Chapter Eleven: Business Life Begins

Before I could go into business I had to get further permission, and I wrote to the AAAs again; this time Harold Abrahams (of Chariots of Fire fame) dealt with my request to trade under my own name. No athlete had done this before me, and there was a fear I could be infringing my amateur status. Harold however gave me permission, and I was up and running.

During this time we had to survive on little or no income, but this did not stop Gordon Pirie and his wife Shirley coming to visit on a regular basis, so that they could get something to eat during their hard-up times. Years later I found out that we were on their circuit; Bruce Tulloh and Mary Rand were both invaded as well. But I liked Gordon and he did give me some ideas about going into business, and it was he who suggested that I might like to be the UK agent for Puma shoes, as he assured me they were looking for a distributor. He also introduced me to Norwegian Ski Pants that he imported, and from these I was later able to develop the slimline trackster, which we sold so well in the 1960s and 70s.

During the time in Wokingham our income was helped by my egg round. I had around sixty laying chickens, and these produced about thirty dozen eggs a week, and I had regular orders for supplying eggs to family, friends and others; and this produced around an extra £5 a week. In our last Christmas there these chickens turned in their last profit, when I had to kill, pluck and draw them before they appeared on many Christmas tables.

My first shop was at the back of a grocery store, the Roundshill Bakery in Bracknell. I did a deal with the man who was then Chairman of the Wokingham Town Football Club, to rent a small space in his premises. It did not last long as he had forgotten to tell his landlord, but it had got me started and there was then no turning back.

I was only running around twenty miles a week, and mainly only club races. It was back on the road in September and another fastest time in the Highgate Harriers Road Relay; the lap was over 4.6 miles and I had a time of 22:55. In the middle of the month I had a couple of third places in invitation two mile events; one just under nine minutes, and the other just over. I was still doing very modest training for me, but at the end of the month I went to Wales to run in another Bernard Baldwin special; the Wattstown Road Race. Not an easy course in the valleys, but I won in 21:45 for the four miles. Another fastest time in the Ealing CC Relays, with 13:04, and some Chiltern League cross-country wins followed, but my lack of training over the past few months was taking its toll, and proof of that, if I needed it, was my usual trip to Mountain Ash for the Nos Galan race. No win this time and not even a high place; just a miserable thirteenth. The race was won by Eddie Strong, and John Merriman was the Mystery Man.

What would 1962 bring in terms of success or otherwise in my running career? The first six days in January I did a total of forty-eight miles, double what I had been doing in a week for the previous few months, and the final day of that week, the Saturday, I won the Berkshire Cross-Country title again in 43:43 for 7.5 miles. My training was edging up again, and the following week I won a five club race against some good opposition, but in the Inter Counties a week later I only finished sixty-sixth; probably the result of upping the training after doing very little.

I immediately took my training back to something like my usual winter level, and ran between ninety and 100 miles over the next three weeks. This included good wins in three cross-country races, and in the fourth week it was the Southern Counties again. I eased off the training and finished thirteenth, which according to my running notes, I had run well. It was a ten mile course on this occasion, and I recorded 50:59, so I suppose it wasn’t bad.

A week later I won the Berks, Bucks and Oxon Championship, and followed this up with my annual run in the Thames Valley Road Relay. For once I did not set the fastest time, but I did a respectable 20:35 for second fastest time. It was then back on the track for sharpening up, although I did have a couple more cross-country races to end the winter season. Then I had the usual round of road relays, including Watford, Leyton to Southend and Uxbridge.

On Wednesday 30th May, I was involved with something that I did not realise at the time was going to set me on a path for the future. Along with others, I helped to set up the first of a series of Gala Nights of Sport in Reading. They were sponsored and promoted by the Reading Chronicle who I wrote for at the time. The idea behind the Gala Night was to bring top sport to Reading, and it was to be a combination of cycling, athletics and football. The star of that first ‘Night of Sport’ was former world mile record holder, Derek Ibbotson, who ran the mile. He had a go at running the first four minute mile in Reading, but the opposition was too far away to help him, but he stormed home in 4:4.6. The two mile race was won by Derek Haith (Thames Valley Harriers) in 8:52.6, from Mel Batty (Thurrock) and Martin Hyman (Portsmouth). I took part and just avoided last place. The programme for the evening was quite simple, with a selection of athletic races and cycling events, and a five-a-side football match. This match between Reading and Aldershot was won by the away team, who scored four to Reading’s three goals. One of Reading’s goals came from Maurice Evans, later manager of the club.

