Hastings Half Marathon: Remembering how the popular race started in 1985

The running boom started with the first London Marathon in 1981, and I and many others started to run, and this naturally meant running around our home town of Hastings in training, and trying to find other events to take part in.

There will be more articles on the history of the Hastings Half Marathon in the coming weeks

The idea of a Half Marathon at Hastings was discussed by The Hastings Lions Club in 1983 as a possible fundraiser and to promote our town of Hastings.

SEE ALSO Hastings Half marathon: All hail the £5m race | Man completes Hastings half marathon in his house | Remembering the Hastings Half Marathon - picture specialThe initial route was developed by me and the Great Terry Cox. Terry was a wonderful character and a good athlete, and once we had decided that the perfect start/finish area would be on the seafront at St Leonards, utilising the Old Bathing Pool facility, Terry worked tirelessly running and cycling around Hastings to get the measurement roughly needed.

But this was the easy and pleasureable part of the idea!

Permission obviously had to be sought from Hastings Borough Council and the police, and this turned out to be a nightmare.

Upon approaching HBC, the response was ‘maybe’, but only if the police also agreed.

Approaching the police brought a mixture of disinterest and horror at the disruption around the town.

Bearing in mind that these were in the days when, except for London Marathon, it was very unusual for events of this nature to be allowed to disrupt the roads.

This situation of an impasse between police and HBC, with each saying they would consider it if the other would, continued for over a year, with neither party wanting to make a decision.

The breakthrough came from a chance meeting with the Chief Constable of Sussex, at a Lions convention at Lewes.

I asked the Chief Constable why we could not have a Half Marathon at Hastings? He replied there was NO good reason and that it would be good for police PR to be seen to be involved. He suggested that I wrote to him, with a copy to Hastings Police, stating our case.

The response was amazing and quick. Two days after posting the letter, I was summoned to a meeting at Hastings Police Station by the Chief Inspector.

The climate of the meeting was totally different from previous meetings, being made very welcome, and the Chief Inspector stating that he felt that an event for Hastings of this nature would be good for Police public relations to be seen supporting the event.

With the inspector was the head of the traffic division and he laid down a number of requirements, which we immediately agreed to carry out, mainly concerning road closures, warning signs and public awareness.

Following this meeting, I was able to go the HBC and give them the news and they immediately agreed to allow the event to go ahead.

It had taken nearly two years to get there, but at last we had the go-ahead.

The work realy started now in earnest, with the date of the event agreed for March 17, 1985, a month before the London Marathon.

The route, with slight changes requested by the police, was officially measured by a member of the Road Runners Club, with permission for use of the bathing pool facilities, and a start time of 10.30am.

But we needed commercial sponsors, and put out the news locally, and had great response to support the event from Anglia Building Society, RN French,Ltd, JVC, Newtime Foods and the Hastings Observer.

We still needed a shoe sponsor, but had no initial responses, until I noted an Advertisement in Runners World for a new running shoe company, ARROW.

The name was too good to resist, and I telephoned ARROW and asked to speak to the Marketing Director. At first this was resisted by the telephone operator, until I said please tell him I am from Hastings ‘1066’ and The Arrow. Next thing I knew was a very keen ARROW person speaking to me and wanting to know more.

A meeting was arranged at their London offices and a deal was struck for them to be the first commercial sponsor of the ‘ARROW Hastings Half Marathon’