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2026-07-21 12:54:05 - Paul D. Foy -
Athletics

I'd like to give a post reminiscing on my youthful athletics career. This will be a stream-of-consciousness post and perhaps the order of events might be a little vague in places because I can't record exactly a lot of the details. I like doing this kind of thing for some reason. It's easier than writing a book and why should I write a book? Nobody really wants to know. I'm just passing time. My athletics in my youth was quite an important part of my life, to tell the truth. In my formative years, early years, it probably lasted, in all seriousness, for about ten years, say from the age of twelve onwards. Now I can tell you how it started. It started when I engaged in an egg-and-spoon race at middle school and I performed particularly well. My teacher, Mr Rhodes, seemed to think I had a good ability towards one particular event, that is, the 400 metres, in that I possessed both speed and stamina, which is a requirement for the event. I think, as I remember, and one PE day, PE session. He set up a 400-metre race between myself and the female 4x100-metre relay team and I managed to win that race quite convincingly. That convinced him that the 400 metres, I remember him telling me, was the event for me so I became quite besotted with developing my career in that event. I started training. I was training regularly throughout the latter stages of middle school. I trained in secondary school. I competed in all the sports events on sports days at Wictliffe Mount Comprehensive School, where I was, I think, always the winner in the 400 metres. I think at that stage, even when it was at school, I was subscribing to things like Athletics Weekly. I was attending the West Yorkshire Track and Field League series of runs of races in the summer, which were organised in this area. This was a very good area for athletics, to tell the truth. West Yorkshire. It had one of the first synthetic athletics tracks at Spenborough in CleckHeaton, which is quite close to me, and I would regularly run there. I competed in the West Yorkshire Track and Field League in Bradford, where there was a cinder track, Huddersfield, Spenborough, and other places, I think, around the area, occasionally on a grass track. I competed in the West Yorkshire Track and Field Championships as a youth I think. I don't quite know what the classification is there, under 15 or something? I think I came second and that entitled me to compete in the Northern Championships, where I got to the final but I don't quite remember my position. I don't think it was anything particularly remarkable. One milestone that I remember was when I was at Whitcliffe Mount School. I went to Batley Grammar School to compete in a match between Whitliffe Mount and Batley Grammar School. Batley Grammar School is the school I turned down as the local grammar school and I managed to win that race. The very pleasing thing about that race, which pleased my PE teacher very well and moderately pleased me because I was still hoping to do better, was that I got under 60 seconds for the first time. I think it was around 58 or something like that. Anyway I continued to train at school and my times year after year progressively went down. Then I went to university at Cambridge and I continued to train there. I competed for Cambridge, I think certainly in my first and second years. Perhaps just in my second year I won the university trials at 52. 0 and I competed against Oxford at Iffley Road, as I've told you before, where I did my personal best, which was 51. 7. Now during these times at university, in the summers, I was predominantly preoccupied with athletics, with training and running in the West Yorkshire Track and Field League. I had a bit of a vague sort of very informal coach who thought my standards were quite good and quite promising but he couldn't understand why I could not go quicker. I understood that because I simply didn't have the splits in the 100 and 200 metres and I don't know why. I didn't understand that. I thought that was a big hurdle to me getting any quicker. Around the third year of university I tailed off my hard training for 400 metres because I didn't think I could not get any better. You've got to be realistic in life and concentrated on other things. For many, many years. I was a road runner, more long distance, which I was never all that good at to tell the truth, and it did my knees in the end, I think. Oh should I mention another thing? When I was at school Wycliffe, I was training so much. I was training at lunchtime on the track. I was training at home, repetitions on the street where I live. I used to do 200-metre repetitions up Station Lane, around into Sherbourne Grove, and then do it. That exhausted me, madness to tell the truth. Madness, I don't know what got into me. Madness. My efforts of use were spent obsessively training and ruining my body, as far as knees and things go, but not too badly. It was corrected by stopping doing it basically and so I miss all that, I tell the truth. I'm just a keen advocate of athletics. I think it's a good thing. I think I should have handled things differently. I should have joined more clubs. I did join Spenburough AC in the end but I should have interacted more with the crew and been a bit more easygoing about it all. That's my character, my friend, I guess. I get into things and I like to pursue them as best as I can. That was quite a formative time and yes it set me up for an interest in athletics and developing yourself and what it all means and the raison d'être of life and that kind of thing.