being placed at the foot of each tree to commemorated the dead of the First World War. Unfortunately further plaques have had to be dedicated after subsequent conflicts around the globe. Godiva Harriers lost some of their members in the Great War. Charlie Davenport was regarded as the club’s ‘marathon runner’, although I have been unable to find just what road distance races he ran in the London area. He died at the Battle of the Somme, leaving a young wife. He worked in the pit at Binley, one of many small villages which the city swallowed in later boundary changes. In the spirit of the Celebration, it was fitting therefore, that the first event should remember Davenport, Lines, and their team mates. Somewhat fortuitously, Coventry’s foremost distance runner [until Bas Heatley came along in the 60s] joined the colours very late ‘avoiding’ conscription, it being     deferred repeatedly because he worked on his father’s farm. As a member of the Machine Gun Corp, he saw little action as he was sent out to India, where he ran and won his first distance races.

  The second stage (Friday May 2^nd) was the Peeping Tom Time Trial held in Allesley Park on the outskirts of the city over a distance of 4.195 kilometres [Clever stuff this - the distance employed allowed the other three stages to be 10 kilometres each and the cumulative total to equal the full marathon distance]. The original Marathon Trial passed through Allesley village about 200m from the Stage Two Time Trial. One of the city’s enlightened philanthropists had a boy’s boarding school in the park a few years before the foundation of Godiva Harriers; he held school sports for pupils and old boys at a time when such things were rarely heard of. When Allesley Hall was rebuilt on a grander scale, Lord Illiffe allowed local sports to be held in his grounds, actually within spitting distanceof the route of the

Toll Road

used by the Trial. The runners in the Tour of Coventry and Warwickshire ran the trial as a handicap, the slowest runner in the first stage being sent away first, a la Tour de France.

  Lord Aylesford gave permission for the roads on his private estate to be used for Saturday’s Black Prince 10 kilometre third stage. The turning point in the deer park was about 50 metres from the course of the 1908 run. Runners on this stage had the delightful vista of the stately Packington Hall, herons on the misty lake and deer wander across the course. Crossing the pack horse bridge over the ford added to the nostalgia of a time with no traffic – the original trial being ‘followed by hordes of cyclists on bikes’.

  Sunday May 4^th was the Lord Leofric 10k held on the Fen End Test Track, more used to seeing Aston Martin and Subaru cars screaming around the circuit than sweaty runners plodding their weary way along the bitumen. The disparity was stark. The 1908 marathoners could scarcely have conceived of either the sports cars presently using the circuit for testing or the rumble from aircraft returning from missions, landing on the mile long straight when it had been previously used as a war time airstrip.  

  May Day (Monday May 5^th) brought the event to within 4 days of the actual centenary of the Coventry Olympic Trail; the Breakfast 10 kilometres was held around the University of Warwick campus, which despite its name, is in the city of Coventry! The flat two lap course invariably produces fast times …. but not after doing 20 miles in a previous four days! At least the thought of the presentation cum BBQ and a final marathon time put some slight spring into the steps of the competitors.

***Note: because of difficulties with the part of the course that ran through Wormwood Scrubs and the fact that the stadium for the Games was not completed until a month after the ‘Olympic Course’ Trial, the distance is questioned by many statisticians. The scepticism seems to be justified when the times of all the competitors are examined, not just that of the winner. Further evidence is advanced by A.E.H Winter in his booklet "From The Legend To The Living" who confirms that ‘the Marathon trial race organised by the Polytechnic Harriers was indeed 22½  miles’. Winter was the ‘Poly’ marathon organiser for many years and bestowed upon me the dubious honour of being one of the few athletes to be disqualified from a national championships for cheating! 

Venue	Date	Distance	Winner	Time	Organiser?
Manchester	21 March	19 miles	Fred Lord	1:50:23	Salford Harriers
South London	28 March	20 miles	Fred Thompson	2:08:30.	Ranelagh Harriers
Liverpool	4 April	18 miles	William Clarke	1:46:08	Liverpool Harriers
South London	4 April	24 miles 670 yds.	E.R.Small	2:51:02	Blackheath Harriers
Derby	11 April	22 miles 1380 yds.	E.Eglington	2:37:40	?
Olympic Course***	25 April	25 miles***	Alex Duncan	2:15 :45	Polytechnic Harriers
Coventry	9 May	25 miles	Jack Price	2:37:13	Birchfield Harriers
Olympic Course	23 May	22 miles 1420 yds.	J.B.Powell	2:28:23	South London Harriers