Category: Marathon Stars

John Kerr (second from left, head showing between George King and Andy Fleming) in the 1957 SAAA Marathon.

John Millar Kerr, who between 1960 and 1962 won one gold medal and two silver medals in the Scottish Marathon Championships, ran for the Harriers in Airdrie, his birthplace in 1933.   He had been a cyclist and was known as ‘Jack’ to his fellow bikers although  his mother disapproved of the abbreviation.   Hugh Mitchell (Shettleston) twice a silver medallist (in 1964 and 1969) and a record breaker in the solo Edinburgh to Glasgow was another one of those cyclists and remembers that John had a low but very powerful running action.   Jackie Foster (who won a bronze medal in 1959) remembers him as ‘Johnny’ Kerr, and rather ‘fat’ for a runner,  probably weighing over eleven stones compared to the nine and a half of normal ‘scraggy’ competitors.   However his wonderfully positive attitude made him state that his extra weight was an advantage as he had something to lose, unlike ‘skinny rabbits’ like Jackie himself!   Johnny had a low shuffling stride and sweated profusely appearing to stretch his vest and nylon running shorts to the maximum.   When Jackie worried once about an apparently classy field of opponents, Johnny retorted “Nonsense.   They have just two legs each like you and I,” and went on to win.

One day the two of them were running in the Strathallan twenty miler on a red hot day with black bubbles of tar forming on the road.   They had broken away from the field at fifteen miles and Jackie was highly chuffed at still keeping up with Johnny and was looking forward to finishing second.   With about half a mile still to go, Jackie offered his rival one of the little refresher sweets he was carrying.   Johnny Kerr stopped still immediately and Jackie carried onto the track to win in two hours two minutes.   When Johynny did come on to the track a full five minutes later, he took off his peaked cap and jumped on it!   He told Jackie later that he could not believe him fresh enough to offer him sweets after such a gruelling run.   So, for once, Johnny’s strong self-confidence was broken – although Jackie never beat him again.

Johnny Kerr tended to race himself fit, starting in March.   By June 1956, running for Monkland Harriers, he had finished second in both the Dundee 13 and the Babcock and Wilcox 15 – and had joined the Scottish Marathon Club.   He raced frequently – up to 18 miles – and was a meritorious fifth in the Scottish Marathon Club overall championship that year.   In 1957, now representing Airdrie Harriers, he won the Springburn 12 on 25th May, defeating Hugo Fox, and a week later the Dundee Corporation 13.   However when he made his debut in the SAAA Marathon on 22nd June he found the extra distance hard and dropped back to finish eleventh in 2:20:56 (but inside the standard time of 2:55:00)    Undaunted he continued to race frequently and sheer consistency enabled him to win the SMC overall championship, pipping the first two in the SAAA Marathon,  Harry Fenion and Hugo Fox.   In 1958 he disappeared form the results sheets, perhaps because of injury.   However in 1959 he tried again finishing thi9rd in the Edinburgh to North Berwick 22.6 , before improving to fifth in the SAAA Marathon in a new personal best of 2:45:40, well inside the new 2:50 standard time.   On the 18th July he won the Kilwinning 10 in 52:25 beating Motherwell YMCA’s Tom Scott.A week later John was victorious in the Gourock Highland Games 14.   he finished fourth in the SMC overall championship for the McNamara Cup.

John Kerr (288), Andy Brown (164), Joe Connolly (9) in the National Cross Country at Hamilton

In 1960 he improved to second in the Edinburgh to North Berwick in May.   That year’s Scottish Marathon finishing at Old Meadowbank Stadium in Edinburgh, took place on another particularly hot, sunny day.   Gordon Eadie of Cambuslang Harriers, a durable athlete who represented Scotland in the International Cross Country Championships in 1961, broke the solo Edinburgh to Glasgow race, won another two marathon medals – silver in 1959 and 1966 – started cautiously and ran an even paced race, making steady progress and passing the leaders in the later miles to win convincingly in 2:36:40 from Johnny Kerr (2:40:55) and Charlie Fraser of Edinburgh Southern Harriers (2:41:26).

In 1961 John Kerr improved his fitness steadily when he was third in the Clydebank to Helensburgh 16.   June’s marathon route was Falkirk to Meadowbank and once again the weather was extremely warm.   Two weeks before the championship Bill McBrinn of Monkland Harriers (much later a world record holder for the M55 marathon) was second to Johnny Kerr in the Scottish Marathon Club 12 mile race.   On marathon day, 24th June, the press made Ian Harris favourite.   He ran for Beith and also the Parachute Regiment and had represented Scotland in the International Cross Country Championship that year.   Bill McBrinn however favoured John Kerr whose stamina was not in doubt since he had run ultras.   Four English runners had turned up, pooh-poohing the Scots’ chances and saying that they would all break 2:30.   The gun went and the favourites shot off.   Bill McBrinn ran steadily and drank water every five miles.   Hugh Mitchell was following the race on his bicycle and passed on information from the front of the race to Bill.   By Maybury Cross (20 miles) Bill was eleventh and shortly afterwards spotted two of the boastful Englishmen ‘lying on the road an another wrapped round a lamp-post!’   On Ferry Road Hugh shouted that Bill was up to seventh, by 24 miles he was fourth.   ‘They’re dropping like flies in the heat!’ shouted Hugh.   Just after that Bill could see Jimmy Garvie and Jim Brennan just in front of him.   They were staggering from side to side, trying to negotiate the long hill to Meadowbank.   This was all Bill needed to give him the will to run past them into second place.   Looking at a clock on a building, he saw it was four o;clock.   He knew that STV was covering the championships from that time so he ‘put on a bit of a face for the cameras’, and won a silver medal in his first marathon in 2:37:32.   The winner who had endured the heat and staved off the English challenge was John Kerr who recorded 2:36:06.   Bill wrote ‘two runners from the Monklands on the track at the same time and my son James (7) shouting me on from my Mum’s television!’   Third in 2:39:24 was EW Holmes of Burn Road Harriers, the sole surviving Englishman.    In July John recovered well to again win the Gourock 14, this time defeating Ian Harris of Beith Harriers. The official result sheet for themarathon is shown below

At the end of the 1961 season he was named Scottish Road Runner of the Year and awarded the Donald McNab Robertson Memorial Trophy.

Starting the 1962 season with another third place in the Clydebank to Helensburgh , John improved to second in the Edinburgh to North Berwick (behind Charlie Fraser of ESH)  and then on 26th May 1962, John M Kerr gave a hint of his true potential on a cooler day, when he recorded a fine 2:26:58 for second place in the Shettleston Marathon behind Andy Brown (2:25:58.)

When the Scottish marathon took place on 23rd June, 1962, a new course was devised although it did finish for the last time on the ash track of the so-called New Meadowbank Stadium in Edinburgh.   The race started outside the Stadium, went towards Dalkeith, worked its way back towards the coast through Cockenzie and so back into Edinburgh.   Although John Kerr did manage to revenge his earlier defeat by Andy Brown he had a new star to contend with – the illustrious Alastair Wood (Aberdeen AAC) who went on to be fourth in the European Marathon Championships in Belgrade that year.   Wood remembered the Scottish course as being very hilly with a headwind on the way back.   He battled with Andy Brown and John Kerr before breaking away at 18 miles.  Eventually a tired Alastair Wood broke the Championship record in 2:24:59.   Johnny Kerr of Airdrie Harriers was second, once again in the very good time of 2:26:58 and Charlie Fraser (ESH) was third in 2:30:05.    By the end of the season John Kerr had won the SMC overall championship easily in front of worthy opponents such as Andy Brown and Gordon Eadie.

In 1963 however John Kerr’s previous good form deserted him.   After his usual third place in the Clydebank to Helensburgh, he could only manage seventh, a disappointing 19 minutes behind Jim Alder in teh Edinburgh to North Berwick Road Race;  it seems likely that he retired from athletics soon after that to concentrate on coaching.   He was a Committee Member of the Scottish Marathon Club from 1963 to 1968.

Tragically John Kerr’s life was cut short on 22nd March, 1968 when he was only 34 years old.   He was a purification engineer on the River Clyde and, on a freezing winter’s day, he was taking samples near Bothwell Bridge when one of the ropes supporting the bosun’s chair snapped and suspended helplessly from the broken harness, he was immersed in icy water for at least half an hour.  The task was meant to be a two-man job but unfortunately his workmate had not arrived and John had decided to do the job on his own.   The fire brigade rescued him and he walked to the ambulance but died soon afterwards in Hairmyres Hospital from hypothermia and shock.   Jackie Foster wrote ‘A sad end for a really tough guy.’

The SMC AGM took place only five days later.   A wreath had been sent by the club to John’s funeral where many runners were present.   At the AGM a minute’s silence was observed and Dunky Wright, the President, was minuted as saying that John M Kerr had been a Senior Coach , a very able and willing worker, and in fact had been regarded as being the best young coach the SAAA had had in years .   “He was a very good friend.”

Johnny’s widow put up a memorial trophy which for many years went to the winner of the Airdrie 13.   Nowadays it is presented to the winner of the popular Monklands Half Marathon.

*****

As a young(ish) road runner myself in 1961 I followed the SAAA Marathon Championship from Falkirk to Edinburgh in Jimmy Scott’s minibus and it was a good race to watch with Ian Harris and John leading the field – Ian was said to be a PE Instructor in the Parachute regiment; he was said to run to work in the morning, do PE all day and run home again at night and in general he was built up as the favourite but he dropped out and John won. – He was a chunky figure and what is said above about him not looking like a marathon runner is on the mark.   His sheer white nylon shorts always seemed to be very tight and he had a stride length that was extremely short.    The older guys in the Marathon Club said that initially, when he first took up road running, he always went with the leaders and inevitably fell back as the race progresses.   However he went further with them every time out until he was with them all the way and eventually beating them.   It was a real shock when we read in the ‘Daily Record’ or ‘Evening Times’ of his death.   It saddened the whole road running community but he had been a great competitor, was well liked by all and his name is among the stars on the Donald McNab Robertson Trophy   – between Gordon Eadie and Alistair Wood.

                                               Gordon heading for a record-breaking victory in the 1966 Edinburgh to Glasgow 45 miles

Gordon Eadie of Cambuslang Harriers (born 6th December 1934) won the Scottish Marathon Championship in 1960 having been second to Hugo Fox the year before.   He was far from a ‘one trick pony’ however with a long illustrious career that included excellent  racing on the road, over the country, on the track and in the hills.    Jackie Foster of Edinburgh Southern Harriers is quoted in Clyne and Youngson’s ‘A Hardy Race’ as being “one of nature’s true gentlemen, very modest and unassuming.”   I can corroborate that having met and raced against him – or rather behind him – in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s.

They go on in the book to say that he had “a very powerful build that made him look more like a boxer than a runner.   This may have been caused by his having worked as a coalman, perhaps having to carry many a hundredweight sack of coal up many four-storey Cambuslang tenements.   Rumour had it that Gordon worked one morning before a marathon!   Hugh Mitchell remembers that, if Gordon had been delivering coal on a Saturday morning, his form suffered.   Gordon himself makes no mention of such weight training but admits to having run 80 to 100 miles per week.   His longer runs were on the road (some including fartlek) and his easier efforts were over the country.  He wore a vest (with a jersey on top) and shorts.    Footwear was Adidas road shoes or a light pair of Fosters for racing.”

The first mention of Gordon Eadie in the Cambuslang Harriers history on their website is when he was a member of the team that was eleventh in the Edinburgh – Glasgow Relay and won the most meritorious medals – or rather ‘the medals for the most meritorious unplaced performance’.   Another member of that team was Andy Fleming who ran for Scotland in the International Cross Country International that year and they were key members of many a Cambuslang team for years to come.   In terms of the club championship Gordon won it for the first time in 1959.   It was also the year when he won his first marathon medal.

Back to ‘A Hardy Race’:   “In the 1959 Scottish Marathon Championship he remembers that the route was Falkirk to Meadowbank.    Hugo Fox, the holder and a good judge of pace, raced into an early lead from the start.   By half distance Hugo was several minutes in front; but by 20 miles, runners dropped away from the chasing pack and Gordon Eadie found himself alone in second and closing in on the leader.   However Gordon writes, ‘Hugo was one fox who wouldn’t be caught and finished on the track to win by over a minute.’   Hugo’s time was 2:28:57; Gordon was second in 2:30:00 and Jackie Foster third in 2:32:38.”

In 1960 he started the year by leading a Cambuslang team with Andy Fleming to win the silver medals in the inaugural Tom Scott Road Race.   His real triumph however was improving on his 1959 run and winning the SAAA Marathon Championship.   ‘A Hardy Breed’ again: “The 1960 Scottish Marathon, finishing once again at the Old Meadowbank Stadium, took place on a particularly hot, sunny day.   Gordon started cautiously and ran an even paced race, making steady progress and passing the leaders in the later miles to win convincingly in 2:36:40 from John Kerr (Airdrie Harriers) and Charlie Fraser (Edinburgh Southern)”.   He was awarded the Donald MacNab Robertson Trophy awarded by a committee consisting of three members of the Scottish Marathon Club and three members of the SAAA to the outstanding Scottish Road Runner of the year.  In the following cross country season (1960/61) he qualified for the Scottish International Cross country team where finished 50th to be counting member of the team.

