In October 1976, a marathon was held in Verwoerdburg over 26Km, known as the Verwoerdburg Marathon. It was organised by Willem Louw.

This gave rise to the thought of a local marathon club. Willem Louw and the de Beer brothers, Thys and Chris, held an inaugural meeting. Later, "Tiny" Liebenberg and Kobus Louw joined. After affiliating with another group, they became the Verwoerdburg Athletic Club.

This later changed to the Verwoerdburg Marathon Club (and again to the present Alpha Centurion Runners, when Verwoerdburg's name changed to Centurion.)

The WALLY HAYWARD MARATHON organised by this club, was first run on 30 June 1977, over two rounds of 21Km, starting & finishing at the Verwoerdburg Afrikaans High School.

Later, 21,1 Km was added to the 42,2 Km.

Later still, a 56 Km race was also introduced, but due to traffic and other reasons, had to be discontinued.

In 1997, a 10 Km race was introduced, to cater for the "not so fit", and beginning runners.

The number of athletes increased dramatically over the years, totaling between 8000 and 9000 at one stage, making the WALLY the third largest road race in South Africa, (after COMRADES and TWO OCEANS - and specialised events such as the Spar Ladies & JP Morgan Chase business relay).

The 2006 races were relatively poorly supported with only 4653 entries.

If you chose to run other races instead of the Wally in 2006, we would appreciate hearing your reasons, either via the feedback form or via e-mail to alanh@ainet.co.za.

The teething issues with the first use of the new route and new venue in 2005 were addressed in 2006.

In particular, the loop that was skipped from the correctly measured route in 2005 was run by everyone - making the distances correct - (as they would have been in 2005 if the loop hadn't been skipped) & the tog bag administration was streamlined & there were sufficient silver medals.

Many athletes who ran in the 2006 races were enthusiastic in their praises about how well everything was organised and how much they enjoyed their races.

The marathon winners since the inception of the Wally Hayward Marathon in 1977 follow:

If anyone can help with the 1988 winners, please e-mail alanh@ainet.co.za.

Thanks to Riël Hauman for help with many of the results above (especially pre-'89 results).

Riël publishes a weekly publication called Distance Running Results.

Subscribe to Distance Running Results for South African and international results and news on distance running on the road, track and cross-country. Published every Tuesday, it brings you up to date with what happened all over the world the previous weekend. Full of news, views, results and stats, Distance Running Results is the only South African publication with running results every week. For subscription information, write to riel@xsinet.co.za.

Grateful thanks also to Derrick Chamberlain of Chamberlain's Timekeeping for obtaining signed-off official Wally category results for 2001, 2002 & 2003 - (even though Chamberlain's Timekeeping only handled the Wally results for 1 year)! Service to the sport above & beyond the call of duty!

You can contact Derrick about timekeeping for races at running@intekom.co.za or visit Chamberlain's Timekeeping's famous road running results web site, http://www.raceresults.co.za/ (which is not limited to only the races timed by Chamberlain's Timekeeping.)