Marathon runner enjoyed a fine run to win the AAA title in Rugby in May 1981 by two minutes with 2:14:07.

I had a stress fracture at the time of the first London Marathon in 1981. I was able to get back to training before it, but I didn’t think it was worth doing the race when I was half trained up, so I took another five weeks to get into shape for the AAAs and I'm glad I did. 

Although it would have been nice to win the first London Marathon, there was a real significance to those AAAs for me. It was when I realised that I was a marathon runner and I could cover the distance in international times.

The race only had a few dozen runners. It was on the back roads, doing a circuit, around country lanes with only cows for spectators. There were maybe a few people out to watch but not many. The changing rooms were in a primary school. It was a low-key thing. 

I'd run the AAAs the year before in Milton Keynes, and I'd run a personal best of 2:18:56, but I'd lost a lot of time in the final 5km with a stomach cramp so I was hopeful that I would get a new best. Up to that point, I'd been improving in each race.

I went at my own pace, in the pack for the first lap and a half, and then I got away with Andy Holden. We were together for a while but I made a move when there was still quite a long way to go. I got clear, and I ran with the fear of this stomach cramp coming back, reliving that previous experience. But I finished, I won, and the time was 2:14:07, a five-minute improvement on my personal best. And the course was tough – we had to go up quite a steep hill three times – but that was the race which made me realise that I could do it at international level.

I’d always thought the marathon was something that I would be good at in the end. Rugby was gratifying, because it all played out that way. And despite the fact that it was a small race, and not international competition, running 2:14 on that course with that improvement, I now was able to believe that I had a lot further to go in terms of a personal best.

It got me selected to run the European Cup and, the next year, I was chosen for the European Championships but I ended up with calcification on the heel bone. I had to pull out from Athens because of pain and it was operated on later that year.

At the time of the AAAs, I’d been a student at Liverpool University but I was unemployed for the best part of a year before I got a ten-month British Council scholarship to go to Hungary. That came later that year and it turned out it was almost a year to the day from my AAAs win to winning the London Marathon.

My mileage was huge compared to what people do now. I did five marathons in a year with three months of training for each. I showed an improvement in every one of them, even if the times weren’t always faster. 

I ran New York in the autumn of 1981 and moved to Budapest the week after. I was training over there all the way through the London Marathon and right through until I pulled out of the Europeans. You weren't held to a very tight definition of what you were required to produce at the end of the scholarship so I spent most of my time training with the Hungarians.

I was coached by Alan Storey in as much as I asked his advice and that led me through my first few marathons. But, from day to day, the Hungarian national coach was someone Alan knew and they conferred when offering input throughout that whole year.

At the European Cup in France, I went 2:16. I got another PB when I won in Oslo in 2:13 and then I ran 2:10 in New York but they found out the course was short. I did Tokyo the following January and then, in London in 1982, I got my personal best of 2:09:24.

It was the period when marathon running really exploded and I could see it coming. London in year two had 16,000 runners and it was just growing hugely. New York had something similar. 

I didn’t get any prize money for winning in Rugby – just a medal that has disappeared in one of my house moves. I don’t hold on to the medals too much. I know what I achieved. I don’t need the medal to confirm it.

As told to Mark Woods  

Factfile
Born: November 1, 1955
Event: Marathon
PB: 2:09:24
International honours
1983: Chicago marathon, second place
1982: London Marathon, first place
1981: New York Marathon, third place