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The club was back in action the following year with a new determination which is well shown in the report below.

(Captain Steve Taylor wrote  this article for the Road Runners Club magazine.)

“Never again!” was the unanimous opinion of ten sweat-stained and weary runners at the end of last year’s unsuccessful attempt by Aberdeen AAC on the John O’Groats to Land’s End Relay record.

However with the usual unpredictability of the athletic animal, ten of us, along with drivers and officials found ourselves heading north on Friday 6th April in the new familiar Commer Highwayman Motor Caravans.   As the rain and wind buffeted the convoy, there were no more than the usual recriminations and from the drivers, clear indication that they considered us ‘off our heads’.   However our sponsors, Aberdeen and District Milk Marketing Board, had been exceedingly generous in the financial outlay, and we were determined not to let them down.

Saturday, 7th April dawned cold and clear, with just a hint of snow showers in the surrounding Sutherland hills, but the gale had blown itself out.   It was decided that the order of running would be  : Peter Duffy and Derek Bisset; Alistair Neaves and Martin Walsh; Alastair Wood and Rab Heron; Steve Taylor and Colin Youngson; Innis Mitchell (an Aberdonian ex-Scottish Schoolboys cross country champion who was to win ‘blues’ from both Strathclyde and Glasgow Universities) and Joe Clare (Royal Navy and Blackheath Harriers stalwart who had run 2:18 for a marathon after starting seriously in athletics with the Aberdeen club).

This year the Time and Distance schedule had been computerised, and another innovation was the route deviation over the Forth Road Bridge, which saved a few miles.   The routine was as before, with four vans on two hour stints and one van on one hour only.   At 12 noon Pete Duffy set off with a fresh wind at his back.   An hour later – disaster.   Derek Bisset cut his foot during his stint and was to be a passenger for all but a few miles of the whole run.   A quick re-organisation and Teams Four and Five were amalgamated to form a three man team.     The result of this was to reduce the rest period between runs to a desperate six hours.   However the spirits remained high, and the first 100 miles, including the crossing of the snow covered Struie Pass, were completed approximately 25 minutes inside the schedule which was based on a time 13 minutes inside Reading’s record.   The next mishap occurred at Inverness, when a breakdown in communications resulted in a van failing to link up; consequently the combined team were four hours on the road, followed by two and a half hours by Van 2.   By now it was snowing fairly steadily, but the underfoot conditions were quite good.   By 11:00 am on Sunday, the runners were going through Perth and still pulling up on schedule.    On the approach to the Forth Road Bridge there was a bitterly cold wind blowing down the Firth.   The end of Princes Street in Edinburgh was reached in an incredible one hour twenty minutes ahead of schedule.   It was here unfortunately that Van 1 had an argument with a pedestrian barrier and was to be out of commission for the remainder of the run.   Nine sweaty bodies were now squeezed into the remaining four vehicles, not without the usual grumbles – all good natured, of course!   Further south on the stiff climb to the summit of the Devil’s Beeftub the pace was maintained, but the runners were now preparing  to enter their second night with the daunting prospect of crossing a snow covered Shap in the early hours of Monday morning.   By Gretna the team was one and a half hours up on the schedule, and this was the high point of the run.   The conditions on Shap were worse than we at first feared and a temperature of twelve degrees below freezing began to take a heavy toll on tired legs.   By the change-over  just outside Kendal, the time on hand began to dwindle and from then on it was to be a battle of sheer guts to keep ahead of schedule.   Later we learned that it had been the coldest April night in the area for 50 years!

The third day brought its inevitable problems, and despite the bright sunshine the average was dropping drastically; a situation further aggravated by a five minute wait at a bridge on the Manchester Ship Canal.   As the runners swung off the main road just south of Hereford, the gain on schedule was now a perilous 31 minutes and the worst of the night was yet to come.   By the Severn Bridge there were still 210 miles to go and things were beginning to look black.   By Crediton on the final morning – the low point – the schedule showed that we were now 20 minutes behind the record and with only 116 miles left it was hurriedly decided to make a drastic change in tactics.   Two teams (one of four runners and one of five) were quickly organised with each man on a very short stint.   As Okehampton was reached, the watches showed that the rot had been stopped, and in fact a few precious minutes had been pulled back.   By now with 97 miles to go, and in bright sunshine, weary limbs began to take on a more springy action, and as the two teams changed over on the steep climb out of Okehampton, there was a decided air of optimism spreading through the whole party.   By the 800 miles point, just south of Bodmin, the 5 minute 3 second per mile pace of the last 60 miles had pulled the red and white vested Aberdonians  back on to their schedule, and it now became apparent that the record was going to be beaten.   The distance done by each runner was now little more than a glorified sprint, and hills were easily demolished in this way.  

Local news bulletins had alerted the population to the success of the ‘Northern Invaders’ and the flashing headlights and the honking horns provided the extra incentive to get to the finish.   At 7:05 pm the four men on the road together were joined by the remainder of the team, who joined hands and did a delighted jig over the line to the strains of Amazing Grace played on the bagpipes by co-ordinator Gordon Casely.   It was a proud moment for the Aberdeen club as referee Bill Donald announced the time – 79 hours 8 minutes 8 seconds.   Almost 32 minutes inside the previous record.

The team was given a reception by the Chairman of the West Penwith Rural District Council, who delighted the party by telling them of his close association with the Gordon Highlanders, Aberdeen’s own regiment, during the war.   Then it was off to Penzance to a hot bath and a bed.   The record had been achieved largely due to: the knowledge gained  from the previous year’s run; the efficient organisation by the co-ordinators; and of course the overwhelming generosity of the sponsors, who catered for every whim of the runners”

*****

Rab Heron later wrote

“TOUCHING THE BLOOD or COMING THROUGH:

notes for a brief epic novel of pedestrianism on the High Road (and other sundry places in South Britain) in the company of disreputable Coachmen and Sundry Footpads and Broken Men.

·         Great Meaning but no purpose.

·         Free tracksuits – bring your own shoes

·         “We anticipate no communication problems between five motor-homes and one link car….”

·         Sore legs after the first session

·         Good at the beginning; good at the end; a bit of a drag in the middle.

