RUNNING

See Also: THE HOUSE OF COMMONS Parliamentary Privilege; THE RUNNING MAN; SPORTS

Eighteenth-Century Professionalism

In 1770 James Parrot, a market trader, ran a measured mile in under four minutes. He did this for a wager. The course started at Charterhouse Wall in Goswell Road, along the length of Old Street and finished at St Leonard s Church on the junction with Kingsland Road. There is evidence of other sub-four minutes miles having been run during the era. It has been argued that the Victorians first ignored and then forgot these feats because they were not attuned to their own preference for amateurism in sport.

Location: Church of St Leonard, 119 Shoreditch High Street, E1 6JN (red, orange)

See Also: RAILWAYS Sport; TIMEPIECES

Website: https://shoreditch.saint.church

The Four-Minute Mile

In 1945 Gunder H gg, a Swede, ran a mile 4min. 1.4sec.. The same year Roger Bannister (1929-2018) resolved to become a miler after watching Sydney Wooderson and Arne Andersson race against one another at White City Stadium. He studied medicine at the University of Oxford. As the President of the university's athletics club, he oversaw the improvement of the Iffley Road Stadium so that its running track met international standards. He had no coach. In 1950 he started interval training. This involved alternating intense and gentle running. He won a race in 4min. 8.3sec.. He started his clinical training at St Mary's Hospital. Most of his training was done around Harrow School's playing fields, which was close to his parents home. At the Helsinki Olympics in 1952 he was the favourite for 1500m but his races were staged on consecutive days something that his time-limited training regime left him ill-prepared for. In the final he broke the Olympic record but came fourth. He had intended to retire had he won the gold. Subsequently, he gave himself two years in which to run the first four-minute mile. He avoided entering races because of the extreme nervousness that he felt during them. He used his physiological knowledge to improve his breathing technique. In spring 1953 he ran 4min. 2sec.. In the autumn Stampfl became Bannister's first ever coach. Brasher and Chris Chataway became his training partners.

The Austrian athletics coach Franz Stampfl trained as a visual artist. He enjoyed sport and used coaching as a means of generating an income. His approach was that of a sports psychologist. He would find out how his trainees minds worked and then tailor an approach that would enable them to create a vision that they would seek to attain. He had a pronounced strand of mysticism.

Following the Anschluss, he moved to Britain. Following the outbreak of the Second World War he tried to volunteer to serve in the Royal Air Force. He was promptly arrested and detained as an enemy alien. It came from direct experience. He had been placed on a ship that was intended to take him to Canada. One hour out of port, the vessel was sunk by a German U-boat. He spent nine hours clinging to wreckage before he was rescued. He created and implemented his own dictum. It's only pain was to be his catchphrase. He had had experience of it himself.

Stampfl he spent the rest of the Second World War in Canada and Australia. In 1946 he returned to Britain. He appreciated that there was scope for improving the performances of middle-distance runners not only by stressing stamina but also by giving weight to developing pace. He did this with an innovative training system that laid its emphasis upon the runners aiming to improve their speed over the quarter mile.

In 1953-4 Stampfl ran a series of athletics evening classes at the Duke of York s Barracks off The King's Road in Chelsea. Among those who attended these were Roger Bannister, Chris Brasher, and Christopher Chataway (1931-2014), young men who had little respect for the way in which many foreign athletes followed their coaches dictats blindly. Chataway was a smoker. In the early 1950s an oarsman had suggested to him that his athletic performance might be improved if he gave up smoking. Chataway had replied that he did not smoke on the day of a race.

Stampfl sought to convince others of his vision through persuasion and was possessed of a wide intellectual hinterland that helped to induce the group to become susceptible to his ideas. After the training sessions the runners and their coach would go to a Lyons Corner House. There, the Austrian would rarely speak of running to them. Instead, his conversation would range over the arts and other subjects.

In spring 1954 the runners achieved their first 59sec. laps. It was widely expected that John Landy, an Australian, might break the four-minute barrier that summer. In May 1954 Bannister worked his morning shift at St Mary's Hospital and then caught the midday train to Oxford. A gale was blowing. Half an hour before the race was due to begin the wind dropped. He ran in a pair of kangaroo leather running shoes. Brasher set the pace for the first two, Chataway the third and some of the fourth, then Bannister used his speed to dash the final 350 yards. The radio commentary was by Harold Abrahams, the 100m champion at the 1924 Olympics. The trio drove to Harrow and walked up the hill and looked down upon London. They did not need to say a word. We all knew the world was at our feet Bannister had little desire to engage with the media. When he did so, the press conference was conducted in the restaurant that Clement Freud ran in the Royal Court Theatre.

In August 1954 46 days after Iffley Landy ran 3min. 58sec. in Turku, Finland. He and Bannister raced one another at the British Empire Games in Vancouver. 40 million people watched the race on television. Lady made the mistake of looking round to see where Bannister was and thereby losing a fraction of a second. Bannister went past him. They both ran a sub-four-minute race. Later than month he won the European 1500m gold in Berne, setting a championship record. Then, at the age of 25, he retired. Bannister went on to become a respected neurologist, specialising in the autonomic nervous system, and academic. He was knighted in 1975 and made a Companion of Honour in 2017. In 1955 Stampfl emigrated to Australia.

