Tony Hillier's Tour top tips

Last year saw the 10th Anniversary of the rebirth of the iconic four day running event ‘The Tour’, which originally began in 1981.  

2025’s event saw a record number of athletes take part, including local legend Tony Hillier, who has been running in The Tour for almost its entirety. 

Ahead of this year’s edition, we caught up with the inspirational 79-year-old, to hear his thoughts on the prestigious event. 

How important is training ahead of The Tour? 

“Well, you’ve got to be able to run at least four days consecutively, so I would train four or five days a week.  

I think what people may have a shock with is, it isn’t just doing one run, it’s doing four runs on the trot, and that’s the hard bit because you don’t recover. 

Diet wise, as long as you’re taking enough carbs in and you know what you’re doing, you should be fine.  

I’m not a big believer in going on special diets, it’s a matter of what suits you.  

I.e., if you’re doing a long run on a Sunday, eat something night before - carbs.  

If it works through the day, then you know it works, if it doesn’t, and you have a bad tummy, then you change your diet.  

But that comes with experience what you can and can’t eat.” 

How did you find last year’s Tour? 

“Personally, because my fitness was way down, and my age, I found it very hard last year. 

The heat was tough too, that must have made a massive difference to a lot of runners.  

But me, personally, I enjoyed it more because I was mixing with a lot more of the newer runners, and I was quite impressed with how they were running.  

So, yeah, I’ve got a lot more memories out of the last Tour than I have out of the other 22.” 

What would your advice be to younger people wanting to take part in The Tour? 

“It depends what level they run at or what they want to achieve, but the Hyde Seven is a good place to start. 

It’s really a tough race, even though it doesn’t look it on paper.  

But anyone who fancies getting involved this year, I’d definitely start thinking about training as early as possible, four or five days a week.  

I know it sounds a lot, but it isn’t because you’ve got to be able to run four days consecutively. 

It doesn’t matter what your pace is, even if you’re slow, four days running without recovery is quite hard - it takes years to get used to.  

I’ve been doing it for 41 years, and I still struggle.” 

Which element of The Tour do you find the toughest? 

“Well, in the old days, my nemesis was the Hell on the Fell, I never liked it.  

I must admit, I have run sub 40 on it in another life, but I never liked it, because it was a killer going up, and you’re just like a lemon coming down.  

Me personally, with this new tour, I think the Thursday night run (X Trail 10k) is hard, because it looks like it’s on road, but it’s a mixture of everything.  

You’ve got to go up to Lees twice, it’s a long climb, and coming back to do it the second time - it’s tough.  

I find that hard, you hit it once, and you go, ‘oh my god’, then you’ve got to do it again.”  

What did you make of the turnout at last year’s Tour? 

“It went well last year, there’s a lot more runners getting involved. 

The old Tour, I’ll be honest, it was more designed for the old club runners.  

There weren’t many lady runners in the 80s and 90s.  

Since then, there have been more and more ladies getting into running, and getting impressive results. 

I would imagine, percentage wise, it’s more lady runners, than men. 

I’ve also noticed with this new Tour, we seem to be getting a lot more younger people into it, which surprised me, because the Tour is tough.  

It’s not something anybody can do, you’ve got to have a certain mindset for it and train for it, but they seemed to run it very well. 

I don’t know what sort of training they’re doing, whether they’re taking advice or whether they’ve gone in and had a shock to their system.  

The first Tour I did, I’ll be honest with you, it shocked the living daylights out of me. 

I’d been running for a year, I’d done a marathon, and I thought, oh, the Tour looks good.  

And when I did my first one in 1985, I’ve never experienced anything like it - but that woke me up.  

And that’s maybe a good thing, because if you do a run that hurts, like The Tour, then you start training properly.”  

What is the biggest mistake people make when it comes to The Tour, or similar running events? 

“To a lot of the modern runners today, the word ‘race’ is a naughty word, but isn’t to me.  

To me, when you race, whether it be a 10k or The Tour, it doesn’t matter whether you’re going for a time, you will run at higher pace than when you’re training.  

And people don’t get this, they don’t understand why it hurts in a race compared to, say, the training run. 

But they are running at higher tempo.  

And that’s what I train hard for, because I don’t want that race pain to not be enjoyable.  

I want to come out of that race and be able to run the day after, but also achieve a good time in the race.  

I train hard, race easy. I don’t train for health or any other reason, those are the added benefits - health and longevity.  

I mean, I’ve had my problems, I had colon cancer five years ago, and it didn’t stop me running - I bounced back.  

A lot of people said I was an idiot, but no, it’s motivational, it keeps me going.” 

Away from The Tour, what is your biggest running achievement? 

“I’ve had a few good achievements! I think it’s that as I’ve got older, I’ve started to run well for my age - because there’s a lot my age that struggle now.  

And most of them were good runners, far superior to me, but I’ve managed to keep it going, maybe that’s my biggest asset. 

Winning a trophy in the Benidorm Half Marathon for a V 65 was quite a high moment for me as well.  

That gave me the boost to keep going, because it’s tough at my age.”  

Tickets for next year’s Tour - which takes place in June - are still available but are selling fast. To secure your place, visit: https://notreallyheremedia.niftyentries.com/The-Tour-2026