Not content with running in the marathon he started on ultra distance running and in 1963 he won the Edinburgh – Glasgow 45 miles race and won by 37 minutes in a new course record of 4:51:17 on a day of rain plus a driving headwind.   (There is a detailed report of this race in the ‘Point to Point’ section of this website).   He won the event again in 1964.   Although he had to withdraw from the 1965 event, clubmate Andy Fleming won it.   He only had it for a year however because Gordon won it back again in 1966, taking ten minutes off his record time in the process.   He then went South of the Border where he won the Liverpool to Blackpool race which he won by 10 minutes.

There was another silver medal in the Scottish Marathon Championship in 1966 in a time of 2:28:18 and his club mate Andy Fleming was third in 2:32:47.    The race was run from Westerlands in Glasgow out to the Strathleven Estate in Vale of Leven and back up the Great Western Road Boulevard – the trail on which Ian Harris defeated Jim Alder in 1961.   On a warm afternoon the field included Charlie McAlinden (Babcock’s) who had originally been encouraged to run the marathon by Harry Fenion and who had won bronze in the Scottish Marathon in 1964 and been fifth in the AAA’s Championship in 1965.   Hugh Mitchell (Shettleston), Gordon and Andy Fleming from Cambuslang were there and Don Ritchie of Aberdeen was starting in his second marathon.   Hugh had been told that a 2:25 time would qualify the winner for the Jamaica marathon so he started out quite quickly accompanied by Charlie McAlinden with a small pack containing Gordon Eadie and Don Ritchie not far back.   At the halfway mark (Strathleven Estate) there was little change when they turned back to face the hills that had caused so much damage in 1961.   After keeping to a 2:23 pace, Hugh Mitchell had to drop back at 20 miles leaving Charlie on his own.   Charlie had an exra problem in that he did not drink at all on this hot day.   His friend Tony McManus (who also ran for Babcock’s) was meant to hand him a drink at 20 miles but that wasn’t allowed in the strict rules of the day – feeding points were at strict intervals and 20 miles wasn’t one of them!   At 24 miles – the point where Jim Alder was really suffering and passed by Ian Harris – Hugh Mitchell dropped out.   Gordon had started to make a real effort to catch the leader at about 20 miles and chased hard through 23 miles.   He moved into second behind Charlie McAlinden but the heat and the course was taking its toll and many were dropping out or dropping back.   Charlie found the energy to raise his game a bit in the last two miles to win in 2:26:31.

What a group of runners!   In front is Andy Fleming, number 13 is Willie Kelly and Number 1 is Gordon Eadie (all Cambuslang), number 2 is Charlie McAlinden (Babcocks), in the dark vest behind him is Brian Goodwin (Bellahouston Harriers), behind Kelly’s right shoulder is Bill Stoddard (Wellpark) and inside Eadie is Davie Simpson (Motherwell).   Picture probably taken at Gourock HG – does anyone know better?

Cross country internationalist, marathon champion and ultra distance record breaker, Gordon also had a go at the hills.   He ran the Ben Nevis race where he finished one place behind rival Ian Harris of Beith in fourth place – they were the only Scottish runners in the first ten, there were only three in the first fifteen because as well as the usual complement of Englishmen there were several teams of Gurkhas competing that year.   He had several good races with Harris – they were both in the International cross country team that year and they had crossed swords several times and Gordon had beaten Harris in the Strathallan 20 by four minutes to be second to Norman Ross of ESH with Harris third.

His career extended through the 1970’s and he was a member of many good and very good Cambuslang teams.   They returned to the Edinburgh to Glasgow in 1972 and finished twelfth and getting the most meritorious medals again.   In 1974 he again took part in the SAAA Marathon where he was fifth in 2:25:22 to be ranked tenth in Scotland.   (He had been twelfth in 1968 with 2:34:04,  fifteenth in 1969 with 2:31:07 and sixteenth in 1971 with 2:27:45).   He went on winning medals for the club as it improved from bronze to silver in the County and District championships  for the first time and the circle was completed when he again won the club Senior title in 1979 – 20 years after his first victory and after a quite remarkable athletics career.

Personal memories are of a cheery, friendly runner of great talent and courage.   No conceit – I have found that the really good runners never have any conceit and are sociable and helpful to others, it’s the ‘nearly good runners’ who tend to have the conceit – although he had more to be conceited about than most!   I even remember him running on the roads at Airdrie where the road race is a hard 13+ miles and returning to the stadium to turn out in the 5000 metres team race on cinders!    A wonderful man and a great credit to himself, his club and to Scotland.

Finally, a tale from Cambuslang Harriers about his training.    Apparently Gordon could not make the Sunday morning training runs so to accommodate him the other runners (Andy Fleming, Willie Kelly and others) agreed to do the run in the afternoon – they assumed that it had something to do with the physically demanding nature of his day job.   He always turned up in the afternoon and then they eventually found out what the problem was – he would go out for an 18 mile run in the morning, have a sleep then go out in the afternoon with the club!

There is much more about Gordon and Andy at the detailed history page at the Cambuslang website: www.cambuslangharriers.org/?=node/55

Ian entering Westerlands at the end of the 1963 Marathon

Ian Harris won the SAAA Marathon Championship in 1963 and it came as a surprise to many in the Scottish athletics hierarchy.   And yet it shouldn’t have done because he had been a very good athlete for some time and had in fact run for Scotland in the cross country international in 1961.

Ian joined Beith Harriers as a Youth (ie Under 17) and his first training run was in a thunderstorm on a dark night.   Then on his first race at West Kilbride he tried to jump one of those Ayrshire barbed wire fences when he came off the road and cut himself badly but surprised everybody by coming in first.  Beith was a strong club at the time and he was a near contemporary of Tommy Cochrane who won the South West District  Cross Country Trophy so often that when the association folded up he was given the trophy to keep.   Incidentally his first Senior victory was in 1960, the year before Ian’s first win in the event.   Ian’s career included a victory in the South West District Cross Country Youth Championships in 1953 and victories in the Senior event in 1961 and 1963.    He had a third place in the Scottish Youth Cross Country Championships behind Peter McPartland (Springburn) and after finishing seventh in the SCCU Championships, ran for Scotland in the 1961 international cross country championships.   There are many tales of runners who have mishaps with two wheels – Mike Ryan had a motor bike that broke down on the way to the Ben Nevis, George White got a lift through to the start of his leg of the E-G on a motor bike that then knocked him down while he was running and Ian also had his tale of two wheels.   Team mate Tommy Cochrane tells of the time when he insisted on travelling through to the 1959 Edinburgh – Glasgow on his motor scooter.    He fell off it in the outskirts of Edinburgh on his way to the start of the second stage at Maybury Cross.   It is safe to say he ran a bit below par that day!

A track runner early in his career – middle distance races including the steeplechase –  the question is why did he take up marathon running?   One answer was in Alex Cameron’s column in the ‘Daily Record’  after he won the Gourock 14 mile road race in 1960:   “Twenty five year old Harris said: ‘I got fed up waiting for the mile at meetings.   It is always last and sometimes I was soaked before I even got started.   In this race you’re running for a good bit of time.   Next year I mean to go on to the marathon, this is only a build up for me'”   Well, that’s Alex Cameron but when I spoke to Ian he gave a lot of the credit to Tom Scott (of the Tom Scott Road Race).   At the New Cumnock Highland Games Tom was warming up for the road race and he remarked to Ian (who was getting ready for the mile to be held later at the meeting) that since he was training hard he should have a go at the marathon.   He was also encouraged by John Kerr who won the championship in 1963.    He also took part in a few hill races – he ran the Ben Nevis twice, Goatfell and Ben Lomond.   In the Goatfell he was second to Ian Donald by only seven seconds and then the following week he was second in the Ben Lomond race – again by seven seconds!

As was said above Ian started his road running career in the Gourock 14 Miles Road Race in 1960 immediately after an all night shift in his job as a baker. “Ian is a baker to trade.   Only the night before the Round-the-Cloch race he was on shift work.   When he came off duty Ian should have gone to bed.   Instead he decided to stay awake.   Few people at the Games realised Ian was running under such a self  imposed handicap.”   He won the race and it was after that that he was written up as a future marathon runner.  There was a group of very good and competitive road runners in Scotland at the time and his main rival was probably Gordon Eadie of Cambuslang who was second in the SAAA Marathon Championship in 1959 and winner in 1960.   True to his word Ian started running on the roads seriously in 1961.

In the 1961 season he had a series of very good runs that had made him favourite for the SAAA Marathon.      The year had started with a win in the local Beith New Year’s Day race where he beat Charlie Meldrum of St Modan’s and he went on to have a very good cross country season that led to him being selected to run for Scotland in the International Cross Country Championships.    The first race of the summer was the Scottish Marathon Club 10 Miles Track Race at Seedhill Park in Paisley.   It was a very close race with Ian finishing fourth in 54:42 behind the man who was to be one of his closest rivals, Gordon Eadie of Cambuslang Harriers, who won in 52:49, George Govan and Bob Wotherspoon both Shettleston Harriers in 54:18 and 54:34.    Next came the 16+ Miles of the Clydebank to Helensburgh Road Race which Ian won in 1:26:18 from Bobby Calderwood (VPAAC) in 1:27:28 and future marathon champion John Kerr of Airdrie.   On 6th May he ran in and won the Falkirk Invitation 12 mile road race in 71:01 from Bobby Calderwood in 71:14 and John Kerr in 73:10.   The distance was stepped up a bit on 13th May when he was third in the Edinburgh to North Berwick 22.6 miles road race in 2:14:09 – one second behind Jimmy Gibson of Maryhill and two minutes behind the winner, Terry Rooke of Middlesbrough.   The history of the Scottish Marathon Championships refers to Ian with “who ran well in hill races” and there is truth in it but it was not apparent on 3rd June when he was eighth in the Goatfell Race (2866 feet) in a poor 1:35:30.   A week later saw the SMC 12 Mile Road Race in Springburn and he was fourth again – this time behind John Kerr, Willie McBrinn and Jim Garvey of St Modan’s.     He started in the Babcock & Wilcox 14 Mile Road Race on 17th June and was forced to drop out.

The start of the 1961 marathon at Falkirk.   Ian is number 7, also in the picture are John Kerr, the winner, third from the left in white shorts, Willie McBrinn, second, walking across from left to right in all black and David Bowman, Clydesdale, among others.

The SAAA Marathon was held on 24th June and although ‘A Hardy Race’ by Clyne and Youngson reported that he was favourite all was clearly not well with Ian.   There had been three poor races – Goatfell, Springburn and Babcock’s did not augur well.   John Kerr won from Willie McBrinn and in 2:36:06 over a difficult trail from Falkirk to Edinburgh with ten runners dropping out including Jimmy Garvey, Terry Rooke – and Ian Harris.   He completed the season with a second place to John Kerr in the Gourock Highland Games 14 Mile Road Race.   The season had started so well ended in anti-climax.

Summer 1962 was not a good one.   After two races he disappeared off the Scottish Marathon Club radar and did not enter the SAAA Marathon.     And no wonder – he was by now in the Army and after a six month training he had joined the Paras and spent some time in Bahrein where he trained very hard.   The Para training is notoriously tough. I know that when I was doing National Service some of the others fancied themselves as hard men and applied for the transfer to the paratroops but they were all returned to the unit.   They didn’t have what it took.   Ian came back from Bahrein very fit early in 1963 and it showed in his summer season.

1963 started with a much better run in the Tom Scott 10 Miles when he was fifth in 50:36 – five minutes quicker than the previous year.   One week later he was back at the Clydebank to Helensburgh where he was seventh with Gordon Eadie, Andy Brown and John Kerr in the first three places.   The marathon championship was on 22nd June and over a very severe course indeed from Glasgow University’s Westerlands ground and held in conjunction with the SAAA Track & Field Championships.   Ian won the race by over six and a half minutes from Jim Alder but the impression given is that Alder lost it rather than Harris won it.   Judge for yourself, the splits for the race are in the table below.   What is it about warm weather marathons that make even seasoned, quality athletes get it wrong?   Jim Peters in Vancouver is the classic example and there are many others.    But Jim Alder was new to the event: he came to it with many good races to his credit that season including the English 20 Miles Championship.   But to drop his pace to about 6:40 per mile over the final six miles  is something that no one would have believed possible.   In this case it might have been the nature of the hills on the trail, or the length of the hills or even the gradients on some of them compounded by the weather.   But there it is!   And Ian Harris – also an experienced athlete but only having run one marathon before (in 1961 –  and he dropped out of that)  capitalised on it.   It was a course that went out from the University Sports Ground at Anniesland along the Great Western Road Boulevard which was basically flat and gently undulating as far as the outskirts of Clydebank but after the Kilbowie Road junction the hills start to kick in with a slight drop to the Auchentoshan Distillery before climbing to the hill above Gavinburn.   There is then a long down hill stretch to Old Kilpatrick followed by a fairly stiff climb and a long, long downhill run to the outskirts of Dumbarton, gently flat out to the Strathleven Industrial Estate before going back along the same road.   So the long, long downhill became a long, long uphill followed by a short drop and then the climb up to above Gavinburn, then the gentle climb up to Duntocher and back in to Glasgow along a road which had been undulating at the start suddenly developed hills.   For a marathon trail, there were many ‘graveyards’ which could spell disaster.   Ian Harris read the trail better and paced his race better.   The splits (Alder on left, Harris on right):

Alder says in his biography ‘Marathon and Chips’:    “There were several gradual but long uphill stretches on the way out … then the truth dawned!   I had a similar terrain to negotiate on the way home.”    Well, the reasonable man might ask, why didn’t he tailor his pace on the return journey accordingly?   The truth is that the marathon does funny things to your head (runners wanting to hit specific times at check points often write them on their hand or on a piece of paper pinned inside their shorts because thinking gets hard when you are out there), add the heat and the attitude at the time to drinking on the run, add the hills and add his inexperience and it would seem that there’s your reasons.   However Ian was also running his first marathon and he maybe did run it too cautiously early on but that was the better way to make a marathon debut in any conditions, in the prevailing weather on the day it was much better.   Proof?   The difference in the finishing time – all six and a half minutes of it – was built up over the final three miles or so.

