Words: Ultra Magazine
When Andy Milroy once asked Don Ritchie why he ran 6:10:20 for the 100km, his laconic reply was “Cavin Woodward was chasing me.”
Cavin Woodward was an accountant from Whitnash, England. He started running at the age of 16 in 1963 when he joined the Leamington Cycling and Athletics Club (LC&A), starting a lifetime membership.
He took up marathon running in 1971 because he “felt sorry” for Leamington’s veteran marathoner, Tom Buckingham, who seemed like he always was the only club member competing in marathon events. Buckingham had started running in 1946, and was himself a former runner-up in the 52-mile London to Brighton Road Race and 4th-placer in the Comrades Marathon. Woodward said, “Tom never seemed to have any support so I decided to run with him. Other distance runners then joined the club.” Soon several runners in the club started to compete in the 52-mile London to Brighton Road Race.
At first Woodward competed in races more for enjoyment than for winning. He said, “But my wife Carol changed that. She was fed up with coming to watch me do not good, so she mapped out a training schedule for me and made sure that I kept to it. It proved a great incentive because Carol comes to watch all my races and gives me encouragement.” She would also bring along their twin boys. Woodward ran his first London to Brighton in 1971 and finished 17th. He said, “I was more interested in finishing than my final position.” His best marathon time was achieved that year, 2:19:50.
By 1974 he was racing nearly every week from 5K upwards. He found that running competitive events was far more rewarding than slogging out the miles in training stints, but still trained about 70 miles per week. It was said of Woodward, “He is the man who runs marathons as often as most folk exercise their dog. Most distance runners are content to run a couple or perhaps three marathons a year. Woodward reckons to run one every other week.”
But then in October Woodward won what is perhaps the greatest 100-mile race ever staged.
By 1975, Woodward was winning nearly every long race he finished. In April, he set the world record for 30 miles at Epsom of 2:43:52. In May he won the Isle of Wight marathon in course record time. During the summer he struggled with his performance because of the heat, but In August, he won the classic Two Bridges (36 miles) in Scotland.
In September Woodward ran again at the London to Brighton Road Race. From the start, he went out fast, grabbed the lead running 10 miles in just 55 minutes. He explained, “I felt that if I wanted to win the event, I would have to be three minutes ahead of the opposition after 30 miles. In fact, I was four minutes up on them. But even at that stage I couldn’t relax. There were 24 South Africans in the field of 100 and I didn’t know what they were capable of doing. I always start fast, but for all I knew they could have been strong finishers.” He won, finishing only a minute over the course record. He had finished on the podium for this international race four years in a row.
But then in October Woodward won what is perhaps the greatest 100-mile race ever staged, with 18 carefully chosen competitors lined up in Tipton including Ron Bentley and New Zealander Siegfried Bauer. Cavin planned to go for as fast a 50 miles as possible and then “hang on” to see if he could cover the 100 miles, as his longest distance had been the London to Brighton three weeks earlier. Again Woodward took off like a marathon runner covering 10 miles in 0:56:27 became the first person to run faster than 10 mph over 50 miles with a time of 4:58:53. He took a world best 150km with 10:44:15 and then picked up the pace with the end in sight running 8-minute miles and a 7:07 final mile, taking the world record with a time of 11:38:54, knocking 18 minutes off the previous best set by Derek Kay in 1972 in Durban.
Afterwards Woodward said “I proved that it could be done. I hope I have altered the outlook of some runners. I hope I proved that running even-paced is not the only way of winning races and breaking records. I would like to think that if a runner wants to try and run ultras fast right from the start against the wishes of his coach or trainer, he could convincingly argue that that was the way Cavin Woodward did it.”
There was no doubt that Woodward was the most dominant ultrarunner in the world in 1975. Since 1972 he had finished on the podium of 16 or 17 races. By 1975 he had finished 26 marathons and 19 ultras. At age 52 his ultra career finished where it had started, at the London to Brighton Road Race.
Similarly, when Andy Milroy once asked Don Ritchie why he ran 6:10:20 for the 100km, his laconic reply was “Cavin Woodward was chasing me.”
Cavin Woodward passed away in 2010.