Running with rubbish bags good training for marathon

Press, 1 December 1987, Page 56

Running with rubbish bags good training for marathon

Helping a Christchurch City Council rubbish collection team is good training for running a 68km marathon race, says the veteran ultradistance runner, John Drew, aged 74. Drew, who left today for his sixth annual Honolulu marathon, asserts that three hours of gathering heavy rubbish bags into trucks ready for the rubbish cart squad to pick up, is equivalent to a hard 16km training session. “It’s harder really,” says Drew. “Not only do you have to be on the run to keep ahead of the collection cart but you have to run with a load of rubbish bags to pile then! in dumps along the roads.” Drew who is something of a weightlifter as well as a distance runner, recently achieved a bench press lift of nearly 115 kg, while in regular training. This is about 7.5 kg more than his own weight. This is a record for a man of his age and weight. “I found the job of gathering up rubbish bags into piles was really tough,” said Drew. “If I hadn’t been in training for both marathon running and weight lifting I couldn’t have done what I did.” The man Drew helped with

piling part of tin rubbish round is a friend who also trains at the gym, Kevin Alderson. “Not only is he a very strong, powerfully muscled lifter but he has also completed a 68km marathon race," Drew said. “I saw him carry four bags in each hand and two under each arm last week. And some of those bags are heavy. I estimated some of them were more than 20kg or so. Running with a 20kg rubbish bag in either hand was almost more than I could handle. “I think Kevin combines the heavy rubbish bag handling as supplementary training for his weight-lifting and marathon running. Kevin trains on weights with his rubbish-cart team-friend, Gary Smith, who is also a strong weightlifter,” Drew said. Drew has had one of his biggest years of running since he took the sport on at the age of 48. Since then, he has run about 80,000 km in racing and training in 25 years and has completed 38 marathons. Major events this year have included the twenty-fifth anniversary New Brighton 80.4 km race, in which he holds the record for the max-

imum number of finishes — 14 out of 25 starts. Then, at Queen’s Birthday week-end, he completed the City of Christchurch marathon with a time about 20 minutes faster than in the same event the previous year. Then, at Labour Week-end, he completed the prestigious Port Hills 100 km race. These runs have had assistance from the Canterbury sports motivation consultant, Art Pickering, who went with Drew all the way in each event Pickering actually ran with Drew for about 30km in the 100 km race. This year. Drew will again be the house guest of Dr Jack Scaff, a well-known Honolulu cardiologist and marathoner. Both Dr Scaff and his wife, Donna, have run the City of Christchurch international marathon as well as lecturing in the city on the effects of marathon training as a means of preventing heart attacks and strokes. Dr Scaff is a founder of the Honolulu marathon and has run these events since the first one, 13 years ago. Both Dr Scaff and his wife will contest the Honolulu marathon this year. Drew is using this year’s series of runs as a build up for the twenty-fifth anniver-

sary re-enactment of New Zealand’s first 24-hour run in Christchurch on May 22, 1988. ; In the first 24-hour run, op May 22, 1963, Drew completed 167 km and at the same time bettered the best 160 km time by the great Australian veteran, and coach of the Olympic champion Herb Elliot, Percy Weils Cerutty, by about 23 minutes. Drew says he hopes Art Pickering will be there too, to boost him along. He plans to cover the 167 km to celebrate his seventy-fifth birthday anniversary. ■T don’t think it will be as tough as when I did it bedcause the New Zealand Ultra Distance Association will see to It there are plenty of caravan resting places and refreshments and we know a lot more about ultras than when I did my first one,” said Drew. ■’ A spokesman for the New Zealand Ultra Runners’ Association, Bob, Dlckison, says the association plans to Invite runners from throughout New Zealand and some from Australia. Drew says he plans to do a bit of canvassing to attract some entries from among the 9000 or so runners in the Honolulu marathon, too.