Cast your minds back to 1980.
Middle-distance runners Seb Coe and Steve Ovett were gold medallists at the Moscow Olympics, and as a result, there was a massive boom in running.
The North Staffordshire Road Runners had 200 members in the late 70s, which surged to nearly 900 by the time the Olympics came.
In the same year, the group’s membership secretary contacted John Britton, who worked in IT at ICL in Kidsgrove, to see if he could computerise members’ details because they couldn’t keep up with the paperwork.
John, who lived in Alsager at the time, was both a road runner and a fell runner, and because he and his colleagues worked flexi-time, they would run at lunchtimes.
On a Friday lunchtime, they’d challenge themselves to tackle the steep incline of the hill up Mow Cop – and that’s where the idea came from for the Killer Mile.
John explains: “The success of our Olympians meant running was becoming increasingly popular, membership at running clubs was increasing, and one-mile running events were springing up everywhere, including one along Fifth Avenue in New York.
“I ran in other races but wanted our club to organise our own mile event and thought about our Friday runs in Mow Cop. I spoke to one of my friends, Peter Goodfellow, who was an international road runner. At the time, he worked at Congleton Council and offered to lend me a surveyor’s wheel. I measured the run up the hill in Mow Cop, and it was literally a mile! The rest, as they say, is history.”
He added: “I advertised the Killer Mile with running clubs and leafleted at fell races. For the first race in 1982, we had 90 runners, the second nearly 300. I organised the event for seven years and at its peak we were getting around 1400 runners which was incredible.
“My job moved to Manchester then, so I stepped away from organising it, but I am incredibly proud of what was achieved. It attracted the country’s top runners who all wanted to tackle the Killer Mile, but it also appealed to the community. I’ll never forget all the costumes that people wore in the fun run.
“It’s been amazing to see the race continuing after all these years. It’s marvellous to see the event’s new marketing, its website and all the social media around the event. I wish the organisers continued success, and I look forward to seeing it go from strength to strength in the future,” John said.