A brown mop flies past the head of a 14-year-old making his first tracks in the dark of a Barnet night. A renowned 10,000m world-record-holder, weaving past a rabble of juniors still well within the first 25 laps of their own pursuit.
Dave Bedford on the outside and a younger, self-confessed slower Dave on his inside. Chalfen is his surname and whilst he doesn’t yet know it, his path is fast becoming set on a journey that will take him from budding athlete to international coach, via Kenya, Spain and the rest the often wonderful, sometimes murky world running has to offer.
50 years later, Chalfen is a familiar face a few miles from that Barnet track. Parliament Hill and Hampstead Heath a north star that has never truly released its grip.
Full circle
A Highgate Harriers coach, amongst others, Chalfen is the coach of England internationals Jacob Allen and Alex Leprêtre, as well as a variety of athletes of every different level through his website Run Coach 1 to 1.
I sat down with Chalfen over Zoom a few days before the release of A Few More Laps – A deep dive into the sharp end of running and coaching. Part-memoir, part study, it is an observation only a lifetime in the sport can really give you.
A round trip through the brain and feet of an individual whose half-century association with the variety of characters athletics seems to attract makes for a book purpose built for the fanatic, the population of which is bigger than they let on.
A Few More Laps begins with Chalfen’s own early steps, his bedrock a nostalgia-filled passage through the North London club scene, its leading modest lights and a snapshot of an era, unrecognisable but in truth not too far away from the scene we see today.
From athlete to coach
Chalfen is modest, though the idea of telling him such seems enough to make him blush. So when he says he possessed little talