A good read i just came across, courtesy of Roger Robinson. I thought i'd share it here :
When I put up my Adrienne Beames interview a few days ago, I promised the very different conversation I had with Derek Clayton on the same day in 2013. As with Adrienne, my objective was to let Derek give his own account of his controversial world records, not intrude my own opinion. Here's the interview. Skip the joint Introduction if you read it before.
Two Aussies from Melbourne transformed the marathon in 1967-71. They talk about their controversial world records and their remarkable lives.
Roger Robinson
In July 1969, a man walked on the moon. Our world would never be the same. The modern age of marathon running was launched at that same time, with three journeys into the unknown, all three blasting off, of all places, from Melbourne, Australia.
1. On December 3, 1967, when the men's world marathon best had stood for two years at 2:12:00, suddenly the news broke that an unknown Australian called Derek Clayton had won Fukuoka in 2:09:36.4. Sub-2:10! When no one had even gone sub-2:12! The shock was as if the first sub-2 hours marathon were to happen not in twenty or thirty years from now, but today, right now, while you're eating breakfast and reading this Marathon & Beyond.
2. Two years later, Clayton was no longer unknown, his big bony figure, fast low stride, and raw aggressive attitude featuring in every top marathoner's bad nights. He was still the only man on earth to have broken 2:10. He'd had injuries and surgery and we began to think he might be a one-shot. But on May 30, 1969, this time in Antwerp, he knocked our brains out again, running one whole minute faster, 2:08:33.6.
3. Two more years on, August 31, 1971, just as the new breed of American and European women marathoners were jostling to be first to break 3 hours, another unheard-of wonder from down-under beat them all to it, by an even bigger margin than Clayton's. Adrienne Beames had run 2:46:30, said reports from Werribee, a bit outside Melbourne. It was a giant leap for womankind.
What was in the Melbourne water? How did this ultimate triple whammy happen? Did it happen? Controversy swirls around all three performances, especially the last two. In most record progression lists, those entries are laden with cautionary footnotes. Every statistician, course-measurer, historian, eye-witness, rival claimant, and rumor-monger has had their say. But not many people have troubled to ask the athletes themselves what they think. I was recently in Melbourne, where both Clayton and Beames still live. So I went to hang out with each of them a while, to chat in a friendly runners' way about whether they did it, when they did it, how they did it, what it meant, and how they live now.
Derek Clayton
My conversation with the legend was informal and fluid; and because this was Derek Clayton it was stimulating and vigorous, full of vivid memory and strong opinion. We talked during a good lunch, with Kathrine Switzer also there to tune in to one of her heroes, in a restaurant more or less halfway between Melbourne city and his semi-rural home. He then kindly drove me to the home of Adrienne Beames, a long way out of his way. I've tidied our rambling chat a little, and have popped into the text a few background notes and an occasional private comment.
This is not a full biography or assessment of Derek Clayton. For those, go to his own excellent book, Running to the Top (1980), or Rich Benyo's insightful article, “Derek Clayton: World's Fastest Marathoner” (Runner's World, May 1979, posted on
www.RichardBenyo.com/shorter
).
Tall, powerful-looking, very fit, and ruggedly self-confident, Clayton makes quite an impression when he walks in – the craggy face unmistakeable, even after many years, and with the thick black hair now white. At 71 (born November 17, 1942), he's still an elite runner's combination of being warm, good-humored, zestful, forthright, and potentially competitive. It's kind of like meeting a semi-retired John Wayne for lunch. The six-gun isn't on show but you sometimes hear it clink.
Roger Robinson: The last time we met, Derek, we were speakers at the Hospital Hill Run in Kansas City, and you were vice-president/sales director for Runner's World. So you finally resisted the lure of America.
Derek Clayton: Bob Anderson sold the magazine to Rodale, and I didn't want to move to Allendale. I loved America, but I also loved this place, Melbourne, and it was an ideal time to return. I did a two-hour bike ride this morning. I'm a mad keen golfer, and play every Thursday and Saturday. I've been an Aussie since I was 20. I've got two kids, and now I'm a new grandfather. [He beams proudly]. But those were good years, in America. I enjoyed the culture and opportunities of the running boom, I liked the work, and I did it well. I got on well with the Runner's World editor, Rich Benyo, who was unusual because he didn't clash with Bob Anderson. Bob could be difficult but then again so could I. Most of the time we got on well, and still keep in touch. Bob brought his models to Melbourne not long ago for his swimwear calendar and we did the shoot in my factory. I import glass for the building industry, but not much work got done that day.
RR: Let's go back. Born in Barrow-in-Furness, in the north-west of England, a tough steel and ship-building town, even tougher in the middle of World War 2, with bombing and food shortages. Then you mostly grew up in Ireland...
