While most Britons were demolishing the last of the Christmas turkey in 1979, Sebastian Coe ran a punishing 14.4 miles up the Derwent Valley, defying everything that nature and the elements dared to throw at him. “It was a hard effort, a 5:30 pace in wet tracksuits and slickers,” wrote the Olympic marathoner Kenny Moore, who tried to keep up. “The wind and rain howled out of the Pennines, stopping the men cold in places, blowing white water back up from the spillways into the lakes.”
Eventually Moore had enough and went to sit with Coe’s father, Peter, who was driving behind them, listening to Schubert in the car. But Coe ploughed on. “I’m harder this year than last,” he told his father afterwards. “Clear to see,” came the response. A few months later the world realised it, too, as Coe won a brilliantly defiant Olympic 1500m gold in Moscow.
