Life on the Run

by Stan Eldon

  March was a quieter month, and there were two major races; the National Junior where I was ninth, and the Inter Services where I was eleventh.

  In April 1956, I had run the Maidenhead ten mile for the first time. The race winner was Jack Heywood (Herne Hill Harriers) and an almost permanent student at Reading University. His time was 53:05, and Mike Barrett (Ealing) was second in 53:44, just in front of me in the third spot with 53:51. I won the Army three mile title and other races during that summer.

  At the end of April, after I had won a six mile invitation race at the White City in 29:48, I started training on the track, which meant running to Tidworth or running on a local grass track at Bulford. My first track session of the year was about nine miles in total, and started with running two 880 yards in 2:7.5 and 2:8, with 440 yards recovery, followed by two 440 yards in 59 and 56.8 seconds, and then 6 × 220 yards, run in between 26 and 28 seconds, and finishing off with 2 × 100 yards in about 10.5 seconds. I took a 220 yard jog between every fast run after the 880 yards. A word of explanation about my sprint times; they were always taken from a flying start. This pattern of training, progressively getting faster in a training session, was to be my main training for the rest of my running career, and helped me to develop a fast finish.

  In May I had quite a few club races; some for Salisbury and others for Windsor. These included a 2:05 880 yards, several miles in around 4:30, and a 440 yards in 54.5. I ran for Berkshire in the Inter County Championships at the White City, and finished sixth in 14:0.8. Wins in the Berkshire Championships followed; the one mile in 4:18.4 and the three miles in 14:27.2. My next run was not so good, I ran in the Southern six miles and could only finish sixth in 29:59, but within four days I was back to my best. Winning a three mile race for the Army against Hampshire in 14:14.8.

  Most of my training was on the track at this time, and typical sessions could include up to 28 × 220 yards, with the same recovery and all run in under 30 seconds. Other sessions would include up to 14 × 440 yards, but these were normally as part of a longer session where I would run other distances as well. Another typical day at this time would be 6 × 3/4 mile, with a two lap jog between each 3/4, and finishing with 6 × 220 yards.

  Other races in June included finishing sixth in the Southern Counties three mile in 13:59 (first time under 14 minutes), the Army three mile title in 14:10.2, run on a very heavy track at Aldershot, and a 3,000 metre invitation, on the same track one day later, in 8:33.

  July was a very busy month, both before and after finishing my National Service in the second week. I ran for the AAAs against Kent in a two mile race; 4th in 9:17.6. I was ninth in my first AAA senior championship three miles at the White City, where I ran 14:02. All together I had over twelve races in that month, plus an unusual event. Just before I left the Army I was sent to Aldershot for the Army Modern Pentathlon Championship; the event I had declined to enter. Not to take part, but to run the 4,000 metre course and set the standard that the competitors had to match to score maximum points. I was not open to bribery, so I ran as fast as I could and set 13:01 as the standard over the cross-country circuit.

  I had a busy July and I was back at Inkerman Barracks, Woking, for my demob from the Royal Military Police. I had a total of around fifteen races during that month, both before and after leaving the Army. Apart from the Inter Services Championships, where I finished third in the three miles in 14:19.4, most of these runs were in club matches.

  While in the Army my running had progressed rapidly. I set a world best for the three miles for a junior under nineteen years of 14:19 in 1955, and in April 1956, I set a world best by six seconds for an under nineteen-year-old of 29:48.3. I was only eighth and it was my first six mile race, but I did have some good names behind me, including Chris Brasher who later that year won the Olympic steeplechase. The Kenyans have probably got fifty or maybe hundreds of young runners running faster than these times today. I had been the Army Three Mile Champion, but had not managed to win the cross-country because that was held by Basil Heatley, the man who was to win an Olympic silver medal at the marathon in 1964.

  Chapter Five: On the Beat

  I left the Army in July 1956 and applied to rejoin the Berkshire Constabulary. I had to report to my old police station at Windsor to see if I measured up to their requirements. I had no problem education wise, but the inspector who was checking me out, started to take my measurements. Everything was all right until it came to my chest measurement. He put the tape around my skinny frame and it was barely thirty-four inches; quite a bit below the required thirty-eight inches. Luckily the superintendent came in to see how things were going; the inspector conveyed the disaster of my chest measurement to him. The ‘Super’ then asked the inspector to measure me again, and he put his hand behind my back and twisted the tape to take up a few inches, and I was in the police. The only problem was that every year when I got my new uniform, it was like a sack and always had to be tailored to fit. In these early days we had two different uniforms; one was the now familiar open-neck collared tunic with lapels, and the other was a relic from the previous century, the buttoned-up to the neck tunic.

  Shortly after my interview at Windsor, I was at the Police Training College at Sandgate, in Kent. There was a slight panic when some of the ex-servicemen on my course were called back to the forces for the Suez crisis. I was under threat of being called back for a few days, but they did not require my running, signalling or shooting skills, so I was able to settle into the course. Surprisingly for someone who had never been very good at exams, I had top marks all the way through the course; all over ninety per cent; much to the annoyance of my class mates who studied every evening, while I ran along the seafront between Sandgate and Hythe. I enjoyed the time at Sandgate and got plenty of training.

