How to Run a 2:11 Marathon
16 Jan 2004 09:43Â
Marathon legend Bill Adcocks (Coventry Godiva Harriers) got a series of endurance seminars off to a flying start at the UK Athletics Endurance Performance Centre, St Mary?s College Twickenham, on Thursday 15 January.
He attracted an audience of 50 ? twice as many as expected ? to a lecture topically entitled ?Road to Athens? to kick-off a series organised by UK Athletics and the Flora London Marathon.
The title stems from the fact that Adcocks? time of 2:11:07 when he won the Athens Marathon in 1969 remains the fastest ever over the course that will be used for this year?s Olympic Games.
It was one of seven marathons he ran in 17 months. But this was no pat-on-the-back chat. He pointed out that the sequence ended when he dropped out of a European Championships Trial marathon at 15 miles ? adding: ?That?s what happens with chickens when you chop their heads off. They run around a while and then keel over.?
But he made it perfectly clear to his audience that his marathon highs and lows ? his best time was 2:10:48 when he won the Fukuoka Marathon in Japan only seven weeks after he finished fifth in the 1968 Mexico Olympics marathon ? stemmed from a steady increase in his training mileage and a frequent racing programme from when he entered the sport aged 12.
Urging his listeners to forget times now being run by Africans and concentrate on running personal bests, he said: ?Athletics is like being on a precipice. It?s how you manage to stay on that precipice, to make sure you don?t go over the edge, that matters.?
After carefully detailing his training and racing schedules throughout his athletics career, and how he fitted them in with full-time work initially as a gas fitter and then as a college lecturer, he summed-up: ?All this was done as a result of individual perspectives, individual love of the sport, individual ambition and I don?t think the principles have changed to this day.
?It?s up to every individual to examine their own aims and objectives, and how best to achieve them. It?s the route through that quagmire that is the excitement of athletics. If you are not passionate about it, what are you doing it for??
The lecture, followed by a question and answer session, lasted for over two hours. Organiser Bud Baldaro, the National Event Coach for the Marathon, described it as a ?superb start? to a series that will continue at St Mary?s on Thursday 19 February (7.30pm) with training advice especially for runners taking part in this year?s Flora London Marathon on Sunday 18 April. It will aim to help those targeting specific times, ranging from two hours 10 minutes to four hours plus.
The third seminar, on Thursday 18 March, will feature Hugh Jones, the first UK man to win a London Marathon, in 1982, and Joyce Smith, who led home the women in the first two London Marathons in 1981 and 1982.
Interested? Simply turn up at St Mary?s College, Waldegrave Road, Twickenham, on the appropriate evenings.
And marathon runners living in other parts of the UK but interested in the secrets of Adcocks success should be encouraged to know that he says: ?The presentation can be repeated if there is sufficient interest.?
Need more information about any of the above? Email Baldaro at