·         Chafing, as in sand in the jockstrap

·         Invading small quiet hotels and monopolising the bathrooms

·         The A9 Munros rising up to greet a cold pink dawn

·         The rolling English road

·         Drunk on the first pint of ale in Tewkesbury

·         The side of the van all over the bloody street in Edinburgh

·         The Pipes, The Pipes

·         Crapping in a nice front garden in a quiet and furtive manner, somewhere

·         Tatties with eggs mashed into them and lumps of cheese

·         Yoghurt any time of the day or night

·         “Ninety seven mile to go!” quoth a Devon roadmender

·         Didn’t see the Loch Ness monster

·         Jamaica Inn

·         The partners – Youngson (1972) and Wood (1973) – thanks for the memories and the laughs”

The Jogle is one of the toughest tests of collective endurance that could be imagined.   It is a ten man relay race against the clock between John O’Groats and Land’s End requiring ten good athletes, an efficient back up team, determination  and team spirit in abundance.    The great Aberdeen teams of marathon and distance runners of the 1970’s and 1980’s were probably unique in numbers and quality when they tackled the event and set records.   Colin Youngson ran in all three record breaking runs and his introduction to our coverage of the event is below.   He remarked that the team of 1983 contained a 3:50 1500 metres guy, a 2:29 guy, a 2:21 guy plus six Scottish marathon champions and the world’s greatest ultra runner!   It was probably inevitable that they got the record.

“The first attempts at setting records between John o’Groats and Land’s End occurred in the 19th Century.   By 1880, both runners and cyclists succeeded in setting times between the two points.   The advent of rules governing End to End attempts by the early 20th Century set the pace for the present day.

Since 1959 many teams have tackled the euphemistically abbreviated JOGLE (or LEJOG, depending on the direction chosen).   For example Cambridge University broke the record at one point, and this has been written about by Roger Robinson, who used to run with Mel Edwards in the 1960’s.   Roger is not only one of the very finest of athletics journalists but was also an English and later New Zealand cross-country international and a World Veteran marathon Champion.

By 1967, Reading Amateur Athletic Club, at the time European team marathon champions, broke the Jogle record in 79 hours 40 minutes.   Ron McAndrew was one of their best runners.”

I’ll record the actual relays separately below for ease of access to the individual attempts and they will be in the words of several of the participants – mainly Colin Youngson but Steve Taylor is responsible for the 1973 report, Martin Walsh did the Postscript and there are contributions by Rab Heron and others.    

The Links below are in chronological order from left to right and the ‘Helpful Hints’ should be read, as it was written, before the 1982 account.

Jogle 1972   Jogle 1973    Helpful Hints 1982    Jogle 1982   A Typical Jogle Session   Postscript

Alastair Wood

 Aberdeen made their first attempt, north to south in 1972, starting on Sunday 9th April.   Donald Ritchie remembers Steve Taylor and Alastair Wood chatting about the possibilities during Sunday runs.   Most people were incapable of speaking or thinking during those knackering sessions!   Steve was captain of the team in 1972 and 1973 and arranged sponsorship from the Evening Express.   We turned up at Aberdeen Journals on the Lang Stracht for a publicity meeting.   Particularly chic tight fitting red tracksuits were handed out.   These were mainly used as pyjamas during the actual relay!

After our attempt started the John  O’Groat Journal reported that each pair of runners was accompanied by a dormobile with a driver and co-driver.   Messages from the Lord Provost of Aberdeen and Provost Mowat of Wick were sent with the team to the chairman of Penzance Council, conveying best wishes from folk at “the northern end” to “those dwelling in the vicinity of Land’s End.”   “The system employed by the team throughout the long run was a combination of time and mileage turns – three spells of 20 minutes for each runner, with intervening 20 minute rests in one of the escorting vehicles, and then repeating the process after 60 miles”.   In actual fact we quickly realised that the best system, apart from during the last 100 miles, was for each pair of runners to share two hours of five minutes on, five minutes off.

The article continues: “The first man off, Alastair Wood, sprinted away from the John O’Groats House Hotel promptly at 4:00 pm, the time keeper’s signal being immediately translated publicly by the Provost giving a blast on the team’s “trumpet” – a horn  once carried by a railway track look out man and used for warning workmen that a train was approaching.

A Scottish and British Internationalist, Alastair Wood is holder of the world 40 mile record.   he is a lecturer on the staff of Robert Gordon’s College of Technology, Aberdeen.   The second man to take the road was Graham Milne, a former Springburn (Glasgow) Harrier.   He is a teacher in Robert Gordon’s College.   Number Three was Steve Taylor, a former three and ten mile champion and Scottish Internationalist.   He is on the advertising staff of the ‘Press and Journal and was the paper’s head organiser for the race.

Caithness has a special interest in the runner who became the fourth man out – Alexander Keith, a Royal Air Force cross country team regular, who comes from Castletown although he is now a Senior Aircraftsman based at Waddington, Lincolnshire and works as a survival equipment fitter.   He joined Aberdeen AAC last year.”   (Sandy became a regular British marathon international in the late 1970’s)

“The other six members of the team were Donald Ritchie, a marathon runner and engineering student at Aberdeen University; Colin Youngson, a teacher in Glasgow who ran cross country and track for Scottish Universities; Peter Duffy of Ashton-Under-Lyne, Lancashire, an exciseman and fell runner currently based in Wishaw; Robert Heron, a Scottish Universities international cross country runner and post graduate student at Aberdeen University; Martin Walsh, ex-Cambridge University track runner, now a marine biologist at Torry Research Station, Aberdeen; and Alistair Neaves a twenty year old apprentice watch maker and track runner.”

This was a very good team with Wood, Taylor and Keith outstanding, but we lacked understanding of the specific difficulties posed by this gruelling event.    We had to maintain ten and a half miles per hour to beat Reading’s record.   At first, all seemed to be going fairly well but our chosen route proved a handicap – cutting through Glen Quaich slowed us down, as did sending poor Din Ritchie on a solo struggle over a snowbound twenty mile stretch on the Corryairack Pass.   Then it became clear that we had an extra six miles to do that had not been accounted for.   Vans broke down, runners slept in and the so-called co-ordinators (including the abnormally enthusiastic and energetic Mel Edwards) succumbed to sleep deprivation.   Injuries took their toll but young Neaves performed heroically as did Martin Walsh, the fastest hirple in the north, who maintained the pace despite suffering due to a steel pin in his left leg which had been inserted after a bad motorcycle accident.   As exhaustion hit, and dreadfully stiff legs, things became so bad that they began to seem hysterically funny.   Rab Heron and I fantasised about a Kestel hovering overhead actually being a vulture, waiting to pick at our skinny bones.

