From Last to First: A long-distance runner's journey from failure to success

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That's some way to win a marathon, never mind your first one, isn't it?" laughed Spedding. "Magnani was convinced he'd held me off but I had a feeling the race was mine. Charlie Spedding describes himself as ‘not particularly talented’ – at least, compared to the group of people he had chosen to find himself among. These were the athletes in the Olympic marathon. So how did he end up with a bronze medal? How did he win the London Marathon? And why does he still hold the English record for the distance? See the March 26 issue of AW for more tributes to Lindsay Dunn plus details of his training theories

People know Lindsay for Brendan and Charlie and all the amazing names he’s coached,” says Shrubb. “But he’d take on ordinary athletes like me too. Little did I know that my first experience of the London Marathon would be timed so perfectly, at least from the perspective of a young British sports fan. In the intervening years there has been very little to cheer in the men's race, Britain's last win coming in 1993 through Eamonn Martin, but maybe Mo Farah is the hope on the horizon that marathon running in this country needs.

Brendan Foster and Charlie Spedding on the impact Dunn had on their lives and the wider sport following the coaching legend’s death aged 77

Spot on. Deaths now dropped, it’s all “Cases”–‘seek and ye will find’. However, 70-80% have innate immunity. Who am I to criticise a Knight of the Realm with his long and distinguished career? I have worked for most of my life as a pharmacist but left my profession several years ago feeling very disillusioned. Too many people were taking medication for metabolic diseases but never getting better. The drugs were treating the symptoms but not the root cause of their illness. I have devoted recent years to researching and writing about the real reasons so many people are ill. Clearly, lifestyle factors are to blame and among them diet has the biggest influence. Tragically, the official dietary guidelines, issued by the NHS and the Government, are a major cause of most of the metabolic diseases suffered by so many people. The pharmaceutical industry benefits from this situation: official advice makes people ill and symptom-treating drugs make those people patients for life. Britain’s disastrous decision to abandon testing for coronavirus occurred because health systems could only cope with five cases a week, official documents show. However, I didn't want to come last yet again so I gave it a real go. I didn't win - but I finished second or third and thought: `Hey, this is for me.' I was good at something." I hammered as hard as I could in the tunnel and was right behind him going down the home straight. The noise the whole way around was extraordinary but we had a whole lap to do after that. I think I’d used up whatever finish I had catching him, although I ended up only two seconds behind.

The London men's winner of 1984 is confident that Paula Radcliffe will emerge as a British winner in the women's race of 2005, though he is not so sure about the impact of a third marathon in eight months upon the long-term future of the world record-holder. "You can only go to the well so many times, and running the marathon really is going to the well," Spedding pondered. "Even if you are the best in the world, it takes an awful lot out of you. And I just worry that running another one now is maybe just diminishing Paula's chances of making sure she wins gold in a major championship." It’s impossible to imagine that moment being lost now, or, as is happening with increasing frequency, being rewritten by some retrospective readjustment of the result. But imagine Treacy had finished fourth in that Olympic marathon, only to discover, three or four years later, that one of the runners ahead of him was caught doping, and that he was being promoted to the bronze medal position. As for Spedding, there was no shame in finishing second to Jones, although understandably he wasn't too keen to embrace the victor come the end of the race: "I didn't shake hands with him at the finish, but that wasn't because he had beaten me," which was fair enough considering Jones's caught-short moment.

Then one day we had a race over two miles of pathways around the school. A few set off at a brisk pace but, once out of sight, dropped down to a walk.

The emotionally manipulative and coercive language around masks focuses on what they represent – showing you care That was Charlie Spedding's first ever marathon race in the space city of Houston, America. His second brought another glorious victory in the London Marathon. And his third an Olympic bronze medal finally confirmed before 92,000 folk in the Los Angeles Coliseum Stadium and a worldwide television audience of two billion. Not really," he insisted. "Remember this was an era when Britain boasted Steve Cram, Seb Coe and Steve Ovett head to head, Daley Thompson and Tessa Sanderson, so an Olympic bronze medallist wasn't going to suddenly become a millionaire. The spin-off was colossal for some but not for me." While very few people are wearing masks on the high street, online mask shaming is in your face. Covidiot. Selfish. Get over it. Mask up. Granny killer” Again Jones was satisfied enough that he had beaten such a strong field and defended his title: "The one second has never bothered me; everybody else made more of a fuss than I did," he revealed in Struthers' article, but from that day on he was wise enough to make sure he always wore a stopwatch.The reason therefore why so many old people have died is because people are living longer and they are the ones with the old-age related diseases. The virus is not selecting according to age, but medical condition. Spedding returned 2hrs 9mins and 58secs - 37 seconds behind Lopes but only a tantalising two seconds behind the green-vested Treacy, with whom he battled the final miles. The more testing that is done, the more “cases” will be found, i.e. people who have markers showing that they were exposed to the virus (and probably developed immunity). Indeed, even in his final few weeks he was heard to be following news from the English National Cross Country Championships on social media from his hospital bed. In those grey days between amateurism and professionalism athletes were allowed to run for cash - but they couldn't spend it.