Ian’s own memories of the race are the long hills and then being told that Alder was walking and when he caught him he ‘strolled’ past him.

Press coverage was excellent.   This is from the ‘Glasgow Herald’: “Discovery of the championships was undoubtedly 28 year old Ian Harris, Beith Harriers, a soldier serving with a parachute brigade in Aldershot.   He won the 26 miles marathon in two hours 25 minutes 32 seconds only half a minute outside the record.  A most commendable performance considering that it was his first attempt at the distance.   In addition to this his car broke down and he arrived only ten minutes before the line up.   For 22 miles he stayed behind the strongly fancied Anglo Scot Jim Alder who recently set up record time for twenty miles in England.   But Harris’s superb stamina enabled him to forge well ahead after 23 miles.   And he finished an easy winner to be garlanded with the laurel wreath.”

Beith Harriers Press Notes: “At the SAAA Championships held at Westerlands in Glasgow, Ian Harris of Beith won the marathon.   He is the first Beith Harrier to win an SAAA title.   Ian ran a splendid race.   He lay second to Jim Alder of Morpeth for most of the race.   At 20 miles he was two minutes down on Alder but came through strongly to pass Alder at about 24 miles and then went on to win the race by almost 7 minutes in a time of 2 hours 25 minutes 32 seconds.   This time was only 30 seconds outside the Scottish native record.   Our heartiest congratulations are due to Ian for this great win.”

The ‘Evening Times: “The marathon race went to Ian Harris (Beith) who was within one and a half miles of the finish when he took the lead from Anglo Scot Jim Alder to win in 2hr 25 min 32 sec – only half a minute outside the best-ever time for the distance.”

After a break his season restarted on 3rd August with the 20 Mile Road Race at the Strathallan Meeting when he was third.  The winner was Norman Ross of Edinburgh Southern in 1:51:18, Gordon Eadie was second in 1:52:32 and Ian was third in 1:56:07.   The first three had run together until the 15 mile point before Ross and Eadie surged away.   On 10th August he won the Aberfeldy 13 miler in 1:13:55 from Charlie McAlinden who would go on to win the SAAA Marathon in 1966.   The season ended with a remarkable run in the Ben Nevis Race when he was first Scotsman to finish when he crossed the finishing line in third place with Gordon Eadie one place behind.   There were only three Scots in the first fifteen, and six in the first 30.   The usual strong English contingent was there as was a large contingent from the Gurkhas.   Ian led the 1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment to the first team award.

Ian, on the right, in his Army vest.

So what kind of training was he doing at the time?  Total mileage was about 120 miles a week, often more.   He would run the seven and a half miles to the barracks, do some training in the afternoon and then run back at the end of the day.   On a Sunday it was a long 15 to 20 miles run on his own and the week included plenty of fartlek.   he reckons that the country around Aldershot where he was based was very good for that type of session.   Again we have a marathon champion who is putting in many miles, doing speed training with a longer run at the weekend.   He must have been very talented but the volume of work speaks for itself.   Incidentally he is not in favour of runners training with their ipod or earphones on: your mind should be on what you are doing and where you are running.

What happened next?   Ian’s career continued mainly as an Army runner and as a member of Walton AAC when he was based in England with only occasional trips to Scotland such as 1964 when he won the South West District Championships at Greenock beating team mate Tommy Cochrane.   Incidentally the Committee at Beith Harriers must have had a bad case of the “If Only’s” at that time – Tommy Cochrane was doing terrific running at home but Ian and another Harrier Danny McFadzean, who was in the Royal Navy and one of the country’s very best marathon men at the time were only available occasionally.     There were also the many outstanding runs for Walton AC when he was at home in the Barracks at Aldershot such as the Chichester to Portsmouth 16 Miles Road Race when he was second in 1:24:27 to Dave Cooke of Portsmouth in a start studded field that included fellow Beith Harrier Danny McFadzean in tenth in 1:28:53.   An extract from the report in ‘Athletics Weekly’ says it all: “Over the last five miles Ian Harris put in a terrific effort and on entering the stadium at Alexandra Park  had pulled into third place, about 100 yards behind Dave Cooke who had a 40 yards lead on John Edwards.   Over the final 400 yards, Harris put in a super human effort and about 50 yards from the finish line caught John Edwards.   In the final run-in Harris just got the better of Edwards by one second and came within 7 seconds of  Dave Cooke who won with 1:24:20.   Harris’s last minute effort not only gained him second place but it also put paid to Portsmouth’s nineteenth attempt to win their own ‘Burtonia Team Trophy’, Walton getting the verdict on the position of their third scorer.”  

In 1964 he also won the Inter Services Marathon Championship and kept on running thereafter with racing almost weekly against the RAF and other Units.   The Paras team won the Army Cross Country Championships for nine consecutive years with Ian as a member of a very good squad.   He ended his serious running and racing career at the age of 36 but competed as a super vet in Germany where he did some running and racing again at the age of 47 for another five years and ran a 25K in a fast 1:30.     

And when I spoke to him in May 2010 and asked what race had given him most pleasure he said that it had been winning the Beith New Year’s Day Race back in the early 1960’s.

Alex Breckenridge winning the Junior National Cross-Country at Hamilton in 1953

When we all saw the 1960 Olympic Marathon on television or in the cinema with Abebe Bikila winning in the dark in Rome from Abdessalem Rhadi with Barry Magee finishing in third, we all thought, “I’d love to have been there, even to see it!”   Very few of us knew that a man who had run in the McAndrew Relays, the National at Hamilton and competed in his club’s Christmas Handicap was actually part of the field.    Alex Breckenridge, formerly of Victoria Park AAC, finished thirtieth in that, the most dramatic of all Olympic marathon races.    Like Paul Bannon and Mike Ryan, he was one that had got away.   Born in Buffalo, New York in America on 17th April, 1932, he had been brought up in Scotland but after a spell with VPAAC he went on a sports scholarship to the States returning for only one year before going back to the USA and joining the Marines.    He was one that we could ill afford to lose.    His career was so full both here in Scotland and in America that it is clearly impossible to cover it all.   This is only a hint at what was a wonderful athlete’s time in the sport.

There was an account of his introduction to the sport in the ‘Scots Athlete’ of June 1953 after he had won the Scottish Junior National cross-country championship and broken the national record for the Mile.   It read as follows:

“At last Scotland has a coterie of athletes taking the challenge of the ever-increasing standard of world athletics.   Whilst post-war athletics over the border and on the continent no less than other parts of the globe had an upsurge reflected in all-round brilliant performances, with the notable exception of high jumper Alan Paterson, home athletics remained in the doldrums.   With, as it were, Andrew Forbes as the harbinger and pointing the way, we now have a group: Eddie Bannon (Cross-country), Ian Binnie (3 and 6 miles), David Gracie (400 hurdles) and Alex Breckenridge (1 and 3 miles) reaching within the orbit of world ranking and recognition.   The latter, Alex Breckenridge the youngest of the group has jumped into major prominence only by virtue of his performances in recent weeks culminating (to date) in his great 4 mins 11.2 secs Mile at the Police Sports when finishing third but downing Dwyer (USA), Nankeville, Parker and Green (GB).   His progress merits our study.

The presentation here has a two-fold purpose.   Firstly as a tribute to the efforts of a most likeable, purposeful but modest athlete.   Secondly to inspire others to reach out to greater heights.   Perhaps this will be done by capturing the spirit of his drive and acknowledging the willingness for training work.   Like the vast majority he is a working fellow with no special privileges.   But he is imbued with a telling enthusiasm.   Like all true sportsmen, his approach is as open as a book, no ‘closed shop’ or secret training methods.   He is concerned to see our sport flourish.   What he can do, even by taking a completely  different road, you may better.   Only it can’t just be wished, you must try!  

His first real entry to the athletics arena was when he finished second to RC Calderwood (4 min 52) in 5 min 06 sec at Govan High School Sports in 1959.   A few weeks later he ran fourth (about 5 mins) in the Glasgow High Schools Mile to Fred Robertson (now Garscube) in 4 min 49 secs.   At this early stage, and as yet unattached, he was perhaps foretelling the characteristics that have featured his running recently.   This ambitious youth was not overawed by variety in distance.   His first open race was in Rangers Mile handicap (110 yards) and however unwise it may seem a fortnight later he entered and finished the Milngavie 10 miles road race.  

The cross-country season following he joined Victoria Park AAC.   He found cross-country racing hard going but was pleased at finishing  17th and last counting man in VP’s winning  team in the Scottish Youths Championship (1950).   With his training based on the lines followed by Andy Forbes, he became popularly known as ‘The Third Man’ in the track season reducing his handicap from 125 yards to 60 yards.   He had twelve places – ten thirds and two seconds.   Best mile time, 4 mins 39 secs.  

Cross-country 1950-51 saw him stepped with seniors in VP’s winning Midlands relay team.   He won his club’s junior and finished eighth, second team, in the National 7 Miles Cross-country.  

Track 1951, training four times a week – Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday along the orthodox lines (schedule, time trials, etc).   He won a few handicap prizes and several two mile team prizes.   His mile time lowered to 4 min 31 sec but he failed to qualify for the mile final at the championships.   The following cross-country season he was out to do better.   He trained extra nights and extended his mileage.   But after all, he finished further back and he began to conclude that he was not meant to shine at the game though he could continue to be a useful team man.”  

Influenced largely by the work and results of clubmate Ian Binnie he changed to a completely new pattern of training in the 1952 track season.   He had just turned 20 years of age.   Orthodox set schedules of fixed distances and time trials, etc, were out and instead he concentrated on the more free ‘fast-slow’ or ‘winders’ principle: ie easy running interspersed with fast 150 yards bursts.   These ‘bursts’ are not actually sprints but more retaining distance form but very vigorous and as hard as one can go.   For no apparent reason his 2 mile form varied considerably this season.   His best was 9 min 39 sec.   With an uncomfortable 4 min 31 sec heat he qualified for the Scottish mile final and after his previous night’s struggle, he surprised himself by finishing 3rd in 4 min 23.7 sec.

Last season with a less strained programme than the previous winter he hit superb form to Christmas 1952.    A septic toe caused (foolishly he says) by tight sandshoes and the subsequent treatment caused him to be off a complete fortnight.   He never quite regained this early form though he did win the National Junior 7 Miles CC race and by ding so was selected and ran at Paris for Scotland in the 9 miles international Cross-country race.   He deduces from this that a fortnight is too long a ‘lie-off’ even with an injury and he would not do it again if the least avoidable.”

Now here is his full and amazing 1953 track performances to date (minus club competition which he enters and takes in his stride).   It includes 600 yards to a mountain race!   And, watch the progress.

2nd May – Kilsyth.   Half mile heat.   1st 2 mins off 20 yards.   2 miles   1st – 9 mins 40 secs.   Half Mile final, up to leaders but could not hold effort to tape.

5th May – Scotstoun – 3 miles scratch – 2nd. 14 mins 42 secs.

9th May – Vale of Leven – 2 miles.   1st 9 mins 25 secs.

16th May – Scotstoun – half mile, 2nd 1 min 57 secs of 20 yards; 1 mile 1st, 4 mins 19.5 secs off 25 yards.

23rd May – Bonnybridge – Open half mile, 2nd; Open mile 3rd and 600 yard relay leg.

25th May – Goatfell mountain race (approx 9 miles) 1st.   A stamina test and mental relaxation from track work.

30th May – Ibrox (Glasgow Highland Gathering) – Inv Mile – 1st, 4 mins 9.7 secs off 70 yards.

2nd June – Edinburgh L&C Sports – 2 mile scratch – 1 mile time 4 mins 40 secs, so took pace but Ottenheimer (Yugoslovia) held on and sprinted past the last furlong winning in 9 mins 11 secs.   AB’s time 9 min 15.2 secs.   Running coming much easier and intent to combine competition and training as best as possible.  

6th June – Shawfield – 2 miles scratch – 8 mins 43 secs but announced as 176 yards short.   Open Mile – 1st, 4 mins 18.6 secs off 5 yards

13th June – Ibrox – 1 mile scratch – 3rd – 4 mins 11.2 secs.   1 Mile Open  4 mins 17.4 secs.

15th June – Westerlands – 1 Mile scratch, 1st 4 mins 15.4 secs

17th June – Larkhall – 1 Mile Handicap, 2nd, 4 mins 17 secs (approx).

20th June – Helenvale – half mile – 1 min 56.6 secs.

Here is the outline of his present training programme:

Sunday Afternoon:  3 Miles made of half a mile jogs and 300 yards strides.

Monday:   Run from the house at 11:00 pm about 2 miles brisk stride.

Tuesday: 2 – 3 miles ‘Winders’.

Wednesday: Either as Monday or Tuesday.Thursday: As Tuesday probably including a 600 yard stride.

Friday: Easy 2 mile road run.

Saturday: i mile easy jogging as slow as desired before race.   Plenty of glucose.

Over and above he runs part of the way to work roughly 2 miles in the morning and to and from at lunchtime, fully clothed.   In winter this may mean with heavy coat and gloves!