I remember arriving at Palmer Park in Reading, the venue for the event, about two hours before the start and there were already queues at the gate to the stadium. The total number who attended that night was around 5,000. They packed into the small stadium, and all but a few hundred were standing around the outside of the cycling track. It was an instant success and was to be repeated for a number of years.

If 1961 had not been a good year for me, 1962 was a disastrous one. I won a few club races, and had one or two wins in invitation events, but nothing earth shattering.

In October I went to Wales and ran the Gilwern Harriers Road Race. I could only manage fourth place, one minute behind the winner T. Edmunds from the home team. I had to wait until November for a reasonable time in a race, and that was close to home at Bracknell, where I finished second to Martin Hyman with 50:40 for the ten mile road race. In December I ran the famous Hogs Back race in Surrey, and recorded 46:50 for fifteenth place in the fifth running of the nine plus mile race. Looking back at the results of that race is like looking at a directory of British distance runners; they were all there.

I revisited the Nos Galan races, and finished fourth in the one mile, and eleventh in the four miles; an improvement on the previous year. This was one of those winters when it was a difficult journey to the event. There was very heavy snow, and as well as digging ourselves out from snowdrifts on the way, when we approached Mountain Ash we took a wrong turning, went down a terraced road, got stuck at the bottom and could not get out onto the main road again. We managed to get help from the police and they took us onto the races, leaving my car to be collected, hopefully, the next day.

In January 1963 the Inter County Cross-Country Championship was held at Emmer Green, Reading. The strange thing about this race was that there did not appear to be a county championship to select the team; presumably the county race could not take place because of the very heavy snow. The winner of the Inter County race, that was run in very heavy snow and very cold conditions, was Tim Johnston (Cambridge), with Gerry North second and Basil Heatley third. The first Berkshire runner was Don Stevens (Reading AC), who ran one of the best races of his career and finished in the high position of twelfth. The press reports at the time kindly said that Stan Eldon failed to make the first twenty places - in fact I was ninety-fourth.

I believe the reason there had been no country race, was due to the very heavy snow that was on the ground from Christmas to late March. Training during the rest of the year was only at the level of twenty to fifty miles.

I ran in the Inter County twenty mile race at Victoria Park, London, for Berkshire, but after reaching twelve miles in sixty-five minutes, I eventually dropped out at seventeen miles.

My first marathon was on 15th June 1963, when I ran the Poly Windsor to Chiswick Marathon. It was in the middle of the track season, and I was really training for track races with average mileage of only about forty miles a week. I had always wanted to run the marathon, and I remember lining up in Windsor Castle with great anticipation. I was in nineteenth place at ten miles with 55:55, and twenty-sixth at fifteen miles in 84:51, and I reached the twenty mile mark in just 1:59. I was quite pleased with the result considering my lack of mileage training, and ran into the finish at the Kinnaird Stadium in Chiswick in 2:47:32 in fifty-fifth place. Oh how I would settle for running that time today. The race was won by American Buddy Edelen in 2:14:48, a world best at that time. A whole four minutes behind him, in second place, was “Mr Marathon” Ron Hill (Bolton United Harriers), and a further four minutes back, in sixth place, was another running legend from the same club, Jackie Haslam.

Although my greatest achievements were winning that cross-country championship against Alain Mimoun, and also the record runs on the track, I think that my real enjoyment came from road racing. The road race season used to come as a natural break between cross-country and track in April, and the reverse at the end of the season between track and cross-country. As my track running diminished, running on the road became more important to me.

By 1963 I was more and more involved in business, but still did a little running. I ran in the Reading Borough Police ten mile in August, and managed to get eighth place in 51:47. The race was won by the Cooke brothers from Portsmouth, and the winning time was 50:30.

In the same month I ran in the AAA Marathon at Coventry. I was in fourth place at five miles in 26:19, same position at ten miles in 53:47, but I was in a bad way by fifteen miles, reached in 83:52, having dropped to thirteenth place. I then did something that I did not do very often, I dropped out as I had in the Inter County twenty mile earlier. I was suffering from the lack of mileage. The winner was Brian Kilby (Coventry Godiva) in 2:16:45, and Basil Heatley from the same club was second in 2:19:56.

