Track Stats - Arthur Keily

27 marathons would probably represent the bulk of a career for some. Not a bit of it for Arthur Keily. He competed in a myriad of other road events, his winning record being prodigious:

Melton Mowbray 10 1959 49:56 (new record) Roundhay (Leeds) 10 1960 50:17 (new record) Staveley 10 1959 51:34 (new record)   1960 50:20 (new record) Morpeth to Newcastle 13½ miles 1957 1:09:15.8   1959 1:09:57   1960 1:06:03 (best ever time for half-marathon) Belper 15 1954 1:14:31 Nottingham 15 1957 1:16:23   1958 1:17:23   1959 1:16:10 (new record) Sedgley 15 1954 1:25:38 (new record) Walton 15 1956 1:21:47 (new record) Winnington Park 15 1957 1:23:08 (new record) Halesowen 16 1960 1:23:32 (new record) Liverpool Pembroke 20 1957 1:47:52 (new record) Inter-Counties 20 1959 1:43:54 (new record) Wakefield 20 1957 1:55:00 (new record) South London Harriers 30 1955 3:05:43   1958 2:59:08 (new record)   1959 2:57:55

Arthur with the trophy after winning the 1960 Polytechnic Marathon

Wearing his Derby & County vest, Arthur was an integral part of the club's road relay teams. In 1957 he was one of six runners who all broke the course record on stage seven of the London-to-Brighton relay (in effect, the national championships). Derby & County AC finished 5th in the team race. In the same event in 1958 he broke the record on stage eight and the club were 2nd. The same year he was part of the Derby team which won the Manchester-to-Blackpool relay for northern clubs and was in their team which repeated the success for the following two years. 1960 was a great year for the club. They won their first English cross-country team title with Arthur in 35th place. Later they again demonstrated their eminence in the distance-running sphere by securing 1st place in the London-to-Brighton relay.

In addition to the achievements detailed above, Arthur has vivid memories of two track races in which he took part which showed his abilities at even longer distances. The first in October 1956 was a three-hour race at the Stompond Lane track, in Walton-on-Thames, organised on the initiative of the Road Runners Club. It is instructive to note that this took place only 23 days after Arthur had recorded 2:27:19.8 in the Kosice marathon. On the Walton cinder track, he not only won the race, covering 31 miles, 877 yards and 11 inches in the three hours, but en route he set a series of records – 2:29:32 for the marathon distance, 2:50:49.4 for 30 miles, and the first man under three hours for 50 kilometres amongst them. A year later at the same track in another Road Runners Club promotion he was entered for a 50 miles race (200 laps of the track). This one was only seven days after another marathon run at Kosice. He never intended to go the whole way, but he did lead from eight miles to 39 miles, retiring at 40 miles with an English Native record of 4:05:55 (the winner at 50 miles was Gerald Walsh, of South Africa).

In 1957, after working in the railway industry for over 20 years, Arthur took up employment as a machine worker at Rolls Royce. In 1960, having missed Olympic selection in 1956, he did find himself in an Olympic team, but it was not a successful experience for reasons which he describes below. He called a halt to his competitive career at the end of that year. In 1962 he left Rolls Royce and initially worked on promotions for Derby County Football Club. He did much work for charity. Then he was the greyhound-racing adviser for the “Derby Evening Telegraph” newspaper and became an expert on systematic betting. In this case it did not turn out to be “a mug's game” as he bought a second-hand white Rolls Royce with his winnings and the rest he invested in a house.

Arthur with medals for winning British Masters titles

Arthur Keily came back as a veteran runner. In 1991 he recorded 3:24:22 for the marathon, a world's best time for a 70-year-old. He was still competing 10 years later when he was British Masters champion at 400 metres and 3000 metres walks in the same afternoon! I asked Arthur about his reputation as one of the earliest British exponents of high-mileage in training. He told me: “I ran backwards and forwards to work, starting three miles there and three miles back, gradually building up to 11 miles there and 11 miles to 15 miles back. For seven years I ran 100 miles weekly. In my job I was crawling in and out of boilers, with riveters bringing rust all around, and balancing with a 15-pound sledgehammer on the footplate. I reckon the athletes of today would find it hard to cope with that!” There were disappointments in his career – he just missed out on selection for the 1956 Olympics; he was ill at the time of the 1958 Empire/Commonwealth marathon race; and in 1960 he feels the marathon runners were taken to Rome too late to acclimatise properly for the Olympic marathon (he was still in Derby when the Games began). He says ruefully: “I had a lot of aggro from bosses putting me on all the heavy demanding jobs because I was the fittest! Sometimes the day before my races I was swinging the sledgehammer on the side of trains and dirty smoke boxes. Don't forget I was already 39 when I went to Rome”. Why did he take up running so late? I wondered: “For one thing I did not think I was good enough! I was hooked on football from the age of 14 and played for the top teams in the Derby area, winning six league championships and six cup finals”.

Athletics is so different today from the world Arthur experienced. He comments: “I can't understand athletics today. Look at my own club, I never see a Derby athlete mentioned in ‘Athletics Weekly’. Yet look at the rewards for successful athletes – what we could have achieved with those in our day! I look at the times in ‘AW’. There are few British runners near my times. Something is radically wrong. I think most of the coaches today are theologians and not practical men. My father (also Arthur) was a Sergeant and PT Instructor in the Army. He always drilled into me – if you want to excel at sport, don't drink and don't smoke. He got killed at Dunkirk, so he never knew about my sporting endeavours”.

A fine athlete and a man of trenchant opinions, Arthur has published a number of books on the sport and on health and fitness generally which are inspiring. I can end this article in no better way than to quote from his splendid volume, “Sixty years a happy, healthy sportsman”: “I remember about 35 years ago when I won a mile race at Leicester. As I stood in the tent I overheard a runner ask another runner if he knew who had won. He said: 'Some grey-haired old bugger!' The keynote of life is growth not ageing. Life does not grow old. The life that flows through us at 70 is the same that energised us in infancy. So-called age is the deterioration of enthusiasm, faith to live and will to progress”.