His best year was undoubtedly 1953 and it may be worth filling in some of the gaps left by the comprehensive article above.  He had an exceptional run in the Edinburgh to Glasgow Relay in November 1952 when, with VPAAC having fastest times on stages 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8, he ran the last leg and set the fastest time by over a minute.   Incidentally it is interesting to note that he ran in four of these relays, won four team gold medals, ran fastest time on his stage three times with the exception being when he ran the second stage at the age of 17.   Back to 1953, starting the year with a win in the Beith Harriers New Year’s Day race he went on to win the Nigel Barge race – the classic organised every year by Maryhill Harriers and one won by everybody with any pretensions to endurance running class.   Nevertheless, John Emmet Farrell reckoned that his best run at the start was neither of those.   “Alex Breckenridge of Victoria Park has lately improved to such an extent that he has even stolen the thunder of his senior colleagues including the brilliant but erratic Binnie and the wonderfully consistent near veteran Andrew Forbes.   Recent successes include the annual Beith event, the Nigel Barge Road Race as well as club successes.   Possibly Alex’s best piece of running to date was in a confined club race – the Xmas handicap.   In dismal and far removed conditions to suit record breaking, he covered the well-tried ‘McAndrew’ road relay trail in 15 mins 11 secs.   When Eddie Bannon broke the course record for the same course on a good October day in 1951 with 15 mins 20 secs it was rightly considered superb running.   Form this we must assume that Breckenridge who is also a grand miler, is one of Scotland’s best ever track, road and cross-country prospects.   His display in the Midland Championships emphasised his favouritism to win the Junior title though I would add that the gap in class may not be quite as evident in cross-country as over track and road.”

The Midlands championship that is referred to was one where he finished second to Eddie Bannon of Shettleston  but came the National at Hamilton he was second to none as he won the Junior Championship by eight seconds from J Finlayson of Hamilton.   Victoria Park won the team race – and also the Senior team race!   As a result he was selected for the International cross-country  championship meeting at Vincennes where he was a counting runner for the Scottish team in twentieth place.   Emmet Farrell rated the run as follows: “Breckenridge ran steadily but without inspiration.  He started very slowly then went through the field, but faded towards the finish.   But this race was a grand experience for our youthful debutant who should be a useful asset for Scotland in the years to come.”  

The summer is fairly well covered above  but his best times of summer 1953 were  880y – 1:56.6 (number 4 in Scotland); Mile – 4:11.2 (number 1); 3 Miles – 14:25.3 (3); 6 Miles – 31:58.0 (2)

But the bombshell was to explode when, in the August September issue of the ‘Scots Athlete’ Emmet Farrell had this to say in his ‘Running Commentary’.   “Breckenridge, like John Joe Barry, born in the USA has accepted an athletics scholarship which will take him away for at least four years.”

There were also hints that he was interested in a military career but nothing was to happen on that front – yet.    He did indeed leave on an athletics scholarship to Villanova University where the head coach was the renowned Jumbo Elliott and he was to become part of the greatest ever University squad.   Just note some of the names in the picture below, not least Olympic 1500m champion Delany and world pole vault record holder Don Bragg.

Villanova team in 1957 with Ron Delany and Alex Breckenridge on either side of coach Jumbo Elliott., also in the picture are Ed Collymore and Don Bragg.

 One of Alex’s team mates was Irishman Ron Delany and he has an excellent article in ‘Sports Illustrated’ which can be accessed at http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1080757/index.htm .  In this article Ron describes arriving in America, being met at the airport and taken out to Philadelphia.    Comparisons with Scotstoun?   “The beauty of the campus – rolling green hills over which I was to jog for many a mile”      It is a long but very interesting article and since Delany was at Villanova from 1955 to 1959, then it would not have at all different for the Scot.   Comment is made on the American difficulties with the Irish brogue and the Scots burr!   There are several references to Alex in the article.   The team which peaked in 1957 with the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field Championship – three of them won Olympic gold and five represented their country in the Olympics and there is debate about whether it was the greatest track and field team in history.  Leaving Scotland after the wonderful 1953 season he clearly had a good winter – the US Collegiate system has cross-country a bit earlier than we do and follows up with indoor track before the outdoor season begins.   In an article of 6th May 1954 we read the following:  “Alec Breckenridge, the mile champion of Scotland, has been named the fifth starter in the Heptagonal Mile, May 15, at Soldier’s Field.   A freshman at Villanova, Breckenridge will join Fred Wilt, Horace Ashenfelter and Fred Dwyer in an attempt to defeat the 1500-meter Olympic champion Joey Barthel.   With Breckenridge added to the field Barthel may get the competition he needs to break the Soldier’s Field mark of 4:05.3.”

Alex Breckenridge leads Ron Delany

In inter-college athletics Alex was mentioned often as the man to beat in the Mile or Two Miles – eg Before one meet, The Harvard Crimson referred to ‘the favoured Alex Breckenridge in the two mile’ in 1956.   He took part in many events – when an attempt was made on the four minute mile in the Atlantic Boardwalk mile, he was asked to take the pace for the first half mile which he did, but he was feeling so good that he ran on and finished first which meant of course beating the pacer for the second half mile!    The sequel was just as amazing: Having won in 4:06.3, ahead of the Olympic champion Mal Whitfield, the organisers didn’t feel this was in keeping with the role of the pacemaker and awarded the trophy to the 3rd placed Whitfield (the other pacemaker finished 2nd)!

The Villanova distance squad was clearly to be feared – in April 1956 they won the Quantico Distance Medley Relay (“An indication of the quality of the entrants in this meet was the distance medley relay in which winners Villanova ran Charles Jenkins, Warner Heitman, Alex Breckenridge and Ron Delany”) and also the Penn Distance Medley Relay with Ed Collymore, Charles Jenkins, Alex Breckenridge and Ron Delany.   No doubt there were more but these will suffice as an indicator of the runners with whom he was ‘mixing it’.   He was now referred to in some reports as ‘Villanova’s ace.’   When they won the NCAAA Championships in 1957 Delany won the Mile but Breckenridge finished fourth in the Two Mile Run in 9:03.4, one place ahead of Leonard ‘Buddy’ Edelen (9:05.4) who would later go to England to improve his athletics!

Alex’s plaque at the Villanova Hall of Fame: put up in the lead in to the Rio Olympics 

Reported by the American Sports Reference website to be 5’9″ tall and weighing 143 lbs his affiliations were listed after leaving Villanova as US Marine Corps/Victoria Park AAC, Glasgow.   The VPAAC connection had not been forgotten and when his scholarship ended in 1957, he came home for a short spell.   In November that year he ran an excellent fifth stage of the E-G where he had fastest stage time by over a minute in the winning team but by now, his heart was in the States and the following year his times in the Scottish rankings are credited to ‘Alex Breckenridge, formerly of Victoria Park AAC.’

In 1959 he was US AAU Champion at both 15,000m and 30,000m and at the PanAm Games in the same year he was sixth in the 10000m   Marathon selections always cause some controversy if only because any one off race can be affected by unforeseen occurrences and the US selection for the 1960 marathon was no exception.   Apparently the selectors had said that two events would be taken into consideration, the Yonkers and the Boston Marathons, and the first three finishers in these races would be taken.   Two men, Alex Breckenridge and Gordon MacKenzie were clearly qualified by this rule but Johnny Kelley failed to finish the Boston race which meant that he was ineligible.   The East Coast elite were pushing for Kelley, most of the others were pushing for Robert Cons.   However it worked out, Alex was a certainty!   In the Yonkers Marathon, he was third in 2:32:41 and in Boston, sixth in 2:28:44.   The Olympics were held on 10th September 1960 in Rome and he finished thirtieth in 2:29:38.   One place ahead of him was Brian Kilby of Coventry Godiva and England, Watanaba of Japan was thirty second and the aging Alain Mimoun thirty fourth.   He was in good company.   It is difficult to find more information after that date but his personal best performances have been listed on the internet as follows.

Maybe a better indicator of his status was the number of times he was ranked among the top ten American athletes at the end of a season.   Being in the USA Top Ten once would be a remarkable achievement to do it as often as Alex did over a seven year period is a measure of consistently high performance.   Look at the table.

* Top ranked was Leonard (Buddy) Edelen with 2:18:57.

If you want to see how he did in USA Track and Field Championships, then here it is.    Remember that these are placings in the finals of US Championships at a time when men like Jim Beatty, Bill Dellinger, Max Truex, Don Bowden and company were all running.    The last serious results that I can get for him in terms of rankings or championships are for 1963.

If you want to do a search for his (or any other American) results in championships or rankings, then a good website is http://trackfield.brinkster.net/USAMain.asp?P=F where you can wander around results from before you were born up to the present day.

John Emmet Farrell lauded Alex Breckenridge to the skies, as did many another, as one of the brightest prospects for the future of Scottish athletics.    Unfortunately like several others (Mike Ryan and Paul Bannon spring immediately to mind) his undoubted talents were to be realised in colours other than the blue of Scotland.  The good news is that he is still involved in the sport.  The Marine Corps Marathon was founded in 1975 with the aim of promoting and spreading good will, especially after Vietnam  and would be starting at Arlington.   As soon as Alex heard about it, he was interested.   I quote from the Wikipedia article on the subject.   “With news of the inaugural marathon quickly spreading, Gunnery Sergeant Alex Breckenridge, a member of the 1960 Olympic marathon team soon lent his support.   With Gunnery Sergeant Breckenridge acting as ambassador for the marathon event, local jurisdictions approved of the event.”   Clearly a man with some influence, even fifteen years after Rome.    Jump to the present.   The picture below from October 2011 is labelled: “At the Santa Monica 5000: USATF Volunteer Alex Breckenridge talks with Olympic Trials qualifier Mandy Grantz.”    I think I’ve done enough to indicate the quality of athlete that Scotland lost when Alex Breckenridge returned to the land of his birth.

Alex was inducted to the US Marines Marathon Hall of Fame in 2016 and there he was introduced again to another US Olympian – the 10,000 metre gold medal winner Bobby Mills.   They were actually friends who reminisced enthusiasticall about the 1960’s and the running scene at that time.   Roger Robinson writes:  
I felt honored that Alex and  I had 3 important LOVE’s in common: Villanova University, United States Marine Corps, and Running.
Alex Breckinridge leadership and Olympic experience helped another Marine runner who was stationed at Marine Corps Base Quantico in 1961-1963 and who went on to the 1964 Olympic’s in Tokyo to win the Olympic Gold medal in the 10K – Billy Mills.

.

Jim Alder is one of the most successful Scottish endurance runners ever.   In the Commonwealth Games in Jamaica Jim Alder was third in the 10000m  and then followed up with marathon gold after one of the most dramatic finishes imaginable.   Leading Jim Alder to the Stadium he found that the stewards outside the arena had gone inside to have a look at the Duke of Edinburgh and as a result he over ran the entrance, Bill Adcocks who was following went in the right entrance and was ahead of Jim.   Dunky Wright shouted to Jim and got him into the stadium while Bill was on the track and Jim managed to catch him and move off to win.  Dunky Wright’s version of the finish is reported in the Minutes of the Scottish Marathon Club: “Mr Wright referred to the great confusion at the finish of the marathon in Kingston and thought that he should give his views to the Committee.   The start was at 5:30 am and that was in confusion.   The course had earlier been marked off in 5-10-15-20 miles and at the finish.   Alder, who had already run in the Six Miles and finished well, was sure that he had a good chance in the marathon.   At 21 miles he was in the lead and and on reaching the stadium he was confused  as Prince Philip arrived at about the same time and there was a security check.   Alder turned in a door too soon  and down a flight of steps.   Wright stopped him and put him on the correct trail and he re-caught Adcocks on the track.   Officially Alder covered the correct trail and Adcocks cut the trail”

As with Joe McGhee in 1954, “As all members knew Jim Alder had won for Scotland in the Empire Games Marathon and this was the third time this event had been won by this country.   As soon as the news reached here a cablegram had been sent to Jim on behalf of the Committee advising him that his victory had made him an Honorary Life Member in company with the two other winners, Duncan Wright and Joe McGhee.”

Four years later he was then second in the next Commonwealth Games  Edinburgh in 1970 in one of the fastest marathon races in history.   However you can see Jim’s story below.   I will have a resume of his career, quote from another website and then speak a bit about his biography ‘Marathon and Chips’.

“Commonwealth Games: 1966, Kingston, Jamaica.    Marathon – 11th August:   For the first time a major Games was held in the Caribbean and Jamaica had the honour of staging them.   Due to the intense heat the marathon started at 5:30 am but already it was very hot and humid.   From 20 miles the British pair of Jim Alder (Sco) and Bill Adcocks (Eng) began to draw away from the field and on the approaches to the stadium Alder opened up a lead.   Having been mis-directed, Alder found himself to be behind Adcocks  on the stadium track but luckily had enough in reserve to regain the lead and deservedly take the gold medal.”

1. Jim Alder (Sco)   2:22:07.8;   2.   Bill Adcocks (Eng)   2:22:13;   3.   Mike Ryan   (NZ)  2:27:59

“The International Games”   The full story is on a separate page titled ‘Jim in Jamaica’

Before we start a little resume of Jim’s racing career might be in order.

1966:   Commonwealth Games:  Marathon:  first    Six Miles:  third                        1970 Commonwealth Games: Marathon: second     1969:   European Games: Marathon:  third

He set World Records for 30,000 metres in 1964 and again in 1970; in 1964 he set a World best time for two hours and in 1970 set a British Record for the two hours.