In the end, despite a valiant attempt to speed up over the last hundred miles, we finished  45 minutes outside the record, in 80 hours 25 minutes 53 seconds.   This was the second fastest team time and the fastest north to south, but we were very disappointed.

When I came to live in Lenzie the club already had close links with Springburn Harriers and regular inter club fixtures were held on the country and occasionally we met up in an inter club on the track – my first ever inter club was at Springburn where I ran the Three Miles against Springburn and Garscube.   They were a considerably good club at the time and to give an indication of this, I’ll set out the athletes here who were in the Scottish rankings for ’66.

* In the Senior Mile, as in all endurance events at the time, the athlete splitting Dunky Middleton and Eddie Knox was Ian Stewart who went on to win the European and Commnwealth 5000 metres titles as well as the International Cross Country Championships.

In the Junior Age Group, Eddie won the SAAA One Mile in the time noted above from Robert Linaker (4:22.9) while Robin Souter won the SAAA High Jump with 6’0″ from Alex Peggie of Montrose (5’9″)

George Jarvie won both the Schools and the SAAA Championships for the One Mile and Nickie Souter won the Schools Championships (the SAAA Championship was not held because of poor support).

A lot of the Springburn endurance success was down to Eddie Sinclair’s training – some said that he worked the boys too hard but there was undoubted success over a very long period.   His top men at this point were Eddie Knox who won the Junior International Cross Country Championship, Dunky Middleton who won the British Indoor half mile championship and Harry Gorman but the list was almost endless and included, as well as George Jarvie and Nickie Souter, such as the Beaney brothers, the Picken brothers and the  Lunn bothers, then there were other outstanding athletes such as Johnny Buntain, Davie Tees, Billy Minto, Stewart Gillespie, the great Adrian Callan  and of course Graham Williamson.   They were always a force to be reckoned with but for some reason they were not the ever presents that they should have been in the Edinburgh to Glasgow eight stage relay.   They used English based  – well not ‘real’ Scottish athletes  – at times such as John McGrow of Longwood Harriers, Peter Knott of Portsmouth (?) and Ian McIntosh of Ranelagh Harriers in some of the major events.   Longwood was Derek Ibbotson’s club and had lots of top distance runners such as Ibbotson, McGrow and Denid Quinlan but McGrow was the only one who seemed to have any Scottish connection.    The thing is that they did not need the Anglos because their own strength was such that they would have given any club in the land a run for their money.   I’d be interested to hear what the connection was between any of the Anglos and Springburn.   They always attracted a number of Scottish athletes from other clubs quite legitimately with Mike Bradley joining from Paisley Harriers (Mike was a GB 1500 champion) and Colin Falconer from Forth Valley being among joining in the late 1960’s and then of course Alistair and Doug came on board in the very late 60’s and early 70’s.

The rankings for 1981 when I left were vastly different with only four male athletes appearing.   Graeme Williamson was fourth ranked in the 1500 metres behind John Robson, Frank Clement and Gordon Rimmer with 3:46.4, Graham Crawford was twenty eight in the 5000 metres with 14.51.68 and in the marathon Alistair McFarlane was eighth with 2:21.01 (run in Glasgow in October) and Doug Gunstone was twenty second with 2:26.52 (fourth in the SAAA Championships in Edinburgh).    Alistair was one place ahead of Don McGregor in the rankings and also had two more times in the list for that year – 2:22.18 which he ran in London in March and 2:22.25 which he clocked when finishing third in the Scottish Championships in Edinburgh in June.

Apart from the trails that we used to run on there were the various open races held in the area at the time from the Springburn Cup, to the Marathon Club Twelve Miles and the Kirkintilloch Highland Games Ten Miles (which was universally recognised to be the longest ten miles in the civilised world).   Some of the roads have been so messed about by road works that they are no longer runnable as proper races and I’ll have to go out and have a wee look at them to see for myself how they have changed.   Anyway, this is how they were – all interesting, all testing and with a degree of overlap.

The Kirkintilloch Games 10 Miles started at Adamslie Park (the Rob Roy FC Park).   Coming out of the park after a lap of the track the runners turned right and headed out past the town centre on the low road all the way to Inchterf and turned left up Antermony Road.   The three mile marker was held up there and one year I came through with Ian Donald of Clydesdale and the time on the car at the side of the road was well inside 15 minutes and the temptation to drop out with a pb was great!   Anyways. the trail them just made a big semi circle round via Milton of Campsie and Lennoxtown to Torrance, up the big drag to the roundabout where it was left again and into Adamslie and once round the track.   10 miles?   I don’t think so.

There was the year when I jogged out from Lenzie, knocked myself out on the race and won the handicap prize which was a big box with a water jug and six highball glasses nicely packed.    See running back to Lenzie carrying that lot?   And trying not to break it?   Part of the attraction was the notion of having a Highland Games in Kirkintilloch  (My Heart’s in the Hielans my heart is not here, my heart’s in Kirkintilloch a chasing the deer…).

The Scottish Marathon Club was a fine organisation run by secretary Jimmy Scott and his committee of fine men such as Jimmy Geddes, David Bowman and others.   It organised a whole series of races over the summer with a championship that included specified races – the Scottish Marathon was one that HAD to be in there, the Clydebank to Helensburgh was another and the Springburn 12 was yet another.    This one started outside the Springburn clubhouse at the bottom of the hill with the start being in line with Crowhill Road.   The race progressed straight up past the Littlehill Golf Club and round to where there is a very sharp uphill turn to the left and over the railway bridge into Crosshill Road.   It then went right round that back road past what we called the Barrage Balloons (where these were moored during the War) and where the Golf Driving Range is now.   Down Cole Road to the Torrance Roundabout, right across the road and in to Kirkintilloch.   We then turned left up Campsie Road to Milton of Campsie via Birdston and then left again and back to Lennoxtown (where there was a watering point – a rarity in the 60’s) and down to Torrance.    Back up to that bloomin’ roundabout then right along the main road to finish just before Colston Road.   Another hard, hard trail to race although pleasant enough to run.