DC: My father was English and my mother was Irish. Their marriage broke up when I was eight, and my mother took my sister and me to live in Belfast...I played soccer, in the school's first team. I was fit and strong and a good runner – I ran all over the field. I almost took up bike riding but we couldn't afford a bike. One day I went to the running club. I never ran on the track, but that day I did four laps in 4:57. I ran off to join the RAF as a cadet, and ran on the RAF Athletic team. I wasn't a bad runner even then. I could have stayed on but the military life didn't suit me, being told what to do all the time. I wanted to try something different, so resigned and decided Australia was a good place to start a new life.
RR: You came in 1963, when you were 20.
[Note: He came out on an “assisted passage,” which meant paying only ten pounds sterling for the journey by sea. The assisted migrant scheme was subsidised by the Australian government to build the post-war population and economy. They certainly got their money's-worth with Derek Clayton.]
DC: Australia's different. I was attracted to the wide open spaces. I loved it. But it wasn't easy. Mum and my sister came out to Melbourne and got jobs, but I was responsible for them, and I also went to night school after work, to be a civil engineer. We never heard from my father. Then years later, after the world records, I was running at the White City in London, against Ron Clarke, and outside the gate the kids were there wanting autographs, and in the crowd there was a man who made eye contact with me. I thought it might be him. Before the Munich Olympics a telegram came: “Bring home the gold. Dad.” I threw it away. I didn't think it was in good taste when I hadn't heard from him since I was eight.
RR: And you were running in those first years in Melbourne.
DC: I wanted to be a miler, like Herb Elliott. I did intensive interval training, sometimes every day. I joined St Stephen's Harriers, a great bunch. It was a great track scene in Melbourne, with guys like Ron Clarke, Kerry O'Brien and John Coyle, world record holders or close.
[Note: Clarke was a multiple world-record breaker. O'Brien had the 3000m steeplechase WR, and was fourth in the high-altitude 1968 Olympics, just edged for the bronze by USA's George Young.]
Running with those guys...! It dawned on me that I'd never be fast enough to be a good miler, but I had great ability to run close to my max for a long time. My heartbeat then was 33, 34. I began to do long runs and push up the mileage.
RR: You won the Victoria marathon champs in 1965 in 2:22:12, then dnf'd in the national champs in Ballarat in 1966.
DC: I had some good local results. I ran a fast 15 miles, and beat Ron Clarke by a minute. So I was getting there. Then I won my first Australian marathon title in Adelaide in 1967, in 2:21:58. and then did a 2:18. For the trip to Fukuoka, on December 3rd, I lifted my training to 150 miles a week. I wanted to give a good account of myself, and do a personal best.
[Note: That Aussie champs in Adelaide, Ron Clarke, Tony Cooke and Dave Power were among the dnf's. Australia was a running powerhouse in those days. Clayton won by six minutes.]
RR: Fukuoka was your big break-through, a day all runners of that era remember – how stunned we were by the news of a sub-2:10 marathon by a runner we'd never heard of. How do you remember it, 46 years later?
DC: Beforehand I felt like a small fish in a big pond. Races like Fukuoka were things I'd only read about. My plan was to run a personal best – better than 2:18! - by hanging with the leaders. I hung in there. Just hung in. They dropped off, dropped off. Mike Ryan was up there pushing it, up at the front till just before halfway. Then he dropped off.
[Note: Ryan the Scottish-born New Zealander had been third in the 1966 Commonwealth Games marathon in the heat of Jamaica, and would be third in the 1968 Olympics, at altitude in Mexico City. That was a tough generation, those born in UK during or just after World War 2.]
I had no idea how fast we were running. I'd never run with kilometer splits.
[Note: Just as well he didn't know. The splits were the fastest in history: 5km 15:06, 10km 29:57, 15km 44:57, 20km 59:59, halfway 1:03:22, 30km 1:30:32.]
Sasaki caught me with about 15km to go. I started doing surges on and off, and at 35km I was away again. Then I just ran like hell to the finish. Later there was a fuss about a moment when I took a water cup from the Japanese, but it was nothing, he just handed it to me when I couldn't get one without breaking stride. It seems he was expecting to share it and wasn't impressed when I handed it back empty. I had no idea how fast I'd run. I just wanted to win the race. I was in a dream knowing I'd won what was called the unofficial world championship. After about five minutes, someone handed me a bit of paper that had 2:09 written on it, but I thought it meant 2:19, so I was disappointed.
[Note: The time was 2:09:36.4, a world best by an almost incredible two and a half minutes. He slowed a little from 35km, with 15:39 for that 5km, but the splits are consistent.]
RR: Now you were a favorite for the 1968 Olympics.