He has held every British record from 10000 metres to the Marathon.

Domestically he won the AAA’s 10 Mile Championship in 1964, Marathon in 1967 and third in the AAA’s 10000 metres in 1968.   Between 1959 and 1980 he won the 3000 metres steeplechase, 5000 metres, 10000 metres, 20 Miles and Marathon.    In Scotland he won the Cross country Championship in 1961, 1969, 1970 and 1971 and also competed in the International Cross Country Championships in 1962, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971 and 1972 (10 times in all).

And that’s just the major honours in his career!

As far as training is concerned he was a big mileage man.   He is quoted on the website www.runnerslife.co.uk as follows:

“I ran plenty of easy runs particularly the long Sunday run which consisted of 20 – 30 miles when I considered that time on your legs more important than how far you had run.   Easy runs to my mind are very important and I know that National Coaches in my day and even today refer to easy runs as ‘junk mileages’ but none of them have trained champion marathon runners!!!   I did two to three steady runs a week between March and September when in the morning I would do ten miles at between 51 and 54 minutes on an undulating course.   In comparison my best race time for 10 miles was 47:06.   As far as heart rate was concerned, all I can do is guess that it would have been around 150 – 160.   Who cares?   I was not flat out, it was simply a burn up and you have to be fit to do them without killing yourself.  

Because I worked as a bricklayer at a mental hospital 5 miles outside Morpeth my speed training was done on the roads and woodland  fields from April through to October (light nights).   The only time I was on the track was between 1964 and 1970 where I competed at least once a week including 1 x 400 metres race, 3 x 800 metres races, 3-4 x 1500 metres races and 2-3 x 2 Miles or 5000 metres races.   I never eased up for these races as I counted them as a , just a little breathless, no lasting pain or tiredness, and carried on with the hard training the next day.  

I only ever eased up for a couple of days before a major championships race.   An example of this was the 2 miles invitation race at the 1965 Gateshead Games, on ash not tartan, which I won in 8 minutes 45 seconds from Derek Ibbotson (World Record for the distance at that time was 8:32).   I had run 8 miles that morning and then worked as a bricklayer all day. 

My training changed and increased intensity from 1063 to 1969 from 100 mpw to 140 mpw (October through to March.   Then dropped to 100 – 110 mpw which seemed relatively like a piece of cake.  The week included fartlek sessions on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday evenings over 10 or 12 miles on undulating roads  and two long runs of 15 – 17 miles.   The nearest track at that time was at Gateshead 18 miles away,  I could not drive and did not own a car until 1969.”  

This is only a small extract from a long first class article which is well written and contains real information.   I would urge you to read it in full but I will finish with a final quote from Jim:

“My view is that runners today do not race enough and they listen too much to their coaches.   They do not do Cross Country or short track races and only race to pay their bills.   Remember as I said none of us in the 1960’s had a coach and none of them, Radcliffe apart, do the mileage and hard work as we did.”

Some of my own comments written when I received copies of Jim’s biography and Ron Hill’s at the same time in late 1981, and printed in the SMC Magazine read as below.

When his biography – ‘Marathon and Chips’ by Arthur T Mckenzie – was published in 1981 it came out at the same time as the first part of Ron Hill’s story ‘The Long Hard Road’.   There were several differences but the main ones were that Jim’s life story was on sale at £1:95 for his entire life story while Ron’s was £12:50 for only half of his.   Ron’s was in hard back with lots of glossy pictures, Jim’s was paper back with eleven or twelve photographs.   These were the surface differences but Ron gave monthly mileage charts on an annual basis and at the end of the book were other details of his miles, races, training, etc while Jim did not give the readers this amount of useful detail.   Mind you, Ron gave us a lot of extraneous stuff that we weren’t basically interested in but I think that Jim sold his book too cheaply – and Ron had another – ‘To The Top And Beyond’ – out in time for Christmas the following year for another £12:50 or whatever.   Staying with Jim, his story is an inspirational read  with a lot of detail.   What follows are a couple of extracts from the penultimate chapter.

I will add to this one – I have said nothing about his major races yet.   Information so far has been collected from the internet, from Colin Shields’s history of the Scottish Cross Country Union ‘Whatever the Weather’, the centenary history of the SAAA by John Keddie, from the book “The International Games”  and from magazines such as the now defunct ‘Scotland’s Runner’ as well as the runnerslife website where the exact link for Jim is:   www.runnerslife.co.uk/Guest-Runners/Jim-Alder-MBE ..

“Training schedules are basically simple, these are basically as follows

WINTER:   Sunday 22 – 30 miles run.

                   Monday to Friday:   4.5 mile run to work in the morning and 12 miles run home at night.

                   Saturday:   Race (if a straightforward one he would run 4 miles in the morning)

SUMMER:   Sunday 22 – 30 miles run

                     Monday to Friday:   4.5 miles run to work in the morning  – but in the evening a separate schedule from the winter consisting of speed work at a different distance every day (see below)

                    Saturday: Race every distance from 400 yards upwards.

Monday to Friday Schedule:

Day One:   22 x 100 yards in 14 seconds with 15 seconds rest in between

Day Two:   Steady 12 Miles run through the woods

Day Three:   20 x 200 in 28 seconds with 200 yards in between.

Day Four: 3 Miles burn up on the roads (giving it the wellie!)

Day Five:  12 x 440 yards in 61 with half a mile jog recovery.

He would weigh himself daily and this remained constant, steady, at 9 stones 2 pounds.   Diet contained nothing fancy, anything edible and he still maintains an incredible diet.   Fluid intake was hefty and he would drink gallons of tea, on average thirty six spoonfuls of sugar every day. ”  

Jim Alder has been inducted into the Scottish Athletics Hall of Fame

Jim Alder – Marathon Career Record        

Jack Paterson of Polytechnic Harriers won the Scottish Marathon in 1949 and 1951 with Harry Howard of Shettleston winning the race in 1950.   Jack was also one of the Scottish Marathon representatives at the Empire Games in Auckland  in February 1950.   Shorter than most of  his contemporaries, and bespectacled he looked quite an inoffensive chap but his competitive record tells a different story.       The men of the 1950’s – other than Joe McGhee – are probably the least well known of all Scottish marathon champions and yet their place in the sport is significant.    Jack Paterson, Harry Howard and Hugo Fox all trained differently, all were looking for their own route to marathon success.   They were also the last of the generation that believed marathon success was the preserve of the older, more experienced athlete.

Jack lived in Tooting, South London, only started running at the age of 28 and began taking it seriously at the age of 32.   His first marathon was the classic Poly Marathon on 18th June 1949  from Windsor to Chiswick and he finished fourth in 2:50:36.   This was followed up with his first victory in the SAAA Marathon on July 1949, on a very hot (not arm but hot!), over the difficult Gourock to Ibrox trail.  How he came to enter in the first place is described in the ‘Scots Athlete’ article below.  ‘A Hardy Race’ describes his feat thus: “the winner was 36 year old Jack Paterson from Polytechnic Harriers, who had been an excellent fourth in the famous Poly Marathon earlier in the year …. after establishing what looked like a winning lead, Charlie Robertson the holder had to retire from the race with blisters and Paterson defeated McDonald by only four seconds (2:57:07 to 2:57:11).   “This after he had nursed and advised me for the last sixteen miles of the race.   Truly a great sportsman and the gamest of runners.  

The victor enjoyed a good season’s running which displayed his great enthusiasm, grim determination and resilience, based on long, slow distance training as suggested by Arthur Newton, the great ultra-distance champion.      He was most consistent, finishing sixth in the AAA Championship, but perhaps his best race was in September when he won the City of Edinburgh marathon in 2:46:04, defeating in another sprint finish by five seconds Cecil Ballard, a well known English athlete.” 

The AAA’s championships on 30th July at Birmingham was won by Jack Holden from Tom Richards with Ballard third, and Paterson’s sixth in 2:45:02 was a very good run.   His second marathon success was when he won the Liverpool Marathon on 13th August where he registered a time of 2:51:55.   It was back up to Scotland on 3rd September for the Marathon at Edinburgh Highland Games.  He won again, this time in 2:46:04.  Not content with five marathons since June, he ran in the South London Harriers 30 miles road race at Coulsdon on 4th September where on another very warm afternoon, he finished second – seven minutes behind Jack Holden but only one second ahead of Fred Gratton with Tom Richards back in sixth.   His splits on the four lap course were 48:11; 45:55; 49:25; 55:21.

The cumulative effect of all this racing and his victory in the SAAA Championships saw him selected for the Empire Games to be held in Auckland, New Zealand in February 1950.

Finishing in the South London Harriers 30

The selection prompted this account of Jack’s career was in an article in ‘The Scots Athlete’.

“SCOTLAND’S EMPIRE GAMES MARATHON REPRESENTATIVE

One of Scotland’s athletic team of seven selected to represent Scotland at the Empire Games to be held in Auckland, New Zealand, next February, Jack Paterson will toe the line for the most classical event – the marathon.   And yet to practically every Scottish student he was unheard of until a blistering hot day in July of this year when he won the National title  contested over the Gourock – Ibrox course.

His selection was not just assured by becoming the newly crowned champion but was obviously made by the stern consistency he was later to show and a revelation of his ‘potential’.   Let’s retreat a little to note his ancestry.  His father who hailed from Clackmannan and his mother who came from Alloa took the southbound trail about 1902 and about twelve years later Jack was born in Tooting, London.   Thus on second January 1952 he will be 36 years of age.   His running career began about eight years ago when he was in Egypt.   he ran in 3, 6 and 10 mile races but in his own words ‘was never better than mediocre’.   Still, he kept fit and as soon as he returned to England in February 1948 he turned to long distance road racing.   He confesses he had much to learn.   He was twenty sixth in the Finchley 20, 65th in the Poly marathon, and third from last in the South London 30.   Certainly not an imposing record but the fact that he finished in the Poly marathon and the 30 in his first marathon season gives an insight into his grim determination.

The enthusiasm was there and he confides “about this time three things happened which were to change my fortune as a long distance runner

(1) I read Arthur Newton’s classic long distance book ‘Running’ in which he advocates training six days a week, all on the slow side;

(2) I wrote for and received advice from the well known veteran marathon runner Alex S Pirie of the famous South London Harriers.   He recommended training five days a week;

(3) I heard a broadcast by Maureen Gardner in which she revealed that she trained five times a week throughout the winter no matter what the weather was like.   When the track season came around she said she found that all this work she had done paid dividends.

I decided to train five or six days a week and the pace of the run was never more than a slow jog-trot.   Starting with six miles a day at the beginning of October I gradually increased the distance until I was doing 17 or 18 miles a day by the following summer.’    In the 1949 Poly Marathon won by Jack Holden he finished fourth.   He had worked long and built well.   From 65th to 4th in a season certainly registered progress!

Then how he came to run in the Scottish makes hearty reading and brings credit to another Anglo-Scot:- ‘If it had not been for the sportsmanship of James MacDonald (Thames VH) I wouldn’t have known there was a Scottish Marathon Championship to be held in Glasgow or that I, as an Anglo Scot, was eligible to compete in it.   McDonald was good hearted enough to seek me out and tell me about it after the Poly Marathon.   His unselfishness  in doing so was to cost him the Scottish Championship for it will be recalled that with Charlie Robertson retiring with blisters, I just managed to beat McDonald by four seconds.   This after he had nursed me and advised me for the last 16 miles of the race.   Truly a great sportsman and the gamest of runners!’   Jack had become a force to be reckoned with in top British marathon circles.   In the classy British marathon on 30th July he finished 6th when Jack Holden won for the third successive time with Tom Richards and Cecil Ballard having a great tussle to take 2nd and 3rd position.   Then a fortnight later he won the Liverpool City marathon from a field of 38 including most of the top men.   He was evidently thriving on competition and revealing amazing stamina he beat Cecil Ballard to win a great race in the City of Edinburgh marathon on 3rd September and then in sterling style gained second place in the SLH 30 the following week.   It was a grand season and a fine record but he remains modest on it.   ‘After all’, he says,’I must improve ten minutes on my best time so far of two hours 45 minutes before I can be ranked as a first class exponent.’   He has no easy task before him.   The field in the Empire Games will be the classiest since the Olympics as those likely to be competing include the reigning champion and record holder Johannes Coleman and his great compatriot Sid Luyt of South Africa, the illustrious Jack Holden (England) and Tom Richards (Wales) of Olympic fames as well as the Australian pair Gordon Stanley and Bob Prentice.   But Scotland has a great tradition in the Empire marathons.   Dunky Wright won at Ontario in 1930, Donald Robertson and Dunky were second and third in 1934 in London and Robertson was fourth in Melbourne in 1938.   Jack’s rivals can count on it that he will do everything he can do to maintain that tradition and will no doubt ‘mix it’.   He confesses with balance yet with unbounded enthusiasm, ‘My greatest ambition is to put up the best possible performance that lies within my power at New Zealand in February.’   One can’t do more than that and he carries all our good wishes that he will do it.”

Start of the 1951 Empire Games Marathon: Paterson marked with cross.   Number 137 is Arthur Lydiard and Jack Holden is on Paterson’s left.