Later I ran in the second Bracknell ten mile, but it was no repeat of the previous year, as this time I was only twenty-fifth in 52:28.

In November I took a team of five from Windsor Slough and Eton AC to compete in the Le Soir cross-country races in Belgium. This trip was memorable, not for the running, but for what happened that weekend on the wider stage. We arrived in our hotel on the Friday afternoon and I met an American runner, Buddy Edelen, who had been living in the UK and had won the Polytechnic Marathon in 1963. He was in great distress, and when I enquired what was the matter, he told me about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The Windsor and Eton team won the team race for non-Belgium teams. I had run in the main international event and finished twenty-seventh, but this was added to our other team runners in the mass event, where Peter Yates was fourth, Robert Graham nineteenth, Dave Bignal fifty-fourth and Ron Smith 272nd. On Monday we caught our ferry back to England. It was a very rough crossing and there were not many people on board. Many of the team were sick, but there was a television room on the ship and we watched the funeral of Kennedy for the whole journey home.

The next step was to find a more permanent home for Stan Eldon Sports, but to be able to afford this it meant selling our little house in Plough Lane, Wokingham. This gave me my first insight into estate agents and the property world. The house was put up for sale at £2,150 and several people came to view. An offer was received at the asking price and then a slightly better offer came in, the only trouble was they were from a husband and wife who were retiring, and both liked the property but had not told the other what they were doing, and had come through two different agents and the estate agents certainly did not tell them. In the end a compromise was reached with the purchasers agreeing to pay more to us, and the agents agreeing to split a commission.

The search for property took us to Caversham on the north side of the Thames at Reading, where we found a small terraced shop, with a reasonable flat over and a small back yard. The rent was £500 per year, so we took it on and moved in March 1962. It had been a cold winter and the snow was still on the ground from Christmas but the shop had to be fitted and we had hungry young mouths to feed.

In those days sports shops sold everything, and so we were into fishing tackle as well as football kits, boots, tennis rackets, running shoes, hockey sticks and anything else that was needed by the local sporting populous. The shop was not really big enough to carry the wide range, and it rapidly extended into the downstairs kitchen and hallway, with the family totally contained upstairs and on the first and second floors.

The business grew, and I went out selling to schools and football clubs, as well as visiting local running tracks, including Windsor and Bracknell, selling running spikes and clothing; frequently on the ‘never, never’; in other words I gave my customers credit and took a few shillings a week off them.

Life was not easy, and living above the premises you never knew when someone was going to call on our services, either in person or on the telephone. I remember late one Friday night, having a call from a well-known athlete who wanted a pair of shoes to run in on the Saturday, and on a Sunday morning, a visit from a major at Arborfield Garrison who was desperate for medals for a sporting event at the garrison that day. We really were ‘Open All Hours’.

About a year after opening, it was decided we should become a limited company, and so Limited was added to the Stan Eldon Sports name.

I wanted to expand into my home town of Windsor, and all I could afford there was a shop that was due for demolition in Oxford Road in the town. It was only about 200 yards off the main street and did have parking close by, so it was a good place to start, and the local council only charged me a small rent of £28 3s. 4d. per month (£338 per annum). The shop was pretty dilapidated and mice, if not worse, were in evidence, but we made the best of it, and after a couple of weeks customers started to appear.

After a short while, I was able to find another shop nearer to the centre of shopping in Peascod Street, Windsor. It had been a well-known bakers, Dennys, in the town, but had been empty for some time. This did not stop people walking in the shop to buy a loaf of bread, and even walking up to the counter surrounded by fishing tackle, sports shoes and clothing, and only realising their mistake as they asked the question. The shop was also only three hundred yards from Windsor’s long-established sports shop E. J. Harding.

As we outgrew our shop, another door opened. A new shopping centre was being built in Caversham with a mixture of shops. I dived in quickly and got one of the largest units, but because someone had just beaten me to first choice, I had a downstairs unit of 1,600 square feet, but the upstairs above this unit had been let, so we had to take the upstairs of the next-door unit which was only about 800 square feet. We set about designing a modern open-plan sports shop. Instead of everything being pushed behind counters, as with the traditional shops at that time, we opened everything up and had displays all along the sides and in the middle of the store.