Jim Bremner was a very good guy, one of the nicest chaps you could ever meet and a member of Springburn Harriers.   He was a very good 800/1500 runner and he came out with us on some of the Sunday runs but always doubted his ability to complete it.   That was his one fault – excessive modesty about his own ability.    Well, one year in the Marathon Club 12 I came off the Torrance roundabout and crossed the road to head for home while Jim who was a few yards behind me(40?50?) stayed on the other side of the road but looked much fresher than I felt.   He caught up with me on the other side of the road until we came to Bishopbriggs Cross where he had to cross the road in two directions and I only had to cross in one.   As we got up past the pub on the left he started to catch me big time.   I saw a car in front and swung out well before it kind of inviting him in to the inside which invitation he accepted.   Then as we came up the hill  and he started to pass me I cut him off at the back of the car – he had to stop almost dead.   Quiet unassuming Jim was so annoyed that he came back and rook about 20 yards out of me in the finishing straight!  Lesson:   Don’t try to cheat if you’re not good at it.

The Luddon Half Marathon was an excellent race and one of the best sponsored in the country – thanks largely to Hugh Barrow and his team at Strathkelvin.   It started at the Monklands outside the Baths and headed to Eastside before turning sharp right and heading out towards Twechar before coming back up to the Campsies then it was round to the Torrance roundabout, across the road, up the Cole Road, past the Open Prison at Lowmoss, round the back road to the top of Gallowhill Road and down to cross the Lenzie – Kirkie Road at the Baths and across the grass to the finish.   It was a hard race  over a varied course and to keep the spectators interested there was a Street Mile which, on the invitation of Hugh Barrow, I organised for the BMC.

There was the year when I was running in the race and having been brought up in the days when there were designated feeding stations, I was seriously irritated by the number of times that wives, girl friends and no doubt lovers as well, were standing roadside handing out drinks to their chosen runner.   Eventually when I saw a woman giving a guy a sponge at the road down into Torrance I snapped!   As I passed I grabbed the sponge: she said “But it’s only for him”: I sucked mightily on the sponge – which had been soaked in very soapy water!   The taste of soap does not aid running.

The Street Mile started at the off license in Lenzie and came straight in the road through Lenzie to finish in front of the Baths.   This attracted many very good athletes and the prizes were good.   There were races for Senior Men and the Senior Women and Under 17 Men ran against each other.   The ingenuity in the prize list was wonderful to behold with meals for two at a restaurant in Bishopbriggs at one end and the winner of the Under 17 Men’s Race getting his weight in mince and tatties at the other.   He didn’t have to take them all at once and the winner, Glen Stewart,  made several journeys to collect his goodies.   Liz Lynch (as she then was) won the Women’s Race in the first year and Yvonne Murray the year after.   If you ask me nicely face to face I’ll tell you about the relative expenses!

I always ran the the women against the Under 17 Men to add an element of unpredictability to the event and give the top women a really hard race.  They appreciated the chance to race against the U17 Men such as Glen, Frank McGowan, Bobby Mooney, etc, in all three such races that I organised at three different venues each year.   In 1986 I was appointed Scottish Staff Coach for 5000/10000 and went on an already arranged three week holiday just before the Commonwealth Games.   I asked Lachie Stewart to organise the Street Miles at Stirling University that year and when I returned from holiday and went in to the Village the first person I met was Liz Lynch.   Wee and in a red tracksuit she started by saying that she could have won the 3000 metres the night before (Yvonne was third) and then started complaining that the Street Mile at Stirling had separated the Women from the U17 Men.   She had brought a friend over from Alabama University otherwise she would not have had a good run!   Never mind, she won the 10000 metres in the Games!

The first Springburn Cup race that I took part in was a Relay Race with teams of one Under 15, one Under 17, one Under 20 and a Senior Man.   That finally fell away because so few clubs have strong (or indeed any) runners in all four age groups at the same time.   There were subsequently three other trails that I know of for the trophy now renamed the Jack Crawford Cup.    The one I ran most often came out of the back gate at Huntershill into Avon Road, turning left and making for Crowhill Road where we went under the bridge and through the cross before turning very sharp left up Kirkintilloch Road to Colston Road then up Auchinairn Road to Springfield Road and into Avon Road before going round again.   There were three laps of that one.

Living in Lenzie for 15 years, it was inevitable that I did some training at some point with Springburn.   Getting involved in the sport in the 1950’s with all the inter club fixtures and at a time when you knew every runner you saw training or running down the street, it was inevitable that I already had a lot of friends in Springburn.   Tom O’Reilly and Eddie Sinclair were particularly good friends as were Danny Wilmoth, Moir Logie, Harry Gorman, Dunky Middleton, Nicky Souter, Eddie Knox and others.   Not long after arriving in the area I was invited on a Sunday morning run from Ian Young’s father’s foundry at Eastside in Kirkintilloch – I quite enjoyed the run but it was spoiled by being asked not once but three or four times to join Springburn.     That finished the Sunday training with Springburn – Tom O’Reilly, Danny Wilmoth and others had trained with us at Clydebank without being harassed in that way and they would never have behaved in that manner.   I didn’t need the hassle and it was many years before I went back to Huntershill which was a totally different environment.   I’ll pass on a couple of stories at a time but for now it’s the race with Dave Andrews and one of Eddie Sinclair’s bon mots.

Springburn Vets: Bill Ramage, Tom O’Reilly and Tony White after winning the Scottish Vets at Dalkeith.  

