Having made our mark in the British Powerjog championships, unexpectedly we received an invitation to take part in a demonstration race at the 1984 London Marathon exhibition “pasta party”. I suspect that word had got around about this guy who had developed a new twist on being a human cannonball, using a treadmill rather than a cannon to be shot into space. We should have learned our lesson, but again we proved we were willing to make fools of ourselves and signed up for it!
A straightforward “head to head” 2 team race this time, but in addition to having high quality opposition as before, we also had a large audience to watch us! Upon arrival, we were greeted by the organisers – and indeed, by Ron Pickering the late lamented TV sports presenter – and treated like minor royalty (so far, so good – we hadn’t been rumbled!) As with our previous race, the opposition team had some very serious runners , including the London Marathon race director Chris Brasher’s son Hugh, no mean athlete himself and destined to follow in his father’s footsteps as the race director many years later. We were fortunate that our team was supplemented by a couple of useful athletes from Birchfield Harriers, who helped us remain in fairly close contention as the race unfolded. The key moment occurred when in the closing stages the other team, having built up a modest lead, put a guest athlete on to the treadmill who turned out to be a highly rated American “ultra” runner. What they hadn’t realised though was that although he could have jogged along at a steady pace all day long, he was completely unable to run at speed and had never previously set foot on a treadmill. He lost ground so dramatically that by the time they could respond by dragging him off the machine and getting back up to speed again, we had dashed into the lead, and despite a frantic chase they couldn’t catch us and we won.
We were happy. They were not! What fun – you really had to be there!
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