Two big names from football joined the Stan Eldon team. We were expanding and I needed staff, and the advertising brought two top ex-footballers to work for me. One was Bobby Ayre, who had played for Charlton and been an England ‘B’ international player. As well as being a good footballer, he was also a very good golfer with a handicap of one or scratch. The other was Sylvan Anderton, who had played for Chelsea under Tommy Docherty, and like Bobby had finished his playing career with Reading.

In 1968 we moved into the new premises with what was then a large rent. In the June my family had grown by one more, when daughter Joanna Elizabeth was born at 26 St Peter’s Hill. This brought my tally to four, and three had been born in Olympic years. No wonder I never made it to that big event in an athlete’s life.

In 1969 someone walked into the shop and made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. The man was Derek Baylis, a local grocer who had himself created a unique business, and had sold out a short while before for around £1 million. He was impressed with my modern shop and concept, and he offered to put £10,000 cash into the business for a minor share. There was no formal agreement and he handed me a cheque for that amount within days.

He had some ideas for the business, and wanted to introduce some of his supermarket techniques into the sports trade. This included trading with Green Shield Stamps whose redemption shop was next door to our sports shop.

Very rapidly he decided we should expand, and he asked me for ideas, so at Easter 1969 we went off in his Rolls-Royce to Windsor and called on a long-established sports shop, E. J. Harding. We walked into the shop, spoke to the manager and found out that Mr Harding was at home and unwell. A quick phone call and off we went to his home at St Leonards Hill in Windsor, where he was in bed. A quick conversation, and Derek had done the deal with Harding. He would not return to the shop and we could take over at once, which we did. A few days and the stock was assessed and everything else was tidied up.

It was an interesting acquisition. The shop was very old-fashioned, and some of the stock had been there for twenty years or more. The only way up to the stockroom was up a ladder and through a small gap into the roof, where out of season sports equipment was stored. This included cricket bats and pads, as well as a good stock of Hornby railway stock. Some of the cricket pads had been there so long they were wrapped in brown paper, which along with the pads was disintegrating into dust. The cricket bats also told their own story. There was a stock of about forty, and when the sales rep from one of the leading manufacturers came around for his order, he told me that Mr Harding had always ordered the same quantity of bats; around ten, each year; we concluded that he did not sell many cricket bats. The previous proprietor did not believe in reducing the price of anything to shift it, and would rather it wasted away in the upstairs loft. All that changed when we took over, and I had to change the attitude of the manager who I took back after the takeover.

We never suffered too much from break-ins at any of our shops, but on one occasion I did get a phone call about 1 a.m. in the morning at home in Caversham, to say the window had been smashed and some stock grabbed from our shop in Peascod Street in Windsor. The police had telephoned and wanted me to attend at once, but when I arrived at the shop barely twenty minutes later, they wanted to know how I had got there so fast. It was not a serious theft and the felon was quickly apprehended. The only thing missing from the shop window were a couple of sheath knives, and they had obviously been grabbed by the blades because there was a trail of blood. It did not take Mr Plod long to realise that it was probably a soldier from Victoria Barracks, not more than a few hundred yards from the shop. A quick trip to the barracks and the offender, with his hand still dripping with blood, was in custody.

The relationship with my sleeping partner Derek Baylis was rather strange, and was not without its problems. He did literally write a cheque and give it to me without any formalities being agreed or signed. We did move over to his London accountants and they gave useful advice. Using his muscle, D.B. and myself went off to see the local Barclays Bank manager, and an overdraft of £20,000 was agreed so as to finance the purchase of Hardings in Windsor. That was OK with me and the bank, until after only a few weeks, D.B. decided that he could then take back his £10,000. Once the bank found out they were not happy, and it affected our relationship from then on.

Derek Baylis kept in touch and very occasionally appeared in the shop. These appearances and any contact at all gradually disappeared, and after about six years he decided he wanted to be released from his commitment to the bank, where he was still securing the overdraft. This was a very difficult period, and it got more than a little heated, with the bank refusing to release him and the threat of liquidation hanging over our heads. I was determined not to be beaten, and I consulted with an acquaintance, who was himself a successful businessman and who was in the Rotary Club I had fairly recently joined. With his help I was able to secure an accountant who was an expert in liquidations and the like. The whole attitude changed very quickly, and both the bank and the Baylis family came to heel. The bank accepted a payoff of the overdraft, but not the full sum from Baylis, and I moved to Lloyds Bank. I learned a lot about banks and banking from that incident.