The result of the race which had 74 finishers was: 1st C McAlinden  28:52; 2.   G Eadie  29:41; 3.   J Irvine   29:42; 4.   J Milne  29:58;  5.  TP O’Reilly   30:09; 6.   W Ramage   30:14; 7.   T White   30:19;  8.   C Meldrum   30:23; 9.   W Russell   30:38; 10.   C O’Boyle   30:45

The runs with Alistair and Bill are described on the previous page.   I started training at Huntershill on a regular basis when I started going in with Alistair and sharing the driving – on occasion I jogged over from Lenzie and back again after training which fairly added to the training mileage.   The facility was great – the dressing rooms were right next to the showers which meant that there were no draughty corridors to negotiate as at so many club HQ’s and the cafe afterwards was a bonus.   The perimeter of the playing fields was on really good, flat grass and you could do all sorts of sessions on the grass – steady runs which were kinder to knees and ankles than the roads, fartleks, timed reps, up and down the clocks were all possible.   In fact anything that you could do on a track could be done possibly more profitably on the grass.    Chris Robison once said to me that if he could train on good grass he would never train anywhere else.    Springburn would have suited him down to the ground.   One incident that I remember is the year that I ran in the Springburn club veterans 5000 metres track race.   They had a lot of vets at that time and the field was a big one.   I ran as a guest and at the start, looking along the start line thought that I could win it with Dave Andrews being the only real threat.   The gun went, I sat in for two laps then went to the front with Dave on my shoulder.    Eventually I got clear by about 20/30 yards until with three laps or so to go Graham Crawford came in from a road run and came up beside me and offered to pace me but I declined his offer so he dropped back a bit, ran with Dave for a bit which coincided with Dave catching up by the start of the last lap.   He passed me in the back straight but I got him again halfway round the last bend but he wasn’t finished.   He pushed past me in the finishing straight so close that our fore arms rubbed against each other, well do I remember it.   We both knew that that was it.   I wasn’t going to get him and he was a good winner – it would probably not have been appropriate if I were to win another club’s championship.     Dave was a super guy and a good athlete.

Other memories include one with a line that I have used many times since then.    Eddie Sinclair and I got on very well together and when we moved to Lenzie he was our postie and we often had a blether of a morning.   Just after Graham Williamson had left him to train with George Gandy, I was running round the grass at Huntershill with him when the two Grahams came up behind us.   As they passed Eddie changed the subject of the conversation and said, “Aye, they used to just get sore legs but now they all get injuries!”    Many a time I’ve used that line about hypochondriacs or bottle merchants in the sport!   Then there was the time a young lad came through the grounds – it was at the point when Graham W was running really well and on television quite a lot.   The lad asked for an autograph but didn’t have a pen or pencil.    Graham borrowed one from Jack Crawford and then the lad didn’t have any paper “But never mind: just sign my arm and I’ll trace it when I get hame!”    The first encounter I had with Eddie was at an inter club track fixture at Mountblow in Clydebank.   The track was alongside the railway line and halfway along the finishing straight was a tunnel under the railway line.    At the start I looked at the opposition and thought that I should win.   I went to the front but after two of the 15 laps (a 300 yard track) I heard someone running right behind me, just where I couldn’t see him.    So I dug in and worked hard.   No matter what I did, the spikes were right behind me.   We lapped everyone else in the field then at the start of the last lap this wee guy in a yellow vest shot past, built up a lead and then slipped off the track in the finishing straight and disappeared under the railway.    It was Eddie – as a professional athlete at the time he shouldn’t have been in the race but jumped in like Wilson of the Wizard just after the start!    I got the verdict but was knackered for the One Mile that I was down to race about half an hour later!   We became good friends after that.

One of the races that I remember well was the 12 lap paarlauf with the teams seeded so that they were all equal and this was also good fun but the time that it took to run a 12 lap relay was so slight that we went for the usual run after that – normally Alistair, Doug and I ran together but on one occasion  a young Jim Cooper (Cooperman) came with us and suffered more than he expected to!    That race had many good men in it – George Turnbull, Conrad Dietrich McAndie, Tommy Malcolm and others including Bernie Fickling.   Bernie gave me, shortly before he died, a book that he had been given by his parents as a Christmas present in 1949 when he was a boy and for which I will always be grateful.   The book is still an athletics classic – “The Science of Athletics” by F.A.M. Webster originally published in 1936 and reprinted in 1948.   I read it, made some notes and brought it back for him and he refused to take it insisting that it was a gift.    Another book incident: at the Clydesdale Harriers club presentation in the very early 2000’s I was given a book by one of my friends who had seen it in a second hand shop.   It was “Funny Running Shorts” by Dave Bedford and Geoff Wightman and had a dedication inside to Adrian from Robert and Alison.   It could only be from Robert and Alison Chalmers to Adrian Callan who was in hospital seriously ill at the time.    I always got on well with Adrian and kept inviting him into the BMC races that was putting on in the 80’s when his running was at a low ebb and he was good enough to say in a regular Springburn club newsletter at that time that I had helped keep him in the sport at a time when he was going through a bad patch.   Then in 1986 when he won the SAAA Championship and was a sub 4 minute miler he was not picked for the Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh that year.   As a protest he asked me (as SAAA Staff Coach for 5000/10000 metres)  to take back the official trophy that went to the Scottish Champion.   I refused saying that I had actually argued the case for his inclusion and suggested that he take it to Bob Peel in Monteith Avenue who had been President of the SAAA.   I believe that he did this.   I had a lot of time for Adrian and regarded him as a Springburn Harrier even at the end of his career when he was running for another club.

Then daughter Liz started training with Strathkelvin Ladies which was organised by two formidable athletes in Molly Wilmoth and Aileen Lusk.    They had been top notch athletes who were now into coaching the girls and Liz went twice a week for a time until we moved to Killearn.   Her particular friend at Strathkelvin was Sally Ann Sword and they travelled to several meetings together such as the West District Cross Country Championships at Bellshill.   Sally’s career went on much longer than Liz’s though.   Sal’s Dad Graham is still a very good friend and was timekeeper at the four Loch Katrine 12K Races that Liz organised in recent years.   He is one of the best  known and most respected officials in the country now.   Other girls at Strathkelvin at the time included Claire and Marlene Gemmell.