In the event, hard as he tried he could not emulate the successes of Dunky or Donald.   He travelled out to New Zealand with the other British teams by steamer.   This took  a month and his form suffered from the long drawn out journey.   The ‘old head’ of Jack Holden saw him fly out by plane and this paid off when it came to the race.   Paterson?   On a very hot day he finished fourteenth and last of the finishers in a good field.   The race was won by Jack Holden of England in a pb of 2:32:57: Holden demonstrated how tough he was when at the age of 43, he ‘kicked his broken shoes off at 16 miles and ran the last ten miles in his socks; he had a further adventure three miles from home when he was attacked and slightly bitten by a Great Dane dog.’   He nevertheless finished ‘fresh but with badly cut and blistered feet’!    Interestingly enough, with the benefit of hindsight,  the fourteenth finisher was Arthur Lydiard of New Zealand in 2:54:51 who was, of course, to go on to become one of the greatest distance running coaches the world has seen, and who, indirectly, helped Scot Mike Ryan to a bronze in the Mexico Olympics in 1960.

He was back in action in Scotland for two marathons in 1950.   The national championships on 8th July over the Falkirk to Edinburgh trail and finished sixth in 2:57:01, and the Edinburgh Highland Games marathon on 2nd September where he finished eighth in 3:02:22.

The Scots Athlete ranked Scottish Road Runners at the end of the summer and Paterson was ranked in eighth position behind Harry Howard, Charlie Robertson, Emmet Farrell, Willie Gallacher, Andy Arbuckle, Jim  Lindsay and Harry Haughie.    It had not been his best season, but he was to be back again in 1951 with another championship title.

He started 1951 on 26th March at Sheffield where he was fourth in 2:41:39 and followed this up a month later (21st April) in the Finchley 20 at Ruislip, finishing ninth in 1:57:30.   The times in these races would indicate that he was running well despite the positions: the Sheffield marathon for instance was faster than any of the races of 1950 which gained him qualification for the Empire Games.

For Scots, however, the big one had to be the Scottish championship.   He made no mistake and won by four minutes from WA Arbuckle and ‘A Hardy Race’ reported it as follows:

“Held with the SAAA Track and Field Championships for the first time, the 1951 Scottish marathon, from Symington to Hampden Park on June 23rd was very humid and a number of the more prominent runners had to drop out due to heat exhaustion, including the extrovert Willie Gallacher (Vale of Leven) who was notable for having his own coach and publicist.   Other casualties were JE Farrell and Alex McLean (Greenock Glenpark Harriers) .    Gordon Porteous ended up fifth.   One notable phenomenon is that Gordon’s time was 2:51:11 just 2 seconds faster than his superb run in a marathon years later in the 1975 Scottish marathon – a deterioration of one second a year!   Jack Paterson would have enjoyed that statistic – Emmet remembers him as having a prodigious memory for times and facts about running.

A  hard man to beat in tough conditions, it was Jack Paterson who won for the second time in 2:43:21 from A (Willie?) Arbuckle of Monkland Harriers (2:47:42) and J (Duncan?) Bell from Kirkcaldy YM (2:50:38).” 

Later on in 1951 Paterson turned out in the Edinburgh Marathon where he finished fourth and the race was reported in ‘The Scots Athlete’.

Lots of interesting and well known names in there but none more interesting than Jimmy Scott in eighteenth place, almost an hour behind the winner: Jimmy would go on to be the Secretary of the Scottish Marathon Club that did so much for the sport in Scotland.

He returned for the Scottish marathon on 9th August, 1952, over the Perth to Dundee course but could only finish fourth and out of the medals in in 2:41:21.   Charlie Robertson won this one by only 25 seconds from Jock Duffy with Emmet Farrell third with Joe McGhee in fifth position.   That was a good run – the time shows that but his career in the Scottish championships was over.   He was now 36 years old and there were so many very good and aggressive young runners coming along- on both sides of the Border – that he probably felt it was time to say good-bye to top-flight athletics.

Joe McGhee was the top Scottish marathon man in 1954 – and rightly so with his gold medal in Vancouver.   Little is ever said about the standard at home in the event but if we look at the national rankings for the year we get the following picture.

We all know Joe, Emmet is a legend, John won the SAAA Marathon title and Bob Donald is still attending cross country and road races – but Norman Neilson?    Who was he?   He is still an unknown as far as most Scots are concerned.   Three times in the top seven shows that he had some ability!   In 1953 he had appeared twice in the rankings with times of 2:43:41 and 2:54:50 for seventh and eleventh places respectively.  Alex Wilson, who provided the above picture, contributes the following resume of the man’s career which was quite remarkable.

Norman Steven Neilson was born in Govanhill, Glasgow on 12th February 1924.   As a youth he competed for Springburn Harriers but lacked competitive opportunities due to the Second World War.   By far and away his finest achievement during that period was winning the unofficial Scottish Cross Country Championship of 1942 at Barrachnie, albeit in the absence of many of Scotland’s top cross country men.   Neilson is  thought to have subsequently moved south to England  on service duties.   After the war he settled into married life in Hornsea, near Hull in East Yorkshire where he worked as a draughtsman.  

He returned to athletics in the early 1950’s and took up the marathon in 1953, debuting that year in 28th place in the Doncaster to Sheffield Marathon in 2:54:50.   Only six weeks after that, he romped to an easy win in the inaugural Hull Harriers Marathon in 2:43:41.    With another year’s training behind him, Neilson improved to 2:40:56 for 12th in the Doncaster to Sheffield Marathon on 19th April 1954.   A month after that, on 22nd May, he knocked another chunk off his personal best in making a successful defence of his Hull Harriers Marathon title in 2:38:02.   The next weekend (!) Neilson returned to his native Glasgow and made a bid for the Scottish Marathon Championship, again representing Springburn Harriers.     He, however was no match for Joe McGhee who defied windy conditions to win easily from Emmet Farrell in 2:35:22.      But in the circumstances Neilson acquitted himself remarkably well finishing fourth in 2:47:09 only three seconds behind Glenpark’s George King.   His running career seems to have come to an abrupt stop at this juncture.   Perhaps he had asked too much of his body.   Neilson according to his fellow Hull Harrier, Dave MacDonald, then emigrated to Canada with his family.   However he returned to England in the late 1950’s, settling in the Blackpool area.

The 1954 Scottish Championship was not to be the last word in his running career though for he made another comeback as a vet.   In 1972, aged 48, he competed in the National Vets Championship in Derby where he ran second to George Phipps in the M45 1500 in  5:00.3.

Joe McGhee winning the SAAA Marathon for the third time.

Writing about Joe McGhee’s career in the sport is difficult because although it is possible to list races and reprint reports, he himself refused to do any talking to the Press, or indeed to anyone, after the Empire Games race in 1954.   We have a separate page on this race under the title of ‘Vancouver 54’ which is mainly comprised of reports from the ‘Scots Athlete’ and there will be extracts from the Scottish Marathon Club Minute book included later this week.    I’ll start with some basic statistics.

Joe McGhee was an English teacher at St  Modan’s High School in Stirling and a member of St Modan’s Athletic Club until 1954 when, already a champion athlete, he joined Shettleston Harriers for whom he ran many good races in the National Cross Country Championships and especially perhaps in the Edinburgh to Glasgow Relay Race where there was a rivalry with Ian Binnie of Victoria Park.  The combination of the time for training afforded by the RAF plus the coaching from Allan Scally turned him into an even better runner.   He won the Scottish Marathon Championship in  1954, 1955 and 1956, the Donald McNab Robertson Trophy, awarded annually as a joint decision by the SMC and the SAAA’s, in 1953, 1954, 1955 and 1956 and represented Scotland in the International Cross Country Championship in 1954, 1955 and 1959.   There can be no doubt about his quality as an athlete.   Some of his career details will be printed below and added to as I have more information about him.

‘A Hardy Race’ reports McGhee running in the SAAA Marathon Championship of 1951 and finishing sixth ahead of such as Emmett Farrell and Andy Brown of Motherwell.   A year later he ran in the Windsor to Chiswick course in the AAA’s marathon, which was the Olympic Trial Race,  and recorded 2:39:29.  In the Scottish arathon in August Chick Robertson was the man and although Joe tried to stay with him he was dropped by half distance and finished fifth ahead of some very good men – Alex Kidd, Harry Haughie and Andy Brown.

The Minute Book of the Scottish Marathon Club for 16th November 1953 have an item on the Robertson Trophy.   “The sub committee met on Wednesday 11th November present being Messrs Wright, Scott and Walker from this club and Messrs McSwein, Dallas and Graham for the SAAA.   Each member was given a typewritten list of the performances by Joe McGhee, Harry Howard, Alex Kidd and Ian Binnie.   After due consideration, it was agreed that the Trophy be awarded to Joe McGhee, St Modan’s AAC for his consistent high standard of running throughout the season in 14 races, and particularly for his fine performance in the Perth – Dundee Road Race on 29th August 1953 when he beat the existing record in the name of C.D. Robertson who was awarded the Trophy in 1952.”   This was to be the first of many honours that Joe was to pick up.   I don’t have details of all the races that led to the award but the following can be taken as representative of his form.

9th May:                Vale of Leven AAC  14 mile road race   1.   I Binnie   1:13:45     2.   J Ellis                 1:17:42     3.   A McLean   1:18:30     4.   J McGhee   1:19:05

6th June:                Dundee Corporation  15 mile road race  1.   J McGhee 1:18:43    2.   CD Robertson     1:22:05     3.   J Miller       1:24:37

27th June:              SAAA Marathon Championship             1.   J Duffy    2:38:00    2.    A McLean          2:38:43     3.   J McGhee   2:39:02     4.   A Kidd       2:43:15

6th August:            Carluke Charities       12 mile road race   1.  N Austin   1:05:48    2.    J McGhee          1:05:55     3.   A Fleming    1:08:27     4.   A Kidd       1:08:54

22nd August:          Bute HG                 11 mile road race    1.  H Howard 57:29       2.    J McGhee          57:48       3.   A Fleming    59:17        4.   W Jackson  60:26

29th August:          Perth-Dundee           22 mile road race    1.   EL Smith  2:01:13    2.   J McGhee           2:01:32    3.   A Lawton    2:02:40      4.   A Kidd        2:05:42

5th September:      Shotts HG                15 mile road race     1.   H Howard 1:16:55    2.   A Fleming           1:18:22    3.   J McGhee   1:18:23       4.   N Austin     1:19:40

12th September     Dunblane HG           14 mile road race     1.  H Howard 1:14:46    2.   J McGhee           1:16:13    3.   W Jackson  1:20:35       4.   AH Brown  1:20:44

It is interesting to note that at that time there often runners from South of the Border who came up to take part in Scottish Road Races and in those listed above Duffy who won the marathon was from Hadleigh Olympiads and both Smith and Lawton at Perth were from Leeds.   Joe’s form was highlighted first of all in the classic Perth to Dundee Road Race when he lost narrowly to Englishman Eric Smith and then in the marathon run on the Lauriston to Edinburgh course which was basically a scrap between Duffy, McLean and McGhee.   The likely winner was Adam McLean who suffered from the ‘Knock’ and was caught and passed by Duffy.   Youngson and Clyne comment on Joe as follows: “McGhee showed obvious potential by finishing faster than the others and was only 62 seconds down on the winner.”

By the beginning of the 1953 – 54 cross country season he had joined Shettleston Harriers, one of the top two clubs in Scotland.   He was also benefiting from the training done in the RAF and coaching done by Allan Scally.   In the 1954 National he helped his team to win the title and gained his first Scottish vest by finishing seventh.    On the roads, he was chosen for the Scottish team for the Empire Marathon – the only man so selected – because the selectors did not view the SAAA Marathon as a ‘trial race’.   His form and fitness kept improving and the SAAA Marathon Championship n May showed this to perfection.   The course went from the Cloch Lighthouse at Gourock to Glasgow.   The time at 5 miles was 27:11 with Duffy, McGhee, Lawrence and King were all together.   Lawrence from Gala broke away with only McGhee going with him.   At 15 miles after the long climb up to Langbank, Joe took the lead and Lawrence dropped out.   Duffy also dropped out here.   Joe pushed on covering the next 5 miles in 30:36 and went on to win in a championship record of 2:35:22.   Conditions were so difficult and the trail a hard one and only seven of the twenty six starters finished the race.   Among those who retired were such as the reigning champion Duffy and Scottish stalwarts such as Andy Fleming, Willie Gallagher, Gordon Porteous, David Bowman, Eddie Campbell and David Anderson.     Duffy as reigning SAAA Champion was particularly disappointed not to have been pre-selected for the Empire Games (Jim Peters had interceded on his behalf but to no avail) and when he saw that he was not going to qualify here it probably influenced his decision to drop out at 15 miles.      Only one week later Joe won the Dundee Corporation 13 mile road race in 1:07:42 from Chick Robertson who recorded 1:12:23.

The Empire Marathon was run at the end of July in very hot weather and although there is a separate page for the Empire victory it is worth quoting Clyne and Youngson again here: “John Emmett Farrell stated that “Considering the gruelling almost freak conditions in which the race was run, the Scottish champion may have been said to have run the race of his life……. a race is never won or lost until the tape is broken or the finishing line crossed ….. judgement as well as pure running ability is necessary.”     