In 1970 I advertised for a shop manager for Windsor, and was amazed when I received an application from my older half-brother Bernard, who had worked for the Borough Council since leaving school and was now in his mid-forties. I thought he was a permanent local authority mandarin. He insisted I treated him like every other applicant, but he did get the job and stayed with me until he eventually bought the Windsor branch from me. Most of the time the shop could manage with one full-time manager and some part-time staff for busy times like Saturday. We did advertise for a full-time school leaver on one occasion, and I interviewed several young applicants before selecting what appeared to be a bright young lad who was very keen. We had a semi-automatic till that could do some calculations, and the lad soon picked up how to use it, until after a few days someone bought twelve football studs at 3p each. He got confused because the till would not do such a simple calculation for small items. The adult with him in the shop at the time explained that you just did that in your head. Then the truth was out, he could not muliply the simplest sums or do any other adding up. We had a chat and he explained his problem, which had not come out in either his job interview or in the report from his school. We had to let him go and it was a lesson for me; I was always a lot more careful when appointing staff after that.

Over the years this shop had some interesting customers, including Michael Parkinson, Mary and their two sons, who were regular visitors for cricket and sports equipment. They lived in Windsor at that time, just a few hundred yards from the shop. I served them personally on many occasions, but one personality I missed, who was served by my brother when he was later managing the shop, was Joan Collins, she called in and bought a tennis racket for her daughter. There was another customer who sent someone to the shop, especially around the time of Royal Ascot each year. Her Majesty ordered tennis balls for her guests attending and being entertained at the Castle for the special week. Our Reading shop did not miss out on personalities, and George Cole and his wife, who lived at Henley, were regular shoppers; as was cartoonist “Mac” and his first wife. At the Caversham shop, I got involved in some bartering with a rep for a record company who used to pay me regular visits and bring me the latest hit records. The arrangement was more for his benefit than mine, and we used to exchange his records for squash rackets and other sporting clothing and equipment.

In 1964 my track running had continued to decline in quality, although I still ran regularly for Windsor, Slough and Eton and for my second claim club Reading AC. In April I did run the Finchley 20 again, and although I was nowhere as fit as when I had run the race the first time, I did set off with the intention of having a serious run. I ran the first lap of five miles in twenty-six minutes, but this was one minute behind the race leader and eventual winner Mel Batty. I went through ten miles in 52:13, and fifteen miles in 80:42, before finishing in 1:57:58. I was thirty-seventh and it did earn me a First-Class Diploma. In fact 1:58 was the cut-off point for these awards, so I was the last in the list.

By now Windsor had quite a good team of road runners, and I lined up again for the Poly Marathon in June. I had learned a lot from the previous year, and finished much higher up the field in thirty-fourth place with 2:34:04.

My family was growing, and on 18th October 1964 our third child was born, Neil William, and this time I was not off on my travels as with the earlier births.

At the end of 1964 I was back at Nos Galan, but this time as the Mystery Runner, but I did join in the race after I had sent the runners on their way and finished thirty-ninth in 20:41.

By 1965 I was really back to being a club runner with no international ambitions, but in some ways it was a successful year, as our club road and cross-country team did have some successes. My training had really dropped off, as I was busy trying to run my business and bring up our young family, which was now three. My training mileage was only thirty to forty miles a week and sometimes very much less, with just a couple of weeks in the first half of the year when I touched seventy miles.

In the thirteenth running of the Maidenhead 10, which was won by Gerry North in 51:37, I only finished thirteenth in 54:38, but the Windsor team easily won the team race; in fact the ‘B’ team won and the ‘A’ team were second. The teams were Peter Yates third, Roger Collins ninth and Robert Graham eleventh, making up the ‘B’ team, and the ‘A’ team was D. Collins sixth, Eldon thirteenth and Bernie Allen fifteenth.

I ran the Finchley twenty mile race again, and surprisingly improved on my performance of the previous year, by finishing nineteenth in 1:53.59.

The season’s top cross-country races were the Southern at Brighton and the National at Parliament Hill, but I did not feature in the results.

I again ran in the Poly Marathon, and with the experience of the two previous years, I ran a good race. I reached twenty miles in just about two hours, which was slower than the previous races, but I managed to finish twenty-eighth in 2:36:31.

