David Bedford

I have a vague recollection of a quote from 'The Dave Bedford Story' where he said that one of his proudest achievements was running a lap of the Isle of Wight during a family holiday - which he estimated to be approximately 50 miles.

The 50 × 1 mile session is clearly nonsense.

No mention of the 50*mile in his book, but he does mention running high mileage since the age of 14 and drinking plenty of beer to hydrate.

In Finland maybe, on his first night he woke up in daylight thinking it was rise and shine time and put on his running gear before realising he was a few hours premature.

Same here. Never heard the story and I was a fan of Bedford. 200mi weeks yes. 50 x mile no.

The race is online. Watch it. You'll have your answer.

I remember from a Lydiard book that Bedford had one of the highest oxygen uptake levels ever measured. Lydiard thought that Bedford would have done better in championship races if he had waited until the 2nd half of races to press the pace, rather than from the gun. That's the tactic Carlos Lopes used in 1976 and his World XC victories in 1984 and 1985. Best front runner I have ever seen.

Go out in 60 in a 10000.

If you are looking for Bedford training look at Goaters book: The Art of running faster. He was Bedfords training partner and world class runner himself.

- doubles, steady never longer then 1h

- 4-5 workouts per week: hill reps, fast track repetitions 200-400m, fartlek , time trials

- frequent racing, including cross country in winter

- Basically 50-80 miles of high quality, similar to many other Brits at the time.

I am always amazed how people could handle so many workouts and quality, but i guess if you are in shape you can...

Yes, you can easily find Bedford online. I just spent a bit of time doing that but found nothing about a session of 50 x1 mile. Runner's World had a Booklet of the Month series for a while and "The Dave Bedford Story" was one of the booklets. I read it, don't have it anymore but if there was a session like 50 x a mile he'd done it would have been in that booklet. It isn't. If you can find something corroborating this I'd love to see it. But yes, Bedford was in the 5,000 in Munich as was Prefontaine. Both were very unhappy with their results and supposedly went drinking together on the night after the race.

You are wrong malmo.I don't spam LRC .I'm atleast as interested in running as you are.55 years experience so far. In many threads I want to help runners at all ages to give them my expertise how to improve fast. I like to participate in threads I see my experience will add something to the discussion.We are all here ( in the running threads ) because we love running, aren't we ? 🇸🇪🤠🇸🇪

Agree. I'd heard, and believe, he did 200m weeks, but the 50x1 is pretty dubious.

He was like Clarke in that he just loved to run, could run fast even down to 5k, but just had no kick.

Don't say I'm wrong. I don't lie. You were so out of control with your spamming that we gave you your own sandbox to play in. To your credit you haven't been spamming the message board lately and we respect that. Right now you are the least of our worries, as it should be. Your participation is welcome and you do add content to the threads. I like that.

That was an unforced error by me. Your troll card has expired. I'm sorry for bringing it up.

The 200m weeks were reported. But of course 200mpw usually means "up to 200mpw" not continually. Reminds me of the Steven Wright joke:

"I went to a 24 hour grocery store. When I got to the door I was locked. I see a guy in there and waved to him.
He waved back and said, "Closed"
I pointed to the sign and said "It says open 24 hours"
"Not in a row."

Actually it was the mid-race surges that were popular back in the day. Pretty much everyone, especially the Brits, had a version of it. In college we even did it in cross country one year. Racing was an exploration of limits, and it was fun.

Thanks for that. Valuable resources.

In the 1972 10,000 final, Bedford took it out in 60.6 first 400m.

No no no, it was the day Lingren ran 16:08 for 4 miles on the incredibly hilly Mt SAC course.

I bought it was the day Lindgren ran WR pace for the marathon for 20+ miles.

I even tried out to copy the training of Bedford out from a copy of his exrcise diary I borrowed from a running friend. Then for some time I did 3 running sessions daily until I couldn't handle it anymore.During that time I didn't work or study so I had plenty of time to do the training and recover. So, I have been there and done it . Have tried out most of the known training systems . My running results just rocketed after I read an article of Jack Daniels and his " exact" paces. With only 6 running sessions per week I ran faster than ever. Instead of running alot of ' useless' easy mileage I did only ENOUGH mileage to back up my faster quality workouts. 🇸🇪🤠🇸🇪

I remember those Runner's World booklets, my high school coach had a bunch of them. I still have the Frank Shorter and Dave Wottle booklets. I remember reading in one booklet I read that Gerry Lindgren was going to try training 50 miles a day. I don't think he got very far with training that much.