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I was very excited when Harvey Hadden was being built. I raced on the grass track on Melbourn park until HH was opened. I was probably the first cyclist to use the track. Took my bike up there one evening when it was supposed to be finished but there was still about 50 yards that was not tarmacked. I rode on it anyway and zoomed down the banking onto the unfinished bit and fell off. Lots of grazes but I was still excited. I was only average as a racer at HH - a different type of racing completely from the grass track where I was league champion at twenty.

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9 hours ago, PeverilPeril said:

I was very excited when Harvey Hadden was being built. I raced on the grass track on Melbourn park until HH was opened. I was probably the first cyclist to use the track. Took my bike up there one evening when it was supposed to be finished but there was still about 50 yards that was not tarmacked. I rode on it anyway and zoomed down the banking onto the unfinished bit and fell off. Lots of grazes but I was still excited. I was only average as a racer at HH - a different type of racing completely from the grass track where I was league champion at twenty.

Me & my mates. All schoolkids were riding tha cycle track every night when the workers had gone home soo PP sorry to dissillusion you but we were first on the travk !!!

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Disillusioned in more ways that one Catfan. When racing on HH I discovered that I was NOT a sprinter. I usually won something at every grass track meeting (usually sports days, Boots, Ericsons, miners welfares etc)  but just did not have the top end speed for hard tracks. I trained with Lloyd Binch who was national Champion. I was his lead out and he would shoot past me on the final straight with such ease.

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That pic brings back a lot of memories. Sitting in the middle of the track between heats suffering with lactic burning thighs. Norman Sheil (National coach) striding menacingly towards me and shouting "are you after blood"?  OK I had run his young protege off the track. He won World honours a year or two later.  I have a couple of pics somewhere of me riding on HH. Must try to find them.

By modern standards HH track was to big. Slower action for the viewers. Smaller tracks with steeper banking are more exciting and entertaining. 

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Hippo Girl and I spent many happy hours at Harvey Hadden Stadium when we were members of Notts AC and competing against each other in school matches and District and County Championships.  We’re both on this photo and even right next to each other but believe it or not we didn’t know each other until Nottstalgia brought us together a few years ago.  Small World isn’t it? !!

This was around 1965 we think.  

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A couple of companies that I used to deal with that have vanished = Rennet's the tool makers and ??? blast my memory! a cosmetics company on the Western Boulevard end of Wigman Rd., who outgrew the premises. 

 

Wish I had the recall of Ian123 - I can only recall a fraction of what he can - even about my locality in Radford. Oddly enough I can recall details sometimes  eg., Rennet's - the manager was Ron Tovey and chief draghtsman was Terry Julian. 

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Mr Softee Ice Cream. Had great fun working there !

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  • 10 months later...

I was in the Philatelie Society at Glenbrook in the 50’s run by a Mr Hill if my memory is correct. I can remember the club going with him, not sure where, and we had to take our stamp books. It would have been for the competition that she won, think it took place every year. Don’t remember this though.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Didn't the running track have what they called a "Tartan" surface, a kind of self levelling top coat so that when it was run over with athletes wearing spiked running shoes it wouldn't cut up the surface?

 

Rog

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My only experience of H.H. was getting off the 56/60 bus on wigman road and climbing over the gate then walking round the top to the gate next to bilborough bus depot. Especially when on an early shift. That was back in 1962-66 when I was a conductor then driver.

 

 

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1 hour ago, plantfit said:

Didn't the running track have what they called a "Tartan" surface, a kind of self levelling top coat so that when it was run over with athletes wearing spiked running shoes it wouldn't cut up the surface?

 

Rog

It was a cinder track when Hippogirl and I competed on it in the 60s. 

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Thanks for that Lizzie, seem to remember a "self levelling" surface sometime in the 70's/early 80's, can you remember a seven day runing race held sometime in the early to mid 80's, think it was based on a Victorian event, I used to call in there on my way home from Bunny on my bicycle, I think the runners did so many hours running around the track and so many hours for sleeping and eating

 

Rog

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Back in the day, I was a regular at the Nottingham Track League cycle races which ran every Wednesday evening between March/April and autumn.

 

My main memory is that it was always freezing!

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Don't forget Rog..i have those photos for you..our kid Pennyfarthing racing in the 60's.

Harvey Hadden himself, was born in the Park in 1851..he ran the family hosiery firm J&S Hadden..then went to Canada ..making a fortune in land investments.

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