Riding on the back of this modest success, I decided to go to Holland in August to run the International Marathon at Enschede. I travelled alone by train and it was a very pleasant journey. I say I travelled alone, that was the intention, but at dinner on the train in the evening I was invited to join an elderly lady at her table and we found plenty to talk about. The company was good for me as it helped me to stay relaxed and it was a bit like being on the Orient Express.

As we lined up for the tenth running of this international marathon, I felt quite confident I could crack two hours thirty minutes for the first time. The race started in the stadium at Enschede with a couple of laps around the track. This was perhaps my undoing, as I could never resist running fast on the track. I was in the leading group as we left the stadium for the flat and fast out and back course of 26.2 miles. I was running well and had been maintaining a place in the first three or four. I started to slow slightly before the point where the race turned back, but at the halfway stage I was in seventh place with a time of 74:14. I was in a group of four and we were just two minutes behind the leader Vandendriesse of Belgium. Those ahead of me included a German, two Czechs, two Dutch, and I was in fact the leading English runner. It was a warm day and that was never good for me, but I was still OK at twenty-five km, which I went through in 87:22 and still in the same position. Within the next five km I was in trouble; it hit me suddenly. I had seen other runners, quite good runners, taking a short walk, and I could not understand why. It was unusual to see runners in leading places having to walk, but it caught up with me, and I remember one runner, who I had flashed by a few kilometres back when he was going though a bad patch, suddenly doing the same to me. I did walk quite a bit and never really got going again, and could not wait for the stadium to come in view. I finished in sixty-sixth place with 3:9:43. There was an official England team competing, and they won the team race with 7:41:43. Interesting to note that the team result was worked on time, something which I thought did not happen until the switching to computers for results in the 1980s. The first English runner was Ron Franklin (Thames Valley Harriers), in seventh place with 2:31:58, someone I knew well as he had the largest stock of running shoes outside of a sports shop; at times he would have over forty pairs of shoes in use. Just one place behind was G. Dickson in 2:33:57. The third member of the team was G. Winchester who finished in 2:35:48. The race was won by the Belgian who had led at halfway with a time of 2:21:16, and he was over five minutes ahead of his nearest rival V. Chudomel of Czechoslovakia. There were some interesting names from England running in the race. There were runners from the Metropolitan Police, whom had I run against frequently in my days with the police. Also running was Stan Jones (Polytechnic Harriers). He had finished in seventeenth place in the 1948 Olympic Marathon, and on this occasion finished eighty-eighth in 3:26:52. Stan, along with Len Runyard, the Windsor secretary, were the two people who had helped me through my running career.

My family were growing, and we had to look for something larger than our flat above the shop. Having no money to speak of, I had to get a mortgage if I was to buy a property. As we thought my mother-in-law was going to have to live with us, I approached Reading Borough Council for a mortgage, and they agreed they would lend me £4,000 for a suitable property. One of the very first houses we looked at, was an Edwardian five-bedroomed semidetached house in a very good position; not far from the shop at St Peters Hill in Caversham. It was a large house; over 2,500 square feet, and stood on a plot of land 440 feet long and about 40 feet in width, but it needed a lot of work on it, as it had not seen any decoration since before the war. I made an offer to the owners, the Millward Shoe family, of £4,250 which was below the asking price of around £5,000. They did not agree, but did accept an increased offer of £4,500.

Huge cracks started to appear in my training in the next year, 1966; although I did have some weeks of consistent decent training, there were large patches when I could not find the time to run. I occasionally had a race on the road, country or track, but nothing like my schedules of the past. When I did find time for a run I usually made it a long one, and this usually fitted in with some other activity like a family visit to see friends and family in Windsor. On one of these runs I ran from Twyford to Windsor, about thirteen miles in seventy-two minutes, and on another run I clocked eighty-seven minutes for about fifteen miles. That run was on the Sunday, and on the Wednesday I ran back from Windsor, a measured distance of nineteen miles in 1:50, but my training notes say it was run into the wind all the way, so it was not a bad run. This was a fairly regular feature during March and April in this year, as I did the same on the next three Wednesdays; all of these were runs from Windsor, and the first of these I ran in 1:42, the second 1:47 and the last in 1:41 (with a following wind).

