Dave ready for another marathon challenge

It’s ironic that my column is out on Friday 12th March, as it’s one year to the day since the 2020 Coventry Half Marathon was first postponed, due to Covid.

However, it’s just one chapter in the connection between the event and Coventry’s twotime Olympic marathon runner, Dave Long.

Dave ran the race as a fun-runner in 1984, won it in 1986, volunteered at drink stations in the noughties and has been part of the organising team since 2017.

He also won the prize of 3rd ‘unattached runner’ in 1985, meaning that he wasn’t affiliated to an athletic club. the first unattached runner won a prize of free membership for Coventry Godiva, so Dave decided to join Massey Ferguson Runners Club instead, which had quite an impact and set the ball rolling to plot his running career.

Dave competed in both the 1988 and 1992 Olympic Games marathons for team GB, twice finishing in the top 5 of London Marathon (4th in 1991 and 5th in 1988) and was in the fortunate position of being invited to travel around the world to compete for around 15 years. Not bad for someone who only started jogging to keep fit for his local sunday football league.

One question he gets asked a lot is would he rather run, or be part of organising the Coventry Half? there is absolutely no contest because Dave will be the first to admit that organising the race is actually much more stressful.

He recalls one particular moment during the hugely successful 2019 event, that I had the pleasure of hosting. Dave was in the lead car with over 3,000 runners behind him.

It suddenly crossed his mind that if he went the wrong way onto the Ring Road, all those runners would follow!

this year’s Coventry Half Marathon will take place on sunday 31st October, having been postponed three times due to the pandemic.

With typical Cov determination, Dave believes lots of people would have given up, but the team from Coventry University students Union, which organises the race, are made of sterner stuff.