  Other memories of Sandgate were not so good. The chief constable who took the salute at our passing out parade, went to prison shortly afterwards for corruption, and not long after that there was a scandal around the commandant of the training centre. It was a time when the practises of the past had got out of hand and were being jumped on.

  I managed to keep up with regular racing and was getting more invitations. Somehow I managed to get away from Sandgate to take part in quite a few of these events. I won a two mile race at one of my favourite events, the Agars Plough meeting at Slough, in 9:10.8, and then two days later I was at the White City in an invitation 3,000 metres, where I managed fifth in 8:28.6. I went back to the White City again for the Fire Brigade Sports, where I ran the 3,000 metres in 8:32. I had plenty of club races to take me up to November, when I finished fifth in the five mile race at Rochester in 25:53.

  Once that was over, it was into work as a police constable on the beat at Wokingham. I lived in digs and got home to Windsor as often as I could. It was a very uneventful year of policing, apart from racing home on my cycle one lunch time, and not watching the traffic in front of me in the main shopping street of the town. I hit a car that had stopped and went clean over the top, with my helmet flying off in another direction. The populous of Wokingham were amused and I was suitably embarrassed but not damaged.

  On another occasion, I set off the Broadmoor alarm early one Sunday morning and had everyone in a panic for miles around.

  There was, for a few weeks, some trouble on Saturday nights at the Drill Hall in Wokingham, where gangs of teddy boys from Slough and Maidenhead used to congregate, but it did not last long as our ‘governor’ believed in treating force with force, and after a few Saturday nights of “pressure” from us in blue, they decided Wokingham was not the place to be. Today it would be called “zero tolerance” - nothing much has changed over forty-plus years!

  It was on the beat at Wokingham that I first came across real poverty. It was in an unexpected place, in cottages between the very good Rose Inn on the Market Place in the centre of the town and the local bowls club, a short distance behind it. I had to make enquiri
es at one of these cottages, and I never forgot the scene that greeted me. A place with hardly any furniture and very young children on the bare floors eating crusts of dried bread, taken from the floor, which they had also used as their toilet over a period of time. I did report it and something was done to help those poor children. I just hope they eventually grew up into a better life.

  Night duty in Wokingham was very interesting, as the town had some strange acoustics. If I was in the town centre sitting on my dustbin behind the town hall, a favourite resting place for me when on night duty, I could hear men speaking to each other quite clearly at the Explorator Fish Depot, over half a mile away.

  I had a very good police superintendent at Wokingham, and he and all the staff there were very helpful to me as I progressed my running. After I won my first Police Athletic Association Cross-Country Championship, they presented me with a special certificate, that had been designed and painted by a patient at Broadmoor, and a pair of red Adidas running spikes. I never did know who the special painted certificate was by, but I was told he was a mass murderer. I still have and treasure that special presentation.

  The CND marches from Aldermaston were taking place during my time in the police. They were at Easter weekends and normally passed through our territory on Good Friday. I was on escort duty with the march on a few occasions, and enjoyed my walk with them, even though I was in uniform and on the ‘other’ side. It was always good natured and trouble free.

  My police duties were mixed and various. In February 1958, I was working for a short while with CID at Wokingham, and used to run the seven miles from my home in Reading to work and back again. The fourteen miles a day was a good way to keep up my training while working for six days a week. It was while on CID duty at Wokingham, when I heard the devastating news about the Munich air crash of the Manchester United Busby Babes.

  During my time both at Woodley and Wokingham, I did have to deal with quite a few sudden deaths of one sort or another, and was ‘Coroner’s Officer’ on a number of cases. This required my attendance at postmortems, which I never had any difficulty with. In fact I was fascinated by the work of pathologists and often used to act as assistant to them. The difficult part of this work was dealing with relatives, especially when one was the first bearer of the bad news about the death of a relative or loved one.

  Other more mundane duties could be the Christmas turkey patrols. Keeping an eye on anywhere that turkeys were being raised for the Christmas trade. This also included a watch on growing Christmas trees, and on the sports clubs who had a bar, to make sure no one broke in for some easy booze. We also did a lot of farm inspections and supervision.

  Throughout the year there could be other observation duties, which included spending all night under hedges in front gardens trying to catch a persistent burglar, whose wife later worked for me as a secretary, and laying in wait close to a pigsty trying to catch ‘criminals’ stealing pig food. I wonder if even a country bobby today would get caught up in this small type of crime.

