THE natural successor to the Examiner Forty Furlongs Fun Runs of the 1980s and 1990s is the Examiner Charity Challenge.
This year’s is on May 26 and if anybody wants to maintain a tradition whose roots can be traced back 28 years, to 1983, details can be found here.
The Fun Runs were just that – a five mile jog taken seriously or in fancy dress, and to raise money for any number of charities, national or local.
They raised many thousands of pounds and were hugely successful, attracting at their height more than 1,000 runners, most of them individually sponsored.
The races were always based at the Huddersfield Rugby Union football ground at Waterloo, where they started and finished.
This was the base for the much more serious 26-mile Pennine Marathon, which for the first few years took place on the same day.
The Fun Runs were a much more modest affair.
Runners came out of the ground into Wakefield Road and ran through Dalton and Moldgreen to the foot of Somerset Road.
They ran up this into Almondbury, then down Fenay Lane on to Penistone Road and back to the rugby ground.
