Memories of a harrier
with the North Belfast Harriers
 ERIC KITSON is the runner in this 1951 photograph.
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 CLUB members indulging in their second favourite pastime. Eric Kitson is not in this picture as he says he didn’t drink then. Stanley Kane of Port Coquitlam is on the right at the front.
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By ERIC KITSON
The other day, a friend of mine said that she was entering the Vancouver Sun Run. I remarked that I had been a harrier in my younger days. She had never heard of the word harrier relating to cross country running, only as a military jet plane or a bird.
In 1950, I joined the North Belfast Harriers along with a fellow apprentice friend of mine named Herbie. The clubhouse was only five minutes walk from my house so it was very convenient.
There were some fields nearby and we started off jogging for about half a mile by which time we were exhausted. We gradually reached a level of fitness where we could join the slow pack on a Saturday afternoon on their usual six mile run on the hills north of Belfast.
The clubhouse was very basic, just a large hut with toilet and cold showers. The members were mostly from the locality, which was mixed religious wise, but we all got along fine apart from some good natured bantering.
Our club captain Eddie McAvoy, our best runner, was RC.
The club had many scheduled races. One of them was a novelty race on Christmas morning. It was a relatively short race around the local streets, about a mile.
We ran in groups of three, one top runner, one intermediate, and one beginner, and we had to stay together.
On my first race, of course, I was the beginner. The last leg was a quarter mile downhill and my teammates each took an arm and raced me to the finish, my feet barely touched the ground. We won.
In those days we didn't have the sophisticated athletic shoes available today. In our training runs, which were partly by road, we used canvas topped tennis shoes.
In races which were entirely across fields we had spiked shoes. In a massed start of hundreds of runners, you had to watch you didn't get “spiked” in the leg by someone’s shoe.
Pretty soon Herbie and I were running in competitive races though in NBH's “B” team. At that time we were going to night school, so we would run about three miles twice a week after school as well as our Saturday jaunts.
The “All Ireland” championships were held one year in Belfast and the next in Dublin. NBH always fielded two teams of nine or 10 each. The first six to the finish line counted, so if they came say fourth, seventh, 10th,15th, 20th and 24th, the score would be 80 and the lowest score won.
At that time East Antrim Harriers were a very strong team and were taking all the trophies. They were mostly from Ballyclare and we used to call them “the farmers.”
A local newspaper called Ireland's Saturday Night was strictly a sports reporting paper at the time and it even published the training runs of the local harriers. There was one club member called Ivor Rush. I used to get a laugh when they published ie “The pack was paced by E. Kitson and the whip was I. Rush.”
In 1996, North Belfast Harriers celebrated their 100th anniversary. Former members converged from all over the world, including my wife Maureen and myself, and Stanley Kane and his wife Jean from Port Coquitlam.
A dinner dance was held at the Europa Hotel and we renewed old friendships with our former team mates.
We also were invited by the Lord Mayor of Belfast to a civic reception at City Hall. We got a grand tour of the building, including the magnificent ballroom and the council chambers.
There are many beautiful murals, stained glass windows and statues in the building, things we never thought to go to see when we lived in the city.
A few years ago NBH rebuilt their clubhouse and made it co-ed with separate showers and change rooms. They now have a strong ladies team and win many race events.
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