My dad trained with Brendan 3/4 times a week throughout the seventies up to moscow, used to come round to our house for lunch on Sundays and play football on the beach with me and his son. He was an awesome trainer. many of the road race records in his native Nort east were run in training shoes after a morning 10 miler, and remember we are talking about athletes like Steve Cram, Charlie Spedding, Kevin Forster, Mike McLeod running on thos courses too.
In the winter his training was almost exclusively high volume with no track training through from October to April, though he sometimes took a warm weather break. His mileage was usuaally up around the 120/130 mark, interestingly he was actually more successful whilst he was working full time and whe he went full time in athletics he became a bit obsessed with it all and went downhill.
An interesting pointer is taht when he was in his prime his club Gateshead harriers was the top club in Britaina nd he had a group of very talented very high quality guys around him, a big group of people all capable of great times and all very hungry. That enviroment must have been perfect.
He was a ruthless competitor, very tough and ran his races in a way which was very hard metally and physically, often breaking the field with two mid race laps of as close to 60 seconds as possible. He did this asgainst Viren in Rome in the European Championships and ran away from him in very tough conditions.
Unfortunately in Montreal when probably the favourite he was not 100% with stomach problems and ran below par, the only British medallist in Montreal.
e was advised by Stan Long and Lynsey Dunn, Lynsey has been involved with lots of good Britsih runners, Charlie Spedding, Kevin Forster, Dominic Bannister, Mike Openshaw etc.. over the years.
He did attempt a marathon in 1980 in New Zealand and ran only 2.15, decided it wasn't or him.
On the subject of his anaemia, whilst he was at Uni in Brighton his results went rapidly downhill, this coincided with his first break away from home and probably a poor diet, after afew weeks of iron tablets he saw massive improvements.
After finishing hiss running career went on to develop the Great north Run and was european director of Nike.