One of the biggest compliments I was ever paid was to be asked to speak at a Springburn presentation evening.    Apart from Tam Hoy singing ‘Sam the Skull’, that evening was remembered for Harry Gorman’s introduction which was more a wind up than a eulogy!   While I’m on about Harry – how about Harry and vinegar, or Harry Springburn at Helenvale?   Neither is about training at Springburn but they are nice wee stories.   I said that Eddie S was our postman when we got to Lenzie and one morning I was talking about a particularly good run by Harry the night before.   Eddie told me that Harry’s form had been in and out for some time and they didn’t know what caused it.   They thought about everything and tried various remedies before coming up with the answer.   Apparently Harry liked fish and chips with lots of vinegar and they discovered that he was allergic to vinegar.   he went on eating his fish and chips but laid off the vinegar   –    and his form developed the consistency that eventually made him the runner he was!   There used to be Glasgow Transport Sports at Helenvale Track in the east end of Glasgow on a Tuesday night.    The quality of the Two Miles Team Race was always good and not too many clubs were invited.    The top team this year was Motherwell YMCA and although McCafferty wasn’t running they had a good team with Alex Brown being their top man.    Going in to the last lap it was Alex and Harry jousting for the lead and the win.   The lead changed four or five times in a very competitive lap and Dunky Wright, the commentator, really lost the place in his excitement.   The commentary was something like “And it’s Brown in the lead closely followed by Gorman of Springburn who now takes the lead.   It’s Gorman, no it’s Brown battling back into the lead.   It’s Alex Brown, no it’s Harry Springburn (and he repeated it without realising it)…………”it’s Harry Springburn…”    I don’t know who won because I was struggling along further down the field but Harry has always been Harry Springburn to me since then!    There were a lot of Tuesday night meetings at that thime and in the Kilsyth Rangers Sports at Kilsyth, a Springburn runner called Knox (not Eddie) was on the programme as Konx which struck me as a much better name!

I have lots of good memories of training and racing with Springburn Harriers and the link continued for many years – eg when Clydesdale Harriers had a tribute evening for George White and David Bowman, Danny Wilmoth gave me thirteen sets of the old ‘Scots Athlete’ magazine.   The evening had representatives of Vicky Park, Garscube, Springburn, Vale of Leven, etc and each table of eight had a single magazine at each place as a starting point for conversation if any were needed.   It was an excellent evening and twelve sets of the magazine were given away that night.   Danny had contributed much more than he knew to the success of that night.

The Lopers obviously learned a lot from each other.   What they learned from past experience was put into the mix of conversations on the hoof and qualified, modified, altered and added to as a result.   Where had the information come from?    Each has said his bit on the page about Coaching but we have to look at the clubs that they came from.    There are, to my mind at least, two kinds of runner that Scottish harriers respect:   there are the one club men like Bill Scally of Shettleston, Colin Martin of Dumbarton and, dare I say it, me at Clydesdale, and there are those who love the sport and always join the nearest club to where they live at any point.    If we look at the Lopers we get differing pictures.

I have been a member of Clydesdale Harriers since 1957 but was also a member of the British Milers Club, the Scottish Marathon Club and the Spiridon Club of Great Britain.   The club had the benefit of input from Ian Donald whose Shettleston background added to everybody’s store of information, Allan Faulds whose experiences in Stirling and Exeter increased the info bank and Bill Wheeler from Portsmouth also gave a new dimension to training.    So, although a one club man, there was a variety of perspectives to be included.

Bill had a longer experience of athletics than any of us and a variety of clubs had contributed to his education.    In his own words: “I started with Edinburgh Eastern Harriers and moved to London where I did not run for a while.   I later joined Cambridge Harriers who trained at Bexleyheath and because I worked as a civilian for the Metropolitan Police was allowed to train at the Duke of York track at Chelsea.   (This was a real hotbed of athletics and it was one of the tracks favoured by Franz Stampfl’s group which included Roger Bannister, Chris Chataway, etc and must have been a real learning experience.   BMcA)     I moved back to Edinburgh and rejoined EEH where Charlie Fraser and Jimmy Devlin were the leading runners at the time (the early 50’s).   We trained on the old Meadowbank with runners from most of the other Edinburgh clubs.    I had started the long Sunday run with Cambridge and introduced it along with 400 metres rep sessions on the track.   I then moved to Newcastle and joined the Gateshead Congers Harriers, not to be confused with the Gateshead Harriers.   It was a tiny club but a good training group and with a nucleus of three won lots of team prizes around the North of England.   The Road Runners Club had a good North East Branch and organised plenty of races around Tyneside and Teesside.    With Gateshead Stadium as a track base and thriving track and cross country leagues it was a great place to be.   The club eventually ran out of members and folded.   Rather than join the mighty Gateshead I joined Gosforth Harriers.   While in England I had run for Edinburgh AC in the Edinburgh to Glasgow.    I moved to Cumbernauld in 1966 and then to Kirkintilloch where I joined Springburn Harriers.   I moved to Durham in 1977 and after initially rejoining Gosforth  which was 20 miles away, transferred to Durham City Harriers.”

Despite racing in the Edinburgh to Glasgow for Edinburgh AC and Springburn he only ever had the one medal as a member of the most meritorious club performance outside the first three teams.    That was in 1956 and the picture that appeared on the cover of the ‘Scots Athlete’ magazine for January 1957 appears above with Bill third from left in the back row.

Lots of clubs but lots of travelling and always it was the local club that he joined.   The athletics education that he picked up must have been considerable.   And all this was put in to the mix between 1966 and 1977 on the long Sunday runs, on the shorter midweek runs and in cars travelling between races.   Bill of course went on to become a Senior Coach – I would suggest that he had learned at least as much from this wide range of experience as he did from the coaching courses!

Alistair’s experiences were different and added another dimension to the discussions.    Alistair had an interesting background in that he was initially a member of the St Modan’s  club in Stirling who became a professional athlete for a number of years before coming back into amateur athletics and joining Springburn Harriers when he moved to Lenzie.

In my book of biographies of Clydesdale Harriers from 1957 – 2007 I say of Allan Faulds that there are two kinds of athlete that other Scottish athletes respect – those who are one club men who stay with their first club throughout their career and those who make a point of joining the local club wherever they happen to be at any time.   Allan always joined the local outfit and that included Stirling, Exeter, Clydesdale, Perth Strathtay, Fife and of course the University clubs.   oug was also in this group and ran at various times for Dundee Hawkhill Harriers, Highgate Harriers, Edinburgh Athletic Club, Springburn Harriers and Fife AC as well as several University clubs.   What a wonderful range of experiences on which to draw when organising his own training!

