Ranelagh Harriers Celebrate 10 years of making women Run!
Tuesday, the 14th of June. All women who have participated in a Ranelagh Harriers' beginners course
in the past ten years, whether they are still running or not, are invited to join our celebration of the
tenth anniversary of the first course. Runners can join in the relay race to be held from 7pm, and
both runners and non-runners can join in the feast from 8 pm at the clubhouse.
In 1995 the sports development team from the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames asked
all clubs in the borough to put on special courses or open days to encourage women to become
involved in their respective sports.
Ranelagh Harriers held our first ever beginners running course for women, and under the direction
of Frances Ratchford it has continued and grown for ten years. The impact on our membership
has been enormous. The women's section of Ranelagh Harriers has grown from less than ten in
1995 to more than 285 today! Our active numbers range in age from the junior right up to
septuagenarian. Our speeds range from the very quick to the not so quick, and the distances raced
vary from less than three miles to more than 50.
This year our women's cross country team took first place in the Surrey League, division one, and
our first runner home in the London Marathon this year was a woman, Lauren Shelley in a time of
2 hours 41 minutes.
Until the late 1970s women simply did not run long distances except for the very occasional eccentric.
As late as 1980, the longest event in the Olympic programme for women was 1500 metres. Women's
cross-country was well established but these distances never exceeded 2.5 miles. Even in the
National Cross-Country Championships the senior competitors could be counted in tens.
In 1980 there were only five female finishers in the prestigious Polytechnic Marathon at Windsor,
from a field of nearly 500. One of the five was Sonia Rowland, soon to become one of the founding
members of the Ranelagh women's section, and our first women's captain.
The proposal to institute a Ranelagh women's running section was finally put before the club at the
AGM of 14th July 1982. It was carried and at the subsequent committee meeting on 8th September
1982, Sonia Rowland, Trish Trevena, Beryl Offley, Vivien Bird and Margot Hill were accepted as the
pioneering members of the Ranelagh Women's section. Before the end of the year several more had
joined, including Margaret Auerback, Mary Smith, Julia Dennis and Irene Speller.
In their inaugural year as members, six women represented Ranelagh in the 1983 London Marathon,
and, in May, Margaret Auerback, Sonia Rowland and Helena Fotherby scored the club's first women's
team victory, appropriately enough, in the Ranelagh Half Marathon.
During their second season, Ranelagh women's teams joined the Surrey Ladies Cross-Country League.
The league races were still little more than sprints - winning times in the senior races ranged from
14 minutes down to just 11 minutes - but the Ranelagh teams excelled to finish 3rd out of 15
participating clubs. Margaret Auerback, with a 3rd, a 4th and a 5th took second place in the overall
individual competition. In the same year they made their debuts in the Surrey Road Relay and Surrey
Cross-Country Championships, and finished both in sixth place.
Accommodation for the pioneers was primitive to say the least. Initially there was just a small
partitioned-off section of the changing rooms where the only washing facilities were a glorified baby
bath using hot water carried through (by men) in buckets from the bath house. Later one end of the
bath house was converted to a small changing room complete with one electric shower. It was hardly
luxurious but it was to remain the home of the women's section until the erection of our new club house
in 1987. Now, on certain club nights, the women take over the larger change room normally designated
for male occupation!
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