From Last to First: A long-distance runner's journey from failure to success

Product Information

Not really," he insisted. "Remember this was an era when Britain boasted Steve Cram, Seb Coe and Steve Ovett head to head, Daley Thompson and Tessa Sanderson, so an Olympic bronze medallist wasn't going to suddenly become a millionaire. The spin-off was colossal for some but not for me."

It’s often forgotten that Treacy had run the 10,000m heats, then the final, the week before, finishing a respectable ninth: “I’m still doing the marathon, definitely,” he told reporters, immediately afterwards, some of whom had genuine concerns for Treacy’s chances of surviving another 26.2 miles of running in the heat of Los Angeles. Spedding is a pharmacist by trade and worked in Ferryhill, County Durham. He is a real ale enthusiast and in 1976 co-founded the Durham brach of CAMRA. In September 2009, he published an autobiography of his running career called From Last to First.A look at Jones's training schedule reveals just how determined he was to be prepared; in the five weeks prior to the event, Jones put in the hard yards, or miles in his case, running 100, 84, 71, 71 and 100 miles leading up to the race. Spedding was told afterwards he was just 30 seconds away from death after a freak reaction to anaesthetic he received for an achilles heel operation. Treacy was beside me. I glanced behind and Joseph Nzau was fading away. I just had that moment where it hit me. I’m going to win a medal. Then immediately, I thought: “Only if I can keep this going for three miles.” I just put it out of my mind completely and it was just a matter of getting to the finish as fast as I could. I just concentrated on that.

Evans, Hilary; Gjerde, Arild; Heijmans, Jeroen; Mallon, Bill; etal. "Charlie Spedding". Olympics at Sports-Reference.com. Sports Reference LLC. Archived from the original on 4 December 2016. Nicola Weatherall, "Sunderland University to honour Eddie Izzard, Charlie Spedding and Alastair Stewart" [ permanent dead link], The Journal, 5 July 2012 That was Charlie Spedding's first ever marathon race in the space city of Houston, America. His second brought another glorious victory in the London Marathon. And his third an Olympic bronze medal finally confirmed before 92,000 folk in the Los Angeles Coliseum Stadium and a worldwide television audience of two billion. We got changed at the Coatsworth Road Junior School," recalled Charlie. "There were no showers when you came in sweaty from a 10-mile run, only washbasins which were about a foot off the floor and tiny. And only cold water. We weren't pampered in those days, I can tell you! It was actually my best chance and I had to persuade myself that something I had never imagined was actually happening – that I’d get to past 20 miles and think: “We’re not going fast enough.” I pushed the pace for a while and really reduced that group.My whole life I had dreamed of a moment like this. I was seen as an outsider but I had convinced myself I could get a medal. Jones powered home, his eventual time of 2:08:16 setting a course record that would stand until 1997. Such was the quality of the running on the day, that Spedding's time of 2:08:33 was 84 seconds faster than the Englishman had ever run before, with third-placed Allister Hutton improving on his personal best time by some seven minutes. It also says a lot about the British athletes of yesteryear, and today unfortunately, that the marks set by Spedding and Hutton still stand as English and Scottish records to this day, a reflection on both their abilities and the shortage in top-quality marathon runners from Britain in the last 30 years or so. The emotionally manipulative and coercive language around masks focuses on what they represent – showing you care