As far as I was concerned, I was always a one club man but mixed with several original thinkers on athletics from the excellent but unorthodox Cyril O’Boyle to the thoughtful and considered David Bowman via such as Jock Semple within the club and also talked to anyone who would stand still long enough.   The range of experiences within the Lopers group was vast – and then you count in the conversations with the ‘guest’ or ‘honorary’ lopers!   You couldn’t have found a better group to work with or learn from.

The Famous Four came from a variety of clubs and backgrounds and all had previous careers as runners but is is fairly interesting to note that almost all of their personal best performances came during the 1970’s – the longer distance ones at least that is.    My own best times at One Mile/Two Miles etc came from the 60’s and Alastair’s at 800 were in the 60’s.   My collection of Scottish Athletics Records Annuals goes no further back thena the year I arrived in Lenzie and I’ll put in a page about the Springburn club strength separately but the first entries I can find for the Lopers were in 1969 when Doug appeared as a Junior in the Senior 3000 metres where he was eighteenth with 8:36.8 and the 10000 metres where he was twentieth with 31:45.4    At this point he was running for London University and Dundee Hawkhill Harriers.   On the same page as his Senior 10000, is a list of Six Miles times where Brian McAusland is ranked eight in 31:36.   In the Junior rankings Doug was seventh in the 1500 metres with a time of 4:01.5, second in the 3000, and second in the 5000 metres with 15:13.0.

The main standard distances for endurance runners were the 5000 metres, the 10000 metres, the 10 Miles and the Marathon.   I have these in tabular form first with comments and  pb’s at other distances are noted below.

*   Alastair had by far the widest range of top rate performances.   He had a pb of 1:57 for 800 metres and 4:03 for 1500 metres (at Huntershill!) and the other times right up to the marathon as above.   All of the times here were run in winning races except for the 10 miles where he was second in the Brampton – Carlisle in November 1976 with the stand out being the marathon win in 1979 in his lifetime best of 2:18.   This would bear out his contention that he had a good attitude but maybe suggests that he had more than a wee bit of speed.    Many have the attitude but not the speed, some have the speed but not the attitude – he had both.   It is maybe interesting to note that he could have had a successful and more comfortable career running shorter distances – how many sprinters would make good 800 metres runners but are content to win prizes at local level?   How many good track runners are reluctant to make the step up to the marathon?    Very few in the Twenty First Century I think.

*   If Brampton 1976 was a good day for Alastair, it was better for Springburn (two team prizes) and better yet for Bill Ramage.   Bill was nineteenth in the time above but won second vet plus second handicap and as a member of Springburn teams that were also placed he took awards as part of the third club team and second vet team!    Some days stand out in your memory.   Some of Bill’s pb’s are in the table above – add One Mile 4:37.   He says that he was not a good marathon runner but not bad up to 15 miles.   In the days before metrication he ran all the Highland Games road races over non standard distances.   Some of his best races were in the early 60’s in the North East of England with the best ever being the Morpeth – Newcastle on 1st January 1960 over “13 miles and 4 furlongs” – as it said on the race certificate) in 1 hour 14 minutes 58 seconds which was not much more than a minute behind the winner – Ian Breckenridge of Victoria Park best road 10 at Redcar.    Like all Scots at the time, he (and we) sought good class races – Alastair and Doug went to Harlow, Sandbach, Rotherham and many other venues south of the border and I even went as far as Boston.

*   My owns track pb’s were early in my career and mostly in the 1960’s over Imperial Measure Distances and on grass or blaes tracks.   They are roughly comparable with the above, eg the Three Miles best was 14:45 which is slightly slower than the 15:00 dead quoted above.   .

*   Doug was a very good runner over all distances – especially in excess of 3000 metres and represented Scotland twice in the International Cross Country Championship: once as a Junior in 1970 and then again as a Senior in 1974.   That he had a tremendous competitive attitude was without doubt – two wins in the SAAA 10000 metres and one in the now discontinued 10 Miles Track Championship say it all.   When the track ten miles championship was discontinued only one Scot had won it in a faster time – Lachie Stewart, Commonwealth Games 10000 metres winner in 1970.  In the Association of Road Runners list of All Time 10 Mile Track Times, he is fourth Scot ranked and has the 72nd and 73rd fastest of all time.   Find it at www.arrs.net/AllTime/AL_O10M.htm    The best 1500 metres time I can find for him is the 3:59.9 that he ran at the Bell’s Indoor Arena when finishing third in the SAAA Indoor Championships in 1975.   The 47:47 for 10 Miles on the road was when he finished fourth in the Tom Scott in 1975.       He also had top ten placings in the National Cross Country Championships when it was contested by many high class athletes and his victories on the roads were seldom if at all comfortable wins against poor opposition.   Finally he is mentioned in the Highgate Harriers website in the interview with Bob Slowe (what a name for a runner.)

Alastair and Doug warming up at Coatbridge

The issue of how many miles to run for a good endurance career is a thorny one and one that is raised a lot these days.   At Scottish level, Ian Stewart and Liz McColgan are both saying folk don’t run enough.   In the pages of ‘Athletics Weekly’ Ian McMillan and many others write frequently on the topic and of course old farts go on ad nauseam if you stop long enough in their presence!   So what did the Lopers do about miles?    Abilities ranged from Alistair’s 2:18 and Doug’s 2:19 to Bill and I running in the 2:30’s.   Since Alistair was the quickest over the distance and also fastest 800 metres runner then we should start with him.

Coming from a track background where 7 miles was a ‘long’ run, he arrived in Lenzie and in his own words “Things changed when I arrived in Lenzie and Mr Ramage must take some credit for that….. Looking back at my diaries I see that during the years 74, 75,76 I averaged 70 miles a week for the three years and these laid the foundation for any future achievements.”   So we are talking about 70 miles a week for three years: 52 x 3 x 70 = 156 weeks at 70 miles = 10, 920 miles!   Almost 11000 miles in three years.   That was the groundwork for the years of very high performance.   He won the 1979 Scottish marathon lifting the scalps of guys like Colin Youngson and Don McGregor and his run in included the following average weekly mileages:-

January  62 mpw; February 74; March 62 (missed three days because of injury); April 91; May 69 (including easing down and recovering for the marathon in June.)