The following year was another  good one for Joe.   He won the SAAA Marathon in a very fast 2:25:50 and when it came  to the award of the Robertson Trophy it was unanimously awarded to him for that run.   Incidentally there was a total of 15 runners inside the standard time of three hours which some said was a response to Joe’s fine run in Canada a year earlier.   ‘A Hardy Breed’ again “By the time the Scottish Marathon came round again on 25th June over the Falkirk to Edinburgh Course, Joe McGhee was even fitter and ready to show that he was a worthy Empire Games champion, as well as supreme in Scotland.   Emmett Farrell, himself 6th in 2:48:44, wrote that ‘Joe McGhee’s record breaking 2:25:50 was easily the feat of the SAAA Championships and puts him in world class and an extra glitter on his British Empire gold medal.   Conditions were excellent but the course is by no means an easy one and this enhances the performance of George King whose time of 2:34:30 beat the previous best ever in Scotland and that of Hugo Fox with a 2:37:35.”   Unfortunately he was unable to run in the AAA’s marathon because of a leg strain otherwise who knows what might have happened?

He also had to retire in the late season Edinburgh Marathon but had a good season on the roads before tackling the 1956 road racing season.   But this was where Harry Fenion from Bellahouston comes into the story.

Harry was a first class athlete who had come up through the ranks and was a real class act.   Built like Dunky Wright it is hard to say who would have had to look up to the other but with a lot of talent.   Harry won the Clydebank – Helensburgh 16 miler by a minute and a half and that form continued up to the marathon.   There was some anxiety about Joe’s fitness after a series of poor runs and dnf’s due to injury but on the day Joe won in 2:33:36.   Joe set a fast pace right up to the 20 mile mark on a warm and sultry afternoon and several good runners dropped out.   Harry Fenion kept with him right up to the 23 mile mark when he dropped out because of blisters.

This was Joe’s third successive SAAA Marathon Championship – no one equalled the feat until Fraser Clyne from Aberdeen won it in 1992, 1993 and 1994.   Next year was Harry’s and he won in a new best time of 2:25:44.  

Joe wrote of his time in Shettleston Harriers, about his Vancouver race and of his friendship with Allan Acally in an interesting letter which can be read  here  .

Joe died on Friday, April 17th, 2015.   Doug Gillon’s excellent obituary is at www.heraldscotland.com/comment/obituaries/joseph-mcghee.123895129

Harry Howard was the first of three Shettleston Harriers to win the Scottish Marathon Championship in the 1950’s with the others being Joe McGhee and Hugo Fox.   He has been described as a comic and an oddball although south of the border he’d have been an eccentric, which is by definition lovable!  For instance:

*   Like many another athlete he also had a reputation for turning up late for races – on one occasion he missed the club bus for the Cross Country Championships and turned up at Hamilton Racecourse in a taxi presenting the team manager with a bill for £4:15:0 which was a lot of money.

*   A believer in self massage he could be seen massaging himself ‘from the big toe up’ before races.

*   Among his other idiosyncrasies was a belief in fresh air and he would sleep at night with the windows open.

*   He was a great believer in Yoga exercises long before stretching of any sort was common in athletics.

Even the official history of the club comments on his habits: “Harry was no mean runner but it is for his idiosyncrasies that he is best remembered.”

But above all else he was a very good runner – Scottish marathon champion, cross-country internationalist and winner of many medals of all colours as a member of a very good Shettleston Harriers team.- and should be remembered as such.   He was racing on the roads at the time when the Scottish Marathon Club was doing its very best under the efforts of Dunky Wright and Jimmy Scott to foster marathon running uin Scotland.   They managed to get races put on all over the country and at a variety of distances.   Unfortunately, the eve nts did not enjoy the parity of esteem with track and field that was to become the case in the 60’s and 70’s so the races were often not reported on and the men involved did not get their due.

Harry (21) and Chick Robertson in the Perth to Dundee, 1951

The Shettleston Harriers history reports in a section called: “A helluva man” Harry Howard: “He was a bricklayer from Kilmarnock and joined Shettleston during the war after he switched from boxing to running while in the Army.   His first major win was at the age of 31 in the Nigel Barge Road Race in 1945”.   In March of the same year he he ran second to Emmet Farrell in the Scottish Cross-Country Association’s senior eight mile race at Dalziell Estate, Motherwell, and in 1946, after finishing ninth in the National (leading Shettleston to first place in the team race) represented Scotland in the first post-war international at Ayr Racecourse.”   In the International he finished 36th to be a counting runner for the team.   Thirty sixth wasn’t too bad when it is noted that the Scottish team had been walked over the nine-mile course on the morning of the race to familiarise them with the trail to be followed!

Immediately after the War, Harry Howard was one of the very best distance runners in Scotland.   On 6th April 1946, in the relay around Dundee, he ran the second stage for Shettleston Harriers where he had the second fastest tim but was part of the winning team.   In the very first issue of the ‘Scots Athlete’ magazine (April 1946) the two favourites for the SAAA 10 miles track title were JE Farrell and Harry Howard but Howard, after running in the middle of the field for the first few miles, dropped out at four.   But the December 1946 issue of the magazine in a preview of the Nigel Barge Road Race at the start of 1947, read.   “This very interesting trail of just under five miles of undulating road is ideal for affording cross-country runners a chance to test their sped before getting down to serious cross-country work.   The last two races run over this course have been chiefly notable for the grand running of Harry Howard of Shettleston who has twice smashed the record , the second occasion beating the figures set up by himself the previous year.   His time of 24:04.8 is a target that will take some beating as on that occasion he ran clear away from his field, including myself.   Afflicted by a stubborn spell of staleness Howard is training steadily and gradually in an attempt to regain his old form.”   In the 1945 race he had won in 24:12 from 12 teams and a total of 86 runners, and in 1946 it had been a victory from 107 runners.   Unfortunately this time, in 1947, the race went to G Lamont (VPAAC ) who won in 24:35.   In the National championships of 1947 he was ninth finisher in the National Cross-Country championship and led the club home to fourth place.

In his preview of the SAAA Marathon in 1947, Emmet Farrell thought that Howard might have been among the challengers for the title, saying that “with several course records to his credit over distances from 12 to 15 miles, can be brilliant or mediocre and has recently blotted his copybook by having to retire twice in subsequent races, yet this unorthodox runner can never be left out of the reckoning.”   Howard did not run the marathon this time around though and after a successful summer season went into the winter 1947/48 cross-country season.   As usual for Howard, he missed many of the championship races, including relays until the national came along and in the 1948 National he was fourteenth individual, fifth Shettleston Harrier and a member of the winning team.

In his preview of the 1949 national championship, Emmet Farrell forecast a team victory for Shettleston – and with runners such as Flockhart, Craig, Howard, McLennan, Stuart, Mills, Wallace Laing and others, all named by Farrell – they were certainly in with a shout.   But Howard, despite being a cross-country internationalist, missed more cross-country  races than he turned out in.  That season alone he had missed the county and district championships.  Would he appear in this one?   He did, he finished seventeenth, was again fifth club man home and a member of the winning team.   This was however his last National appearance until 1953.   He ran in his first English National that year finishing in 71st .  The first post-war Edinburgh to Glasgow Relay was in April 1949 and Harry was on the fifth stage where he set the fastest stage time of the afternoon – one of six club runners to do so for the winning team.

In August 1949 the ‘Scots Athlete’ commented on the victory at Carluke of CD Robertson in the very fast time of 65:31, ‘or 31 seconds outside the course record standing to the credit of Shettleston’s Harry Howard’.   Missing the SAAA Championship and not appearing in the City of Edinburgh marathon, Harry turned out in the Perth to Dundee road race at the end of August but after starting steadily, he dropped out of the race which was won by Robertson with Gordon Porteous of Mayhill second.   There are comments throughout his career about his ‘inconsistency’ and occasionally dropping out of races with no reason given in the reports.

The following winter, 1949/50, there was no Harry Howard in the McAndrew Relay in October 1949 with the Shettleston squad of Wallace, Bannon, Burton and Bickerton finishing second to Victoria Park.   1949 was a year when there were two Edinburgh to Glasgow relays with the second being in November.   Harry ran the fourth leg this time, and the team won again.   Bearing in mind that the club had Jim Flockhart, Ben Bickerton, Eddie Bannon and Clark Wallace among the forces at their disposal, it was no surprise to see them take the gold.       In December in the Midland District relay he ran in the second team and was not only merely third quickest there but slower than two of the C team runners.   Into 1950 and Howard was tenth in the Nigel Barge Road Race at Maryhill to be second counter (Bannon was fourth) for his club  team in third place.   Although he started the year by finishing 23rd and well out of the counting six for the winning Shettleston team in the Midland District Championships held at Motherwell on 4th February, he missed most of the other races such as club, county and national championships but ran in the English National again, this time being 80th behind Craig, Bickerton, Flockhart and Wallace.   As fifth Shettleston runner he contributed to the third pace medals collected.    Winter over, he was back in action on the roads at the age of 36.

1950, however was to be his big year – the one in which he won the SAAA marathon.   In mid-May, Howard was second to Charlie Robertson in a 16 miles road race, in which JE Farrell was third.   Then on the following Tuesday he was second to Farrell at the Ashfield Speedway Track in a one hour race where Farrell covered 11 miles 241 yards (a new Scottish record) with Howard managing 11miles 180 yards.

In the June, 1950, issue of the ‘Scots Athlete’ under the headline of “Harry Howard’s Splendid Comeback”, Emmet Farrell wrote:

“A feature of distance races has been the splendid running of old favourite Harry Howard who appeared to have seen his best days but seems to have found form again although he is running with more repose and judgment than in his early days and is quite capable of upsetting the apple cart in any distance race.   Harry had his greatest comeback showing when he had a magnificent duel with Charlie Robertson in the stiff 15 miles Drymen to Firhill race.   Entering the field together it was only in the final few strides that the Dundee ace managed to clear from ‘Harry the Lion Heart’.”   Later in the same magazine, Farrell previewed the SAAA Marathon championship, saying: “I bracket together Charlie Robertson, Harry Howard and myself for this year’s title.    Holder Jack Paterson will make a gallant attempt to retain his title but with a strained leg and a good bit overweight finds it hard to get fit after the New Zealand trip.   Yes, I think it is anybody’s race.   I should have given Charlie Robertson slight preference to regain the title he won in 1948, particularly after his winning the shorter Brechin and classy Stirling road races, but Charlie has yet to solve satisfactorily the problem of blistered feet.   Harry Howard is running with an urge, but has not yet covered the full 26 miles odd – in public.   I feel that I have run into a bit of form, but the distance has usually been a bogey to me, while of the three, Mr Anno Domini is sitting rather more heavily on my shoulders.”   

The race was run and the title went to Howard.   In their excellent book, “A Hardy Race”, Colin Youngson and Fraser Clyne reported that, “On 8th July 1950 the Scottish Marathon Championship finished at Meadowbank in Edinburgh once again.   ‘The most coveted honour in long distance racing’ was gained by 36-year-old Harry Howard from Kilmarnock, representing Shettleston Harriers.   By a margin of only 13 seconds he defeated Charlie Robertson ofg Dundee  Thistle.   Howard’s time was 2:46:24.    Evergreen Emmet Farrell was third in 2:48:24.   Jack Paterson could finish no better than sixth in 2:57. “

Run in conjunction with the SAAA Junior Championships,  the race was reported in slightly more detail by the ‘Glasgow Herald’.   The marathon championship provided a fairly hard struggle for only a matter of 50 odd yards gave H Howard (Shettleston) his first big honour.   This was a surprising result, for the holder, J Paterson, CD Robertson and JE Farrell were considered to hold the best chances.   The serious racing did not start until the 23 mile mark, when Howard, with the knowledge that he had not the finishing pace of, say, Robertson at the finish decided to go on his own.   The winning time was 5 min 17 sec behind the best championship time of the late D MacNab Robertson.”  

In the AAA’s marathon at Reading two weeks later, Howard ran very well indeed to finish third in 2:37:15.   Farrell was thirteenth.   The Shettleston Harriers history has a bit more about the AAA’s event: “Club mate Clark Wallace accompanied him and borrowed a bike to follow Harry round the course.   After all these years it is perhaps safe to make public Clatk’s assertion that the man who finished second in front of Harry Howard was at one point ‘seen in a motor car.’

Harry was a prolific racer and turned out week in, week out all over the country -n he held many road race records – Clyne and Youngson mention the Carluke 12, the Glasgow to Hamilton 13 and the Kilbarchan 14.   He had in fact run a hard 14 the week before the AAA’s championship.  He did not turn out against Robertson in the Perth to Dundee road race at the end of August, but on 2nd September he defeated Farrell, England’s Geoff Iden and Jimmy Henning of Duncairn Nomads in Ireland at the Edinburgh Highland Games round-the-city marathon.   His time was 2:40:10, three minutes in front of Farrell (2:43:46) and five ahead of Iden (2:45:47).    By the end of the summer he was ranked number one road runner in Scotland ahead of Charlie Robertson, Jack Paterson and Emmet Farrell.     The ‘Scots Athlete’ said of Howard’s summer – “Pride of place must go to Harry Howard (Shettleston) who won convincingly the two Scottish Marathons and was a brilliant third at the British.   He had only one other win – at a shorter distance (Milton AC race).”   The rankings of the first five – 1.   H Howard;   2.   CD Robertson;   3.   JE Farrell;   4.   W Gallagher (Vale of Leven);   5.   A Arbuckle (Monkland Harriers).

