Polytechnic Marathon

Building on this interest, The Sporting Life newspaper offered a magnificent trophy[1] for an annual international marathon that would be second in importance only to the Olympic event itself.

[2] As with the Olympic race, the start was at Windsor Castle and the course was 26 miles, 385 yards; this distance was adopted as the international standard for marathons in 1924.

(The older Boston Marathon, founded in 1897, adopted the 42.195-kilometre (26.219 mi) distance in 1924, but was slightly short for the first three years and was shorter still from 1951 to 1956.

From 1909 until 1932, it ended at Stamford Bridge in west London; then in 1933, it moved back to the White City stadium, where the 1908 Olympic marathon had finished.

Traffic problems made it difficult to continue with the Windsor-to-Chiswick route, and from 1973 until 1992, the race was restricted to the Windsor area.

After a four-year gap, the race was revived in 1992 by Capital Road Runners (an even shorter-lived successor to LRRC) in conjunction with West 4 Harriers.

In 1996, responsibility passed to a commercial events organiser, but increased traffic and other difficulties made it impossible to keep the race going beyond 1996.