Some statistics: he only missed 3 days training in that five month period; From 1st January to 25th May he did 173 sessions in 145 days then ran a pb.    He ran 13 races in the period ranging from 3000 metres on the track to the Clydebank to Helensburgh 16+ which he won.   His longest run was 2 hours 10 minutes (19.5 miles) which he did the day after winning the Helensburgh race.   He says “It sometimes concerns me when I hear about people doing 12 week marathon preparations that they have read in magazines when it is really a year round preparation and probably several years that are required.”  

It should of course be noted that when he talks of the preparation required he is talking about the preparation required to RACE marathons  and not just to run them.   I would think it is probably possible to run a marathon inside 3 hours on a 12 week prep if you have a serious running background.    I know that three Clydesdale Harriers ran in the Shettleston Marathon about this period and Allan Faulds who was doing about 45 mpw was fifth in 2:41, I was doing 65-70 mpw and was seventh in 2:45 and Bobby Shields who was doing about 100 mpw was outside three hours.

Doug was very similar to Alistair in his approach to his athletics – the only real difference that I would note is that Doug seemed to race much more.   He says:

“I agree with most if not all that Alistair says – especially about the need to have the pace if not the speed.   My background  was very traditional at least for the time I grew up in in that I started at about 16 running cross country in winter and track (which meant 800/1500) in summer.   The country built up your strength and the track your speed.   This meant that you soon found easier days running at 6 minutes a mile came without any difficulty.   By the time I was running marathons I was not doing a huge mileage averaging 70 miles weekly.   The split between the days was easy: 16-18 on Sundays running steadily but not slowly, approximately 10 miles per day Monday to Thursday with a shorter recovery run on Friday.   A race on Saturday with a warm up and cool down (where did warm downs go?)  would make up the 70-ish.   Of the mid week sessions one would be on the track eg 20 x 400 in about 70 seconds with 50 seconds  recovery.   One of the other nights would be a fartlek or an acceleration run.

The races would vary in distance.   In winter the cross country/road racing season which involved races from 2.5 miles up to 7.5 .   I feel strongly that the short races maintained your speed over what were sometimes challenging underfoot conditions and the fast short road races eg the Nigel Barge, the Glasgow Uni 5, the Springburn Cup kept you running fast on good road surfaces before you started your build up to a Spring marathon.   Spring would include a couple of longer races  probably a couple of  10 milers and one a bit longer but some of my best marathon preparations included a few track 5000’s.   I also believe longer track races are good not only for developing/maintaining speed but also mentally strengthen you.   Ask today’s marathoners how many track 10K’s they have run in the past three years (I’m still very proud of my track 10K record!)

To summarise, I was always prepared to run shorter distances at faster than 5 minute miles – I’m not sure this is the case nowadays.”  

I was a lot slower than that but I think I did what I could and have no ‘if only’ moments about the marathons I ran.   In 1981 as a 43 year old vet I ran a 2:41 in April and a 2:45 in June.   My miles that year were averaging 73 mpw in January, 69 in February, 69 in March, 74 in April, 88 in May and 67 in June including the easing up before the race.    I had first done 100 a week in 1964 but in the 70’s the highest I reached was 92 but the average was high overall.   My own miles in 1973, 74 and 75 were as in the table below.

Allied to the miles as a method or aid to preparation was ….THE DIET.  This was called either the Carbohydrate Loading Diet or the Glycogen Depletion Diet depending on your point of view.   It was a way of organising your diet in the week before the race to gain maximum benefit from it that had been used by Scandinavian skiers and adapted to marathon running by Ron Hill among others.   If you were a Glycogen Bleedout  follower you had the usual 20+ miles run on the Sunday before the Saturday race to deplete the body’s stores of glycogen and the kept them artificially low by not consuming any sugars or carbohydrates until the Thursday of the week when you went back onto the NORMAL diet.   The body having been starved of them, stored carbs and sugars in big quantities which were at their peak on the Saturday of the race.    If you were a carbo loading man you simply ate loads of carbohydrates in the days immediately before the race.    I did the Diet in its seven day purity several times and thought that it worked although you felt pretty dire at times from the Sunday to the Thursday.    Bill also tried it a couple of time as did Alistair.   Alistair has this to say of the Diet: “I did the diet and remember it being horrendously difficult during the low carbohydrate phase.   It was difficult to know how much the Diet affected performance and how much was down to good preparation.   Later on instead of doing the full week’s diet I would stay off carbs for maybe 36 hours  and then load for the last couple of weeks before the marathon.   This seemed to suit me better.”     As I remember it Doug also did a three day version of the diet.

We were all really surprised and saddened to hear of Bill’s death in Durham in August 2009.    I had known him for some time before we met up again in Lenzie in the late 1960’s and were, I suppose the original Lopers!   We had run in the same races – we competed at Airdrie, in the Tom Scott, the Clydebank to Helensburgh and many more on the road and track.   We were of a very similar standard with him beating me one week and me getting the better of him the next.   Scottish athletes have great respect for two categories of runner – the whole hearted club man who sticks to one club and for the guy who always joins the local club and does his bit for the sport.   Bill, travelling as he did for his job, was in the second category. Starting with Edinburgh Eastern Harriers, he moved to London and joined Cambridge Harriers; when he returned to Edinburgh he rejoined Edinburgh Eastern; when he went to Newcastle he joined the Gateshead Congers (NOT Gateshead Harriers) and when they folded he joined up with Gosforth Harriers.   On returning to Scotland, he joined Springburn Harriers.   (While in England he had run for Edinburgh AC in the Edinburgh to Glasgow Race).   When Walter Ross started up the Scottish Veteran Harrier Club Bill was one of the very first members and an enthusiastic member.   The picture above shows Bill in a Scottish Vets vest leading Ron Hill up the finishing straight.

Bill filled many roles in the sport, a good class runner he went on to be a Level Four Coach; he worked on many committees – club committees, Scottish Marathon Club and so on.   He was a real source of information on subjects athletic and a good companion on road runs with a great sense of humour.   He was a super guy and it was a real blow to hear of his passing.

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