Location: The Duke of York's Headquarters, The King's Road, SW3 4RY (red, purple)

St Mary's Hospital, Praed Street, W2 1NY (red, turquoise)

The Royal Court, Sloane Square, SW1W 8AS (purple, red)

Walter George

Walter George (1858-1943) was the great British runner of the later Victorian era.

Lillie Bridge Stadium

In 1887 Lillie Bridge Stadium (1867) burned down. The incident started because two professional runners had an argument about who was going to lose - they had both bet against themselves. The crowd rioted and the stadium was set fire to.

Location: Lillie Bridge Stadium, SW6 1RU (blue, purple)

See Also: RIOTS

The London Marathon

In 1978 the former middle-distance Olympian runners Chris Brasher and John Disley (1928-2016) joined the Ranelagh Harriers, a running club that was based at The Dysart Arms in Ham.¹

In 1979 the pair ran in the New York Marathon; Disley won the over-50s section of the New York Marathon. Brasher wrote a newspaper article about the experience. In this he posed the question as to why London could not stage a similar event. Working with Disley, he organised the first London Marathon. Disley, a Welshman, with an accommodating manner, had a great capacity to soothe those who had been adversely impacted by Brasher's candour. This was an important factor in enabling the race to come into being. Both men were prepared to remortgage their homes. However, Gillette furnished £50,000 of sponsorship, therefore, they did not need to do so. Disley created the course, Brasher organised the race, which was held in 1981.

The London Marathon has always been vastly oversubscribed by entries. During its early years, when computers were not affordable, it was apparent to the organisers that there the system that they had devised was unable to handle equitably the logistics of the situation. They turned to Paul Zetter, the head of Zetters Football Pools. He allowed his managing director, James Clarke (1923-2012), to oversee the reorganisation of the event. He devised a weighted lottery system. Volunteers from the pools proved to be able to manually process the entries over the course of a single weekend. Mr Clarke continued to be involved in the event's administration and in 1995 was appointed its chairman.

Dan Tunstall Pedoe (1939-2015), a cardiac specialist, was appointed to be the London Marathon's medical director. He devised a series of practices that focused upon prevention. They effectively created marathon medicine. Those people who had a known heart conditions or who experienced chest pains or shortness of breath were required to see a physician before continuing their training. All entrants were required to complete a fifteen-mile-long run prior to the event. His own best recorded time for the distance was 3hrs. 8min..

Location: The Dysart Arms, 135 Petersham Road, TW10 7AA

86-88 Clerkenwell Road, EC1M 5RJ. Zetters offices. Now a boutique hotel. (orange, yellow)

See Also: NIGHTCLUBS Heaven

Website: www.tcslondonmarathon.com www.thedysartpetersham.co.uk www.thezetter.com

¹. Disley had won the 3000m steeplechase bronze at the Helsinki Olympics. He had been the favourite to win gold at the Melbourne Olympics. However, shortly before the Games, he suffered a bout of pneumonia. He ran but finished sixth. Brasher came first.

Running Footmen

A running footman was a liveried servant who ran ahead of a coach to prepare the way for it.

In 1718 the Duke of Wharton set his running man to run against the running footman of Captain L --- over a course from Woodstock Cross to Tyburn. £1000 was waged on the contest's outcome. Two years later his grace lost £1400 to a Mr Diston after the latter's footman beat his. The two men ran the four-mile naked.

The Earl of March, the heir to the 3^rd Duke of Queensberry, would check the speed of his running footmen before he employed them. During the 18^thC the spread of the turnpike system improved the quality of roads. This meant that there was no longer the same need for carriages to be so sturdy. As they became physically lighter so they became faster. Running footmen became increasingly less unnecessary but continued to exist for a while as a distraction for rich men. In 1778 the earl inherited the dukedom of Queensberry as the 4^th duke. He was the last known person to have retained a running footman in his service.

Location: The Footman, 5 Charles Street, W1J 5DF. A pub that was formerly called The Only Running Footman. (purple, grey)

See Also: COACHES; ROADS Turnpikes

Website: www.thefootmanmayfair.com

An Uneven Mile

Derek 'Ibbo' Ibbotson (1932-2017) was one of the leading runners of the 1950s. He trained with South London Harriers. In 1954 he set a new world record for the mile at White City Stadium, running it in 3 minutes 57.2 seconds. Two years later he won a bronze at the Melbourne Olympics in the 500m. In 1958 he was informed that his left leg was three-quarters of an inch shorter than his right one. (Following his retirement he gave chase to a man who tried to steal the family car. He caught the man.)

Sydney Wooderson

Roger Bannister's boyhood hero was Sydney Wooderson (1914-2006). The 5ft. 6in. slightly built, bespectacled London solicitor set world records for the mile (4min. 6.4sec. at London University's Motspur Park sports ground in Surrey in 1937) and half-mile. In 1936 he missed the Olympics because of an ankle injury. Two years later he missed the Empire Games in order to sit his law exams. His 1 min. 49.2 sec. record for the 880 yards stood for seventeen years. He was a member of Blackheath Harriers. In 1944 he was struck down by rheumatic fever, spending four months in hospital. He recovered and was able to resume his international running career. In 1945 the sixteen-year-old Bannister watched him race at White City and became inspired to become a runner himself.

Location: White City Place, Wood Lane, W12 7TP

Website: www.bandbhac.org.uk

David Backhouse 2024