On the 23rd April I again ran in the Finchley 20, but after passing five miles in 25:50, and ten miles in 52:50, I dropped out at fifteen miles. I must have taken a little while to recover from this, as training fell away to very little, although I did have another run from Windsor, which took 1:43 for the nineteen miles again.

After a couple of modest track races, I ran in the Portsmouth to Chichester 16.5 mile race, and the Inter County twenty mile, which took me 1:58.

This was followed by another run in the Poly Marathon, but this time I dropped out at twenty-two miles, having gone through the ten mile mark in fifty-seven minutes.

As that year progressed my training disappeared, and by the 1st October even my training notes and diary stopped. I was only thirty but I was now busy with other things.

Looking back on my ‘life on the run’ between 1957 and 1962, it was strange that I never had the opportunity to run my favourite distance on the track, the 5,000 metres, where I had been ranked in the top three in the world, in a major international championship. I ran in international races for GB at the distance but never in the Olympics, European or Commonwealth Games (Empire Games in those days). I always got pushed into the longer 10,000 metres where I was never as highly placed in world rankings. A classic example of this was my selection for the six miles and not the three miles at the Empire Games in 1958. But I suppose that was my fault, as having been selected for the three miles, I broke the British six mile record and that immediately got me put into the six miles.

My greatest victory was the win over Alain Mimoun in the International Cross-Country, and I had other good wins over the country, but in many ways I was not a good cross-country runner. I could not fly over muddy fields like Gerry North in his prime. My win at Cardiff over Mimoun was on a flat, fast, frozen surface which turned the race into more of a road race than cross-country (if you ignored the fences).

I liked track running, and the challenge it presented, especially at 5,000 metres, but my favourite event was road running, where I was able to excel and break records even after my other performances had started to decline. Maybe I should have stuck with my early ambition from 1948, and taken up the marathon seriously.

Regrets, I have a few. Not being selected for the 1960 Rome Olympics has to be one, but perhaps the missed opportunities for a world record were more important. The lesson I learned, and would pass on to any athlete today, is never let an opportunity pass you by. There were three races in my career, where I was in such good form that I should have picked up a world record at three miles, six miles or 5,000 metres, but on each occasion I won races so easily and probably did not push myself to the limit which would have given me those records. Always grab the opportunity when it comes, and do not leave it for another day, because that other day may never come. I suppose that applies to everything in life.

In those days of the late 1950s and early 60s there were no specialist road running shoes. There were heavy trainers, like the Adidas Rom, but the racing shoe for me, and for many others, was a pair of Woolworth’s plimsolls; cost about four shillings and sixpence, or 22.5p. They were normally brown, and I used to put black polish on them, partly I think to smarten them up and partly to make them slightly waterproof. I think this failed on both counts, but as racing shoes they were successful as they were lighter than trainers. There was no heavy padding, just a thin runner sole, but they never gave me any injuries despite running up to 100 miles a week.

In June 1964 I lined up at Windsor Castle again for the Poly Marathon and this time I was thirty-fourth in 2:34:04.

Later in that year, my old training and racing partner Bruce Tulloh, went out to Japan for the Tokyo Olympics. While he was there he was given a pair of revolutionary shoes called Tiger Marups; a superb lightweight shoe with a special thin sole, but with some cushioning and light leather uppers. When he met the Onitsuka Company (now Asics) who made the shoes, he told them he had a friend who was big in the sports business in the UK. He was referring to me with a small shop on the outskirts of Reading. He brought the shoe back and I was very impressed, as I had never seen anything like it before. It was very light and comfortable, and was completely different to anything I had seen before. I wrote to Japan and introduced myself, and very quickly I had a response offering me the sole UK rights to the shoes and their other products. I had to set about finding out how to import the shoes, and this was not easy as there were no agencies around in those days like now, and the banks did not know very much either. Somehow I got the information I needed, and the first shoes were ordered.

When they arrived, runners were queuing up to buy them at sixty-five shillings a pair. These first shoes were called a Marup, but others followed including a cheaper canvas version of the Marup, and Marion came up with the name Cub, Tiger Cub, for the cheapest shoes in the range, and this sold for just twenty-nine shillings and sixpence.

To help finance the new venture I formed a new company, Stan Eldon Wholesale Limited, with an old school friend John Hatton, who lived in Windsor and worked in financial services. We rented a warehouse under the railway arches in Windsor, the scene of many “Carry On” films, and that was our base for the importing and distribution of the new Tiger shoes and other products.

