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in 2:8.4, and went into the final next day very confident. I will always remember the superb grass track at Southampton and that race for two reasons. The first being that I realised how good runners were when you competed nationally, and I remembered the race because of what happened as we all fought for positions around the last bend. A shot-putter dropped the shot on his foot and fell onto the track, blocking the two inside lanes, and some of us saw the obstruction and others did not, and I got knocked to the outside lane. I could only finish seventh out of a field of nine in the much slower time of 2:12 against the winner’s 2:6.9. A time which I knew I could match. In my very next race, an 880 yards, running for Eton AC against Reading, I ran 2:8, in second place.
    I carried on with playing rugby until 1951, and I think it was that year when I went over the handlebars of my bike outside Windsor Police Station on my way to the grocers for my Saturday morning work. They had just freshly gravelled the road and I think I picked up most of it in my lips. I went to work and did my Saturday morning, before going off to school in the afternoon to play rugby. I did not play, as my headmaster saw me and the state of my face, and refused to let me play; probably just as well.
    In March 1952, I was invited to represent Berkshire in a special Olympic Fund Raising event; an indoor athletic meeting at Haringey Arena. This was my once only run indoors in my whole running career. The event I was running in was the 600 yards, and it was not easy. The track was flat with very small laps and no banking as they have today. I started on the outside virtually off the proper track, and could not get into the lead as I liked to in the first fifty yards. I had quite a good run though and enjoyed the experience. I remember the occasion, as on the same programme, were the big names of athletics in this country at the time, Arthur Wint and E. McDonald Bailey.
    I won the Berkshire Schools 15 to 17 years age group 880 yards in 2:1.6, and went to Bradford for the All England Schools again. It was a very windy day for the heats, and running from the front, I paid the price not for the last time in my career, and just failed to qualify for the final.
    Training in those early days consisted mainly of long steady runs; my favourite run was up the Long Walk in Windsor Great Park to the famous Copper Horse and then back again. Depending on where I started from, home or school, the return run was about six miles. I did a little training on the track, and when I was included in the Berkshire team for the All England, I had to travel to Reading by train and trolleybus to be coached at Palmer Park, Reading. The coaching here for the 880 yard runners was by Mike Dunhill, a runner from Oxford City AC. The school paid for my travel, which was just about four shillings (20p) for the train fare.
    In 1949, I had joined the then Eton AC (now Windsor, Slough and Eton), where we trained and raced on a recreation ground grass track, and the cross-country races were run along the Thames on the north side of the river. I remember athletics was real fun in those days; I enjoyed racing and I enjoyed training.
    The club was a very compact, small family, with the majority of members coming from two families; the Robsons and the Smiths. It also had a great secretary who became my mentor and guiding light, Len Runyard.
    The changing accommodation for cross-country was the British Restaurant in Eton High Street. In those days there were no showers, just a tin bath of normally cold water, unless someone poured in a jug of hot water. There was also a big advantage in being back first, as the water would still be reasonably clean. After a few very muddy runners had been through, you were more likely to come out dirtier than when you went in. This primitive washing facility was commonplace at all cross-country venues, including major championships like the Southern Counties and