Our next club race is the Macclesfield Shield 10 miles, which will take place from our Sutton venue, which has a special place in the history of Northern and National race walking. As you can see below our club, together with Sutton WC hosted the National Championship in 1951. We can tread in the great Lol Allen’s footsteps, starting at 1.00 pm. from the Ex-Service Men’s Club next Saturday, April 1st. As usual, it will be really helpful if you could let Dave Evans at dave.evans08@hotmail.co.uk know if you are attending and in what capacity. Coming together will offer us also the opportunity to pay our respects to Maurice Ireland, a stalwart of yesteryear., whose funeral took place this week.

Stirred by this memory Ron Wallwork reminds us of his 1958 debut in the Sutton Macclesfield Open 10 miles and the array of talent drawn to the race – Matthews, Allen and the LWC legend, Joe Barraclough. It’s a story, which captures the spirit of the time.

I’m not sure if you can read Ron’s final comment in the fading blue.

I wasn’t to know then that five years later I would have the privilege of being one of Ken’s GB victorious Lugano Cup teammates.