We invited the Onitsuka Company over for discussions about expanding the business, and Mr Onitsuka himself came along with the finance director Mr Kitami. We hired a limousine and collected them from Heathrow, and took them to lunch at Skindles Hotel, then a very up-market restaurant on the Thames at Maidenhead. In the car on the way to Maidenhead, the conversation somehow got around to the war. Colonel Onitsuka had served in Burma and by chance so had our chauffeur. As the conversation progressed I thought ‘Oh dear this will blow it’ especially when the two decided they had been exactly in the same war zone at the same time, and could have fought against each other. On the contrary, when we arrived at the hotel they were getting on so well we had to take the chauffeur with us into lunch. The business discussions with the company were very interesting, as they used an abacus for their financial calculations. The Japanese were not using electronic calculators in the early 1960s.

About this stage in my business life I was approached by Mr North from the Kit Kat Cafe at Blackpool, to see if I would employ his son Gerry. Yes, it was my old running colleague from Army days Gerry North. His dad gave me £500 towards the business so that I could afford to take Gerry on. Gerry worked on selling the Tiger shoes to shops and individuals for some time, before leaving me to start up his own company, where he carried on selling the same products.

We were then responsible for another new product. I had seen something called track pants, lightweight cotton tracksuit-type bottoms; baggy but light, and with the idea of the ski pants that Pirie had given me. I set about redesigning them, and had a large quantity made up in Hong Kong. These were a slimmer fit, and I called them Tracksters. They were a great success as they sold for just under £1. I never did register them and another runner, Mr Marathon himself, Ron Hill, made them a little more sophisticated and has sold them ever since. My loss his gain.

I did not get the opportunity to take advantage of either the imported Tracksters or the great Tiger shoes, as a few years after I started importing, the Wilson Government introduced an import restriction which required the putting up of half the value of the imports in cash in this country, as well as funding the letters of credit to pay for the goods in Japan. It was crippling for small businesses like mine, and I had to get out of the wholesale/import business quickly. I did and the retail business survived.

Our business was all about innovation, and we were first in the market place, not just with special products like the Tiger shoes and Tracksters. We got involved with Fashion Shows, which we did on a regular basis, often to support charities, these were good fun and I enjoyed my behind the scenes job of helping the attractive models disrobe and prepare for their next catwalk appearance; the trouble was it all happened so quickly, and there was never enough time to take in the beautiful scenery. The girls were all local and came from a local agency, and their performances were always very professional. We started up ‘Football and Cricket’ evenings, and at these we would show the latest clothing, footwear and equipment to invited people from the particular sport. On the football side we often had the help of West Ham goalkeeper Phil Parkes at the football shows, and at one of our cricket evenings we had almost the whole Hampshire County Cricket Club team, along with some very special cricket bats we had borrowed from the bat manufacturers, like a bat used by the Edward VIII when Prince of Wales, and another used by the great Jack Hobbs. They were very successful evenings and helped us to build up a strong customer base with the local sports clubs.

I spent a lot of money on advertising, especially with the Reading Evening Post, who had a very persuasive salesman, John Madejski, the multimillionaire owner and chairman of Reading Football Club. This was before he had started his Auto Trader empire that brought him the great wealth.

The birth of all my children was planned, that is up to 1971, when on 29th July, Alexandra Michelle came along. She was our fifth and final child, and I missed her birth by a few minutes. As it was Marion’s fifth she had to go to hospital for the birth, and I was at home looking after the family and waiting for news. On the day she was born I went to bed at about 11 p.m. and tried to sleep, but the phone rang and it was the Royal Berks. Marion had just gone down to have our baby. I drove across Reading at lightning speed and arrived at the Royal Berkshire Hospital maternity unit, which was in semi-darkness and appeared to be almost shut down for the night. I found a gown and mask and made my way through to the delivery room just after the birth, with wife and baby still on the trolley. All was well, and after a short stay it was home to catch up on sleep, get the children off to school next morning, and open up the shop. I could not complain, because on previous occasions prior to our other children being born, Marion had worked up to the day of birth, sometimes in the shop and on one occasion she was paperhanging and decorating up to a couple of hours before going into labour. The birth of our fifth child changed our life. Up to that time we had never had a television in our home, but after this latest addition to the family we added a TV and had no more children!