One of Britain’s greatest and most famous runners has died at the age of 82

“Legend” is a word which can be bandied about all too easily but it is entirely appropriate when it comes to describing the former international marathon runner Ron Hill MBE, who has died at the age of 82.

Aside from his athletic success, he will be remembered as an innovator through his Ronhill clothing brand and also for  the astonishing running streak which saw him run every day for 52 years and 39 days – between 1964 and 2017.

After a less than auspicious start to his international career, he finally became a marathon great with wins in the 1969 European Championships and 1970 Commonwealth Games, the same year in which he also won the Boston Marathon.
In Edinburgh his time of 2:09:28 was then the second-fastest marathon in history, as well as being a British and European record.

Hill did not enjoy the same results early in his career. In 1962 he failed to finish in the European Championships marathon and was then 19th in the 1964 Olympic marathon (as well as finishing 18th in the 10,000m), having gone into the race as the world’s second-fastest all-time. In 1966 he was fifth in the Commonwealth six-mile event and then 12th in the European marathon.

Hill was controversially left out of the 1968 Olympic Marathon team after a poor trials run but showed what might have been with a superb seventh in the 10,000m at high altitude in Mexico where he was only beaten by athletes who were born – or had trained for long periods – at altitude.

Around this time he also set a world record for 10 miles (46:44.0), as well as world records for 15 miles, 25km and the fastest ever 20 miles (1:36:28 in 1968).

Hill was not quite in the same form in 1971, where he was third in the Europeans and then sixth in the 1972 Olympics, having been one of the favourites. There was a fourth-place finish at the 1976 Olympic Marathon trials but he continued to run as a Veteran, setting a British Vets over-40 marathon record of 2:15:46 in 1979 in New Orleans.

There was cross country success, too, with second-place finishes at the International Cross Country in 1964 and 1968, as well as English National victories in 1966 and 1968. He also once won the UK Inter-Counties barefoot in the middle of the British winter.

Hill won eight AAA titles (five at the marathon) and 15 medals, also enjoying success at the 6 miles and 10 mile championships. His racing career was superbly covered in his very detailed two-part book, The Long Hard Road.

He was ahead of his time when it came to marathon preparation, helping to popularise the use of the pre-marathon carb-loading diet and, using his PhD in textile chemistry, he raced in breathable, mesh vests – unheard of at the time – to keep cool.

Towards the end of his top level running career, he founded Ron Hill Sports in 1975, and focused on pioneering running clothes and fabrics. He also created the Ronhill and Hilly clothing businesses, both of which are still going strong today.

When Hill began his unbroken streak of consecutive daily runs, Beatlemania was all the rage, the British Parliament were still discussing whether to abolish the death penalty and Hollywood movie premieres included Mary Poppins and Goldfinger. In athletics, it was also the era of cinder tracks, Peter Snell and Abebe Bikila, while the Fosbury Flop had not yet been invented.

“I used to find back streets to run down for my training runs,” Hill told Athletics Weekly, “because runners were considered an oddity. People used to shout ‘run, rabbit, run!’ or ‘up, one, two, three, four!’ and we had none of the fancy things that runners have today like GPS watches or heart rate monitors.”

Hill’s running streak came to an end in 2017 due to ill health and he revealed that he had been diagnosed with dementia the following year.

His passing was announced by his company Ronhill, with a message which read: “It is with immense sadness we today mourn the passing of British running legend Dr Ron Hill MBE. Our founder, our inspiration, a husband, a father, a grandfather, a runner.”

Ron Hill’s personal bests:
Mile: 4:10.1
Three miles: 13:27.2
Six miles: 27:26.0
10 miles: 46:44.0
15 miles: 1:12:48.2
25km: 1:15:22.6
20 miles: 1:36:28
Marathon: 2:09:28