In the McAndrew Relays, he ran the second stage for the Shettleston team that finished second to the organising club, Victoria Park, but missed the Midland relay championship at Stepps in November.   Howard was asked to run the second stage of the Edinburgh to Glasgow relay and he puled in one place to hand over second but although the team pulled up to first place and held it for four stages, they dropped back to second over the final leg when Johnny Stirling of VPAAC passed  Jim McNeil.   The  Dunbartonshire Amateur Athletic Association announced that it was holding its second Clydebank to Helensburgh Road Race on 1st January with special prizes on offer – it was an awkward time of year for this event – there were the established races at Beith (New Year’s Day) and Maryhill (Nigel Barge traditionally the first Saturday of the year) and for road runners with ambition, there was the Morpeth to Newcastle Road Race.   Where was Harry going?   In the December 1950 issue of the ‘Scots Athlete’ under the heading ‘Howard Tuning Up For Morpeth’, Emmet Farrell said:  “Scottish marathon champion champion Harry Howard is training hard for Morpeth and with the possibility of Ben Bickerton accompanying him, Shettleston have the nucleus of a strong team (3 to count).   Although Howard may now be stronger over the longer stretches, he is still no slouch at the shorter distances, and with his special training for the event, should give a good account of himself and should get at least a place if  he does not win outright.”   Despite the forecast, Harry could only finish seventh

Before we finish with 1950, Harry was understandably a hero in Kilmarnock and two weeks after he won the SAAA marathon the following review of his career to that point as told to a local Kilmarnock man appeared in a local paper and it was reprinted in the ‘Scots Athlete’ at the end of the year.

1951 did not start well for Howard – seventh at Morpeth and fifteenth in the Nigel Barge were maybe not the openers he had hoped for.  He missed the Midland Championship at the start of February but in the National on 3rd March, he was not in the club counting six men.   Always better on the road than the country, he had nevertheless won a cross-country international vest but maybe at the age of 37, what Emmet Farrell called ‘Mr Anno Domini’ was starting to catch up on him.   He did however form part of the team which finished second in the English National on 18th March – he was fifth counting runner in 54th place.    In his preview of the SAAA Championships, Farrell described Howard’s present form and ‘uncertain’.   In the event, Howard did not compete.   He was very involved in the Perth to Dundee race on 25th August however when he was second to CD Robertson (2:01:41) in 2:02:13, with England’s RW McMinnis (2:03:47)  in third after a very hard race with Andy Arbuckle, Joe McGhee and Alex Kidd among the following runners.   In his last race of the summer, the City of Edinburgh marathon,  He and Charlie Robertson were left in the invited runners dressing room after the other dressing room for the others had been cleared.   The result was that they had to join the race after the first lap had been run and ran the race knowing that they would have to run the extra lap when they returned to the field.   Nevertheless they managed to work their way through the field and finished with Robertson first in 2:38:15, JW Stone (RAF) second in 2:38:33 and Howard third in 2:40:50.

He missed the McAndrew and Midlands relays, nor was he out in the Edinburgh to Glasgow relay where he might have been expected to play a significant role for Shettleston.   He also missed the Midland and National championships.   Was his career over?   In his preview of the SAAA marathon, Farrell commented on the chances of Robertson and Jock Duffy from Broxburn, but then added, “However, should ex-champion Harry Howard who recently made an auspicious come-back after a spell in the wilderness, decide to enter the gruelling distance race he could be Robertson’s closest rival and would certainly prevent the Dundee man from loitering.”   He was not however a competitor and although he missed almost all of the cross-country season of 1952/53, he ran a good National finishing 14th to be the third counter for the second placed Shettleston team.   Next appearance was in the Edinburgh to Glasgow relay where he pulled up one place on the second place, getting Shettleston into second, and he himself had second fastest time of the day on this very difficult stage.   At the end of the season he turned out again in the National where he finished 37th – a non scoring runner for the winning team.  This was his last race in the national, and there were to be no more Edinburgh to \Glasgow relays – the era of Everett, McGhee, Fox and company had arrive and by 1956 Howard was 37 which was a old for a runner in the 1950’s.   His 1950 win in the marathon had started something for Shettleston however – by 1959 club men had won the event six times, picked up a silver and a bronze and, for that decade, dominated the championship.

Hugo Fox in fourth following George King and Joe McGhee, in first and second.

and a double SAAA Championship winner.  After the lean years of the War when training was at a minimum where it was possible at all, with the help of the Scottish Marathon Club and information passed on from many sources not least the ‘Scots Athlete magazine where Walter Ross printed articles on training and from Percy Cerutty and others from Australia, Arthur Newton from South Africa as well as from America and even England runners began training really seriously.   Joe McGhee was the big name.  Starting from St Modan’s in Stirling he moved to Shettleston Harriers and went on to win three SAAA titles in succession and of course the Commonwealth Games Marathon in Canada.   His career and the Vancouver Marathon are dealt with elsewehere.    He was the tip of the iceberg – there were several good men and coincidentally three of them came from Shettleston – the others being Harry Howard and Hugo Fox.   Hugo is here as an example of this new breed of hard training marathoners.

Hugo Fox was third in Joe’s record breaking marathon in 1955 and then had to miss a year through injury.   When he came back at the age of 36 in 1957 he was second to Harry Fenion ( a wee quirk here too – his time of 2:28:57 was identical to that of his second Championship victory) and then when he won it himself in 1958 at the age of 38 in 2:28:27 for the third fastest SAAA winning time ever.   His second victory in 1959 was his last title victory.    Colin Youngson who co-authored the excellent ‘A Hardy Race’ with Fraser Clyne continued to receive information about some of those who were featured in the book and in 2002 wrote the accompanying article.

HUGO FOX REMEMBERED

By Colin Youngson (2002)

When in 2000 Fraser Clyne and I published our book about the Scottish Marathon Championship (‘A Hardy Race’)   we were concerned that in spite of careful research there might be a host of inaccuracies which would be brought to our attention by irate runners or their relatives.   To our relief few have been received.   The most recent facts are about the late Hugo Fox of Shettleston Harriers who won bronze in 1955, silver in 1957, was the winner (and a Commonwealth Games representative) in 1958 and retained his title in 1959.

Hugo’s sister-in-law, Mrs Cathie McBrearty, lives in East Kilbride.   Someone told her about the book, she got in touch and a copy was sent to her sister, Hugo’s widow, Mrs Phil (Philomena) Fox who lives in New South Wales, Australia.   I was delighted to receive a fascinating letter, photos and cuttings about Hugo and his marathon running exploits of more than forty years ago – and decided to write this article for the Scottish Veteran Harriers magazine.

Mrs Fox corrected three of my errors for a start.   The cover picture (of the lead pack at five miles in Harry Fenion’s 1957 marathon) actually shows Hugo (head and shoulder shot) concentrating hard at the back of the group , conserving his energy for later.   He is fourth from the left and not as indicated on the inside cover.   Hugh Mitchell suggested that Hugo never wore socks – but Mrs Fox asserts that, while he didn’t wear them for running, he always wore them when dressed properly.   Harry Fenion, after losing to Hugo in the 1958 race is meant to have said that Hugo had been on the dole for nine months and had plenty of time to train.   However Mrs Fox makes clear that Hugo was actually working a five day a week in the heat and dust of a foundry, plus two nights a week overtime, as well as running up to 130 miles a week!   In 1965, well after these marathon running days, Hugo was on a four day a weekfor thirteen months – and the lack of work was the reason for the family emigrating to Australia in 1966.

Hugo had been a keen cyclist with a number of Glasgow clubs for fifteen years when he married in 1952.   Although she didn’t share his enthusiasm for cycling, and he gave up that sport, Mrs Fox certainly sacrificed a lot for her husband’s next hobby which he began just to keep fit around the beginning of 1954.   In fact she was the one who said “Why don’t you join the Harriers and do some running?”   He was 33 years old and his Shettleston clubmates, welcoming but blunt, thought he was too old to be much good.   Hugo retorted that the thought of his age never crossed his mind – and obviously set out to prove the pessimists wrong.

The following year he tried out road running and found that he liked it, started training hard and came third in the Scottish Marathon Championship.  Joe McGhee’s record breaking 2:25:50 was world class but Hugo’s 2:37:35 was an outstanding debut.   Before the race he had no idea how well he would run but afterwards was delighted.     In 1956 he missed the race, since he had the ‘flu, but because he was not content with bronze he worked even harder and improved in 1957.   An example of his training was to come home at 5:30 on Thursday, have a wash, put on singlet and shorts and run to Hamilton and back – twenty five miles.  A weekend session might be a thirty mile run.   A ‘Sunday Post’ article reports that “Since Hugo tips the scales at 8 stones 12 pounds he has no weight worries.   ‘If I get any lighter’, he says, ‘I won’t even be able to see myself in the mirror.'”

He had no special diet, although he liked steak, but not immediately before races.   The route to improvement  in his opinion was through more and more training miles – and certainly in 1957 his time of 2:28:57 for second behind Harry Fenion, provided clear evidence that his training was very effective.   His wife was his greatest admirer, said the Sunday Post and asked only that on one night of the week, he would baby-sit so that she could go to the pictures.  “Since he had to be back early that night, he forsakes his normal 20-odd mile stint and just runs to East Kilbride and back – ‘only’ 13 miles.”

As I wrote in ‘A Hardy Race’ the legend has it that when in the 1958 Scottish Marathon Hugo Fox arrived in the lead outside the old Meadowbank track, en route from Falkirk, he found the six foout spiked gate at the north end had not been opened by the park keeper.   Undeterred, Hugo climbed over without impaling himself and strode onto the track to claim his title in a finishing time of 2:31:22, still over a minute clear of Alex McDougall (Vale of Leven) who was allowed to enter via the gate which had now been unlocked.   Harry Fenion (Bellahouston) was third.   Mrs Fox sent photocopies of photographs showing Hugo leading on a lonely stretch of the Shotts Highland Games road race; proudly wearing his Scotland tracksuit at the Dunblane Highland Games; and in the marathon, Hugo passing her outside the park and running strongly to the tape.   There is also a photograph of the entire Scottish squad at the Cardiff Empire Games where due to unbearably hot conditions and a dreadful ‘stitch’ Hugo was forced to drop out of the marathon along with Harry Fenion.   Nevertheless he was in fine form in 1959 when he led the Scottish Marathon from start to finish over a minute in front of Gordon Eadie (Cambuslang) and Jackie Foster (Edinburgh Southern).

After his second victory the Fox family moved to East Kilbride but he still trained by running the 13 miles  to work each morning and back again at night – a marathon a day!   Then at the weekend he had time for a longer effort of 30 miles.   His dedication was truly fantastic and many full time athletes and good class amateurs nowadays must feel that by comparison they don’t try hard enough.

Sadly six years after arriving in Australia Hugo was found to be suffering from stomach cancer although he was only told that he was suffering from an ulcer.   The operation removed a large growth which, the specialist told Mrs Fox, had been developing for twenty years.   In other words, before and during his entire running career.   Mrs Fox wonders whether the agonising ‘stitch’ which forced such a tough competitor out of the Cardiff Marathon was in fact caused by the cancer.   Normally he would ‘run through’ discomfort so this must have been exceptionally painful.   Nevetheless after the operationm Hugo was typically determined to get fit again, having been off work for four and a half months.   He started walking and three months later could manage ten miles a day.   the doctors were amazed when he was back at work four and a half months after surgery.   Sadly his recovery was temporary and Hugo Fox died in 1974.

Any serious runner, especially a Scottish Veteran Harrier, can only admire the brave spirit and determination of Hugo Fox to achieve his full potential as a runner and as a man.   I am grateful to Mrs McBrearty, Mrs Fox and her family fort setting the record straight and allowing us to celebrate this hero of Scottish marathon running.”

I think that the above covers everything that we want to know – or have a right to know – about Hugo Fox.   Thanks, Colin.

The SAAA Marathon Result Sheets for 1958 and 1959:   you may need to enlarge them for a proper perusal

I attach as a couple of appendices the ‘Sunday Post’ article referred to above and the extract from ‘A Hardy Race’ that are referred to above.

I like the juxtaposition of the 6000 miles a year man with the ad for Capstan!

From ‘A Hardy Breed’:

Hugo had been a racing cyclist before he changed to running.   Once when he had moved into a new tenement flat with his wife and young family, Hugo set out to explore his new neighbourhood.   He was so anxious to discover new running trails that he became badly lost and did not return until three hours later.   When he checked the map he found that he had run more than thirty five miles.   Hugh Mitchell, Hugo’s clubmate and another converted cyclist remembered that Hugo worked as a metal moulder and never wore socks – even when dressed up!   Hugo had shown his strength as a cyclist by winning specialist events involving sprinting up a one mile hill.   Another memory from Mitchell is of the Morpeth – Carlisle event with the more experienced Hugo.    Mitchell ate steak before the race while the more experienced Fox preferred bread and jam.   When Hugo ran much better than Hugh the latter learned a lesson.   Jimmy Irvine of Bellahouston remembers Hugo Fox as a specialist marathon runner unlike Harry Fenion who Jimmy considered classier but inconsistent.

Hugh Mitchell has the tale about his first trip to the Morpeth to Newcastle Road Race with the more experienced Hugo.   Mitchell ate steak before the race and the more experienced Fox had bread and jam.   When Hugo ran much better than the Hugh, the latter learned a lesson.     Hugo Fox had the experience in 1958 of arriving in the lead during the championship at the six foot spiked gate at the north end of the old Meadowbank track only to find the park keeper had not opened it.   Undeterred Hugo climbed over without impaling himself and trotted on to the track to claim his title in 2:31: 22.

In 1959 when the race was from Falkirk to Meadowbank, Fox who was a good judge of pace raced into an early lead and by half distance was several minutes in the lead.   By twenty miles the chasing pack was reduced to Gordon Eadie of Cambuslang who was closing in the later stages but Fox won by over a minute from Eadie.