  Police work was never without unusual and funny instances. When people went on holiday, they asked for their house to go on the unattended house list, so that the patrolling officers could look in during the night and make sure the property was secure with no unwanted visitors. Customers used to tell us when they were going and when they were due to return, but they were not very good at informing us if they returned from holiday a day or two early. On more than one occasion I checked a house and found a door unlocked. Quietly and gently I would creep into the house, truncheon at the ready, through the ground floor, and then finding no one, I would climb the stairs to the bedrooms. Then I would hear a noise and burst into a room with torch blazing, only to find a couple in bed. A shock for them and for me, but after a quick explanation about their early return, I would leave them to it.

  There was another activity I could come across at night when patrolling down country lanes or off the main roads. A car or van with steamed up windows and may be with a little rocking motion. It was naturally my duty to shine my torch and make sure there was no illegal activity taking place. Frequently one of the two people in any car was the same young lady who had a rather appropriate but unfortunate name (she had the same surname as Sir Vivian, the British explorer and geologist).

  Another annual duty took me to Oxford for November 5th celebrations. There were always celebrations at the famous Randolph Hotel, and huge numbers of students used to gather for some rather riotous fun there, so extra police were drafted in to protect the property and keep the peace. The university proctors were always in attendance, and they dealt with most problems.

  At this time, Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Reading Borough were three completely separate police forces, and this led to some interesting activities on the county and borough boundaries. Between Woodley and Reading, we used to persuade vagrants and other undesirables to seek refuge in the county town, and between the two county police forces, that met at Sonning-on-Thames, it was not unknown for a body in the river to be persuaded to float across to the other side.

  In my early days in the police at Wokingham, and later at Woodley, the local constabulary were inundated with gifts at Christmas time. These ranged from turkeys to cases of beer, wines, spirits and other goodies. Various methods were used to share these out, and towards the end it was normally by holding a draw and everyone received something. Towards the end of my service, the clampdown started on these ‘gifts’. There had been a couple of high-profile cases of senior officers, including that chief constable, being found guilty of bribery and corruption, and everything was tightened up and gifts of any kind were not encouraged. At the modest local level I never thought it did any harm, and it helped to keep a good relationship between local business and the police. It was like another perk of the job, that I benefited from on a number of occasions with the full approval of my bosses. If there was an accident, especially at night, and we called out a certain garage to collect a wrecked car, there was always a fiver in it for the reporting officer. At that time this represented about two days’ income from the ‘job’.

  Father William Frank Eldon before the First World War

  A very young Eldon at Tisbury in 1937

  Stan Eldon and sister Janet 1939

  Centre front choirboy Eldon with choir of All Saints’, Windsor

  The first win

  The young glamour girl I married

  A display of trophies won by age 16 years

  Leaving All Saints’ Church, Windsor, Wedding Day 1957

  Passing Out Royal Military Police 1954, Eldon 4th from right front row

  Passing Out two years later as a police constable, nearest the camera

  Superintendent Alf East sees the young Eldon off on his beat with TV crew in attendance

  On duty alongside the Thames at Sonning, mixing training with duty

  “You can’t park here madam” with news cameras recording as usual

  Phew! Thank goodness that’s over

  Leading the field in the Rochester five mile road race 1959

  A quick rub down from wife Marion at 5 Eldon Road

  Primitive weight training, a flat iron on each foot

  Tivoli Gardens, Copenhagen in 1957 with Dave Shaw and Derek Ibbotson

  Running home to Eldon Road, Reading

  An abundance of police trophies and others

  Duty follows major win

  One of my driving lessons with BSM

  The special certificate presented by police colleagues at Wokingham

  Chapter Six: The Running Really Takes Off

  The year of 1957 started with an abandoned County Championship at Reading on 5th January; but the year did start off with my winning the Berkshire Cross-Country, with a time of 47:34 for the nine miles in the rearranged race the following week. This was followed by the Inter Count
ies at Rugby, where I got away to a very fast start but faded badly between three and six miles, before coming again at the finish to come in twenty-ninth in 39:17.

  I then started my usual increase in mileage, and in the week ending 26th January I ran seventy-five miles, with a win on the Saturday in a club cross-country match. I won, but I actually finished and dead-heated with a club colleague, and treated the race as a training run.

  The following week my training was down to one of eight miles on the Saturday as I had flu, and it must have been pretty bad because I actually had two days in bed. My diary note on the day I got back to training says “Marion did about two miles”; this must have been a historic moment, I do not recall her running very often.

  The following week I missed running on the Sunday, probably due to a quick turn round of my shift. If I had worked on Saturday night and finished at 6 a.m., I was probably back on duty at 2 p.m., so there was not much time to train. On the Monday I got cracking again with a fifteen mile run, and followed this up on Tuesday with another fifteen miles, but with some fast running over one mile to four miles. The next day it was up to sixteen miles, made up of five fast stages of about two miles with slight rest in between. On Thursday I had two training runs, with fourteen miles in the morning, which included 4 × 1.5 - 3 miles, and in the afternoon six miles with lots of short fast sprints up to 300 yards at a time. On Friday I did just twelve miles, made up of 3 × 2 miles fast, with slow running in between, and on the Saturday I had a 5.5 mile race which I won, but training as well on road and country. The total in the six days, ninety-two miles.