DC: In Mexico City, at altitude. They took the team out there six weeks beforehand, supposedly to acclimatise. I hated it. Twenty miles a day through pollution in a city I didn't like. But you had to do it their way. I didn't handle it. Ron Hill was there, he hadn't made the British marathon team but was running the 10,000m, and he helped me. “I'm stuffed, Ron. There's nothing there,” I said. I was never up there.
[Note: In the Australian champs Clayton had beaten John Farrington by two minutes, in 2:14. In Mexico, Farrington was up with the leaders early on, but Clayton could never get in contact. His strength still showed, as he improved from tenth at halfway to finish seventh.]
RR: Then just when people were writing you off as a one-race wonder, you came back at Antwerp in 1969.
DC: I had knee surgery after Mexico. It was a torn miniscus, but I put off the surgery until after the Olympics. Then I kept pushing the training up. I didn't do regular 200 mile weeks like some people have claimed, that's too much, but I pioneered high-quality high mileage.
[Note: The big buzz idea in marathon training on all the websites in 2014 is Renato Canova's “Extending Specific Endurance,” which means high-volume training at or close to your goal marathon pace. Clayton had that sussed in 1967.]
I did go over 200 miles a few times, but at the quality I was running, it was obviously too much. It's the quality that's important. I don't like going slowly. I drive fast, I do everything fast. That's why I bike hard now. Ron Clarke was my favorite training partner, because he kept me honest. We used to try to break each other up hills. A lot of people wouldn't train with me, as I ran too hard.
After the Fukuoka record, I thought I could break 2:08, if conditions were right, i.e. flat course, cool weather and top competition. I earmarked Fukuoka again, but injury prevented me. After the knee surgery, I was running brilliantly in 1969. I accepted an invitation to race a marathon in Ankara, Turkey, only eleven days before the Antwerp race. Expenses were covered at the Turkey race, and I planned to treat it just as training. I was running 25 miles anyway every Saturday in training. It was at 5000 feet altitude, and hot and humid. I thought I'd run 2:20 but won in 2:17:26, obviously worth much faster, well ahead of two Turks. Second was Akcay, who had been ahead of me in Mexico. I beat him by five minutes. It was a great result, but of course I'll never know how much it took out of me for Antwerp.
RR: Expenses? People now forget you and other top runners had to fit all that training and traveling around a full-time job, and there was strictly no monetary reward for winning high-profile races or in your case transforming a whole sport.
DC: The story got round that Antwerp paid me $500 or $1000 for the world record, and I got banned for a while because of it. But it was travel expenses. It cost me that much in phone calls to get it sorted out. But common sense prevailed.
[Note: The financial details of today's world record bonuses are not made public, but five hundred times that figure might be a starting point.]
RR: Did Antwerp provide pace-makers?
DC: Absolutely no way. I wanted real competition. It's about winning. I cringe at all this pace making. Winning was my adrenaline rush.
RR: There are a number of accounts of that Antwerp race on the internet. It sounds as if you were pretty positive beforehand.
DC: I knew I was running well. I knew I had a faster one in me than Fukuoka. So I said beforehand, “I'm gonna go for the world record.” It was a good field - Jim Hogan, Jim Alder, Ron Grove, two Kenyans, and the Japanese Usami, who was only a minute behind me at Mexico.
[Note: Hogan had won the 1966 European Championship marathon and Alder the 1966 Commonwealth Games. Stories abound about the reaction among the other runners to Clayton's pre-race world record pronouncement. Amateurs were expected to be self-effacing, in those long-ago days. Today such predictions are standard from media-conscious sponsored elites.]
RR: So you had the competition, the flat course, and the conditions were reportedly perfect. It started in the evening and went on after dark, a cool night with no wind. The fast early pace was set by Bob Moore of Canada, whose best was 2:21 at Boston six weeks earlier, so the 15:00 first 5km was way over his head, though perfect for you. Since Moore recently went on record as saying he found you “obnoxious,” it's unlikely he was sacrificing himself to help you.
DC: To be honest, I wasn't interested in the others, as I had my own race plan and was determined to stick to that. Even splits was my aim. I was leading by 9km anyway, and only Usami came with me. I was alone from a bit after 10km, which was 30:06. They were either intimidated, or they expected me to blow up. I had a schedule of times on the back of my hand, and the split times were called out, unlike Fukuoka, where I had no idea. This time I knew where I was on time, and ran as hard as I could to the finish.
RR: OK, the tricky question. In that phenomenal Antwerp race, May 30, 1969, you ran 2:08:33.6, bettering your own world record from 1967 by a minute, and giving you the two fastest times in history, by a huge margin. It was nearly twelve years, 1981, before Rob de Castella broke your record. The world was stunned, and many were sceptical. The accuracy of that course has been disputed ever since. Ron Hill regarded himself as world record holder for his 2:09:28 in 1970, and some lists give that as an alternative progression. I've talked to other top runners of the time who are convinced it was short. Mind you, they weren't there.
