Steve Dawes breaks the winning tape held by race director Peter Head at Foote’s Lane. (Picture by Tom Tardif, 0833661)

STEVE DAWES and Heather Foundling-Hawker are both £1,000 better off today after their victories in the first local marathon for 16 years.

Their wins come exactly 100 years after the first completed Guernsey Marathon saw just four men come to the start line at Le Gouffre.

Yesterday’s race, on rather more busy and better surfaced roads than H. Becker endured in winning the 1909 event in 3hrs 3min. 50sec., saw around 200 starters leave the Foote’s Lane start and finishing point.

But nobody could live with the Guernseyman with eyes on running the event at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.

Despite not specifically training for a 26.2-mile race, Dawes eased to victory in 2-43.54.

It was 11min. outside his personal best for the distance, but he had not set out to improve his third place on Guernsey’s all-time marathon list and the first words he uttered after breaking the tape were, ‘next time I’ll train for it’.

Three places behind Dawes was the 43-year-old long-distance specialist from Honiton, Foundling-Hawker, who managed to head the stronger women’s field despite several times losing her way.

Dawes eventually finished 6min. 26sec. ahead of Chris Carre, the former Guernsey policeman who six years ago left the island and now works as a Salvation Army minister in Herne Bay.