How it all began

When you read the "Club History" blurb for most clubs most of them will start in a similar way - "It all started back in 1800 with a group of people interested in ..." - well not PWR!!!

PWR started in a bit of a topsy turvey way. When the Club met for the first time on that cold and dark Tuesday evening on October 24th 2006 the only people that were expected at the Memorial Hall Gardens in Petts Wood were Julian Coglan, Philippa Borland and Darrell Purvis. In fact on that night another 10 runners congregated there, then 19 the next week, then 24 the following - which was in fact the magic number of members that had been hoped for after the Club had been established for a year!

Since then the Club has grown week on week, month on month and turned into a really successful community based running club that really does cater for absolutely everyone, from the complete beginner to some pretty nifty runners!

But the current story of the Club will always be a changing one. What you are about to read is how PWR began way back in June 2006 ..so let the story begin!

The initial idea

It's funny how a flippant comment can be turned around into a full-on monumental task of "creating" a Club! But that really is how it all started...

When Julian bumped into Philippa one Sunday morning in Petts Wood whilst both were out on there regular Sunday morning runs, they soon discovered that they were almost running the same route and decided to join each other for the remainder of their run (having run and raced together for a number of years previously prior to this chance meeting!). And what happened during that run proved to be a turning point in not only the history books of Petts Wood, but with the local running community per se.

Having had to break their conversation more times than they can care to remember in order to say a warm and heartedly "morning!" to all of their fellow runners along their route, they both comment how nice it would be if all those runners around Petts Wood had the opportunity of meeting up occasionally and be able to run as a group rather than always running alone.

With that thought bouncing around their minds, the "we should start up our own Club" was jokingly suggested and by the end of the run the name of the club, its possible location and what would be on the running vest had already been discussed in earnest - albeit tongue in cheek! When they said their goodbyes, both went their separate ways thinking that the other was not serious about starting the club, but also thinking that the idea was not that half bad....

Well the thought didn't go away and a call was made by Julian to Philippa the next day to see if she was seriously interested in helping "investigate" the possibility of setting up "Petts Wood Runners". Philippa replied saying that she was just about to phone Julian and ask him exactly the same question!!! And there you have it.

Petts Wood Runners was born!

Now all that was left was the hard part.

Over the following days, weeks and months, both Julian and Philippa set to work on building a solid foundation on which to launch Petts Wood Runners. And so started the phone calls to South England Athletic Association as to what was required, calls to the Memorial Hall and other places as possible meeting points and numerous hours spent playing with how the membership form and vest might look - the vest was very important.

Day by day and little by little information was sought and the ideas kept coming - advertising was needed, poster and flyers were created, a web site was designed and the logo was drawn. The possibility of starting Petts Wood Runners began to look like it could actually work. Julian and Philippa wore each of their families patience extremely thin with the continued and unabated desire to try and make this actually work - Julian asking his five year son's opinion on the various vest designs and the type of quality of vest material he would feel more comfortable in was possibly pushing things a little too far - and resulted in Julian having to explain why the club could not be called "Bob the Builder's Runners"! And then there was Philippa who, with the bribe of pizza and cinema, had her daughter and some of her friends running up and down repeatedly outside her house trying to capture on camera the perfect action shot of someone legs in running motion - unfortunately the first 4 pictures had to be scrapped as Philippa suddenly realised that they we all wearing "Crocs" and not running trainers!!! What a great advertisement photo that would have made to go on our posters! The concept even went international for a while as the ideas kept flooding in. One of the classic moments in the creation of Petts Wood Runners has to be how the slogan "Petts Wood Runners - The home of Running in Petts Wood" was thought up and given the thumbs up!!! Whilst Julian and Darrell and their respective families holidayed together in Portugal, Julian bounced the slogan idea off of Darrell who at the time was sunbathing in a rubber dingy whilst floating in the swimming pool and drinking a bottle of "Sagres" - looking like he would have been more at home on the set of the Club Tropicana video!!!! With a simple raising of his beer bottle and nothing more - Darrell had given his seal of approval on the PWR slogan!

Gradually the idea of the Club started to take on shape, a membership database was created, membership cards printed, rules drawn up and the applications for affiliation to SEAA and KCAA were submitted - all with a grand total of 3 members; Julian, Philippa and Ron Leard, Chairman of PWR. Ron was "chosen" (only a little arm twisting necessary) because of his numerous skills and involvement with Committees and has been invaluable with the advice he has been able to give.

The launch

The Club was all ready to be launched in September 2006, only three months after that slip of the tongue, but then came the longest wait - the affiliating bodies were all off on holiday and the wait for them to approve the Club seemed to go on forever. Would the Club be accepted, could Petts Wood sustain a running club with other successful local clubs already established? You bet your bottom dollar they could!

PWR could possibly be one of the fastest established clubs on record - 0 to 100 in the blink of an eye! No one could have imagined that so many local people would come together and get involved and be so supportive of one another. And there you have it, from a Sunday morning running joke to a fully fledged, all affiliated, extremely well supported, friendly and growing community based running clubs! So to all of our fantastic members and supporters - "Thank You" to you all as you are the reason for our continued and unbelievable success and long may it continue!

All that is left to say is that if Carlsberg made running clubs - you can be damn sure it would be modelled on Petts Wood Runners!