DC: It's understandable that there were questions, because 2:08 was considered impossible. I had asked the organisers beforehand to double-check the course because I knew a record was possible. I found out later it was 80m long. Look at the splits. What split would you question? It was a cool, still, night-time race, and being tall and solidly built compared to most runners, I always struggled in the heat. The cool night run really suited me. I felt like a well-oiled machine that night. I was in great form, and 2:08:33 was slower than I knew I was capable of. I was suffering the last 5km, but knew I was on course for a world record.
[Note: Splits: 5km 15:00, 10km 30:06, 15km 45:17, 20km 1:00:30, 25km 1:15:41, 30km 1:30:56, 35km 1:46:14, 40km 2:01:55.]
RR: More disappointments came in the Games marathons. Ron Hill had his best day in the Edinburgh Commonwealth Games in 1970. What happened?
DC: I failed the medical beforehand. I had a bad cold. The team doctors wanted to stop me running. I had to get a waiver to run. It wasn't bull-headedness, I was getting back problems, I knew the body can break down, and I needed to take every opportunity. I was up there early on, but I got chest pains. I tried to give it my best shot, but ended up in hospital with pneumonia. Jim Alder, who'd been third behind me at Antwerp, got the silver medal.
[Note: We skipped the remaining running years. Clayton had one more outstanding marathon in him, the 1971 Australian championship, when he won decisively in 2:11.08.8. At that date, only Hill, Bill Adcocks, and Clayton himself had run faster. It was the fifth fastest marathon in history, done with an all-Aussie field of 42 in Hobart. He was among the leaders in the 1972 Olympics in Munich until halfway, finishing 13th in 2:19:49.6, and he was up there again for a while at the 1974 Commonwealth in Christchurch, but did not finish that one.]
RR: And then?
DC: I had an achilles problem. I was fed up with the body breaking down. You know, when I first started we didn't have good shoes. I trained in Dunlop Volleys. On my intensity of workload, there were always problems. So I retired. I'd lost my motivation. I'm like Ron Clarke, I'd run with a broken leg. But I did what I wanted to do.
RR: Looking back, how do you see it?
DC: It was a short career – I started at 19 and retired at 31. I'd given it my best shot. Eleven years was enough. Fukuoka was the best moment, because it came so out of the blue. It was better than any gold medal, it was so unexpected and almost unbelievable. I was different from most runners, as I ran for success only. Without the ability to achieve my high standards, running would not have had any interest for me. Given the choice, I would have preferred to be a professional soccer player.
RR: And you got head-hunted by Runner's World?
DC: When running took off in America, I was the world record holder. It was a good time. I had cousins in the U.S., my mother's brothers were there and their kids are U.S. citizens. I was earning good money with Bob Anderson, and I was invited everywhere as speaker. One year I gave 55 lectures, all round the States. I wrote my book, Running to the Top. I was fortunate that I was able to take advantage of my marathon reputation years after my retirement.
RR: Then when Anderson sold out, you came back to Melbourne.
DC: With my wife Jen, always. Yes, I developed my own business, as well as putting back into running. I was Chairman of the Melbourne Marathon for ten years, and on the Board of the Victoria Institute of Sport. And I got seriously into golf and biking. It's a bike culture here in Melbourne. I've got a expensive bike, and I ride with guys 30 years younger. A group of twenty of us from Melbourne went to France and rode the Tour de France People's Race. That was great, 100km a day, up through the Pyrennees, and all the young guys sitting on me into the wind, and trying to get me on the hills. But I'm still strong and competitive.
RR: You seem a satisfied man.
DC: I've got a lot to be thankful for – a successful marriage, great kids, a lovely home. I designed and built it myself. I like to have a project. You need to have a goal and do everything to achieve it. Nothing in life is easy. Running's the same. I tell my kids to never have regrets, and give everything your best shot. It was tough, training in the dark after a work day from 8.30am to 5pm, but that's the way it was. I loved the long tough nature of it. For me, to win a marathon was the ultimate high. Now, though I still have the business, others do most of the work. As well as the Tour de France, I've played golf on most of the top courses around the world, and in June I'll play 16 great courses in 18 days in Ireland and Scotland – another marathon! I had a knee replacement five years ago, and I'm in good shape. I bike, play golf, and go to the gym. This thumb surgery is clearing up, and I'll soon be back into serious golf. If I died tomorrow, I've had a good life.
[Note: Derek Clayton dropped me outside Adrienne Beames's home, where I would hear and observe a very different life story. I watched the man who came from a broken working class home in a Lancashire steel town, and ran the world's first two marathons under 2hrs 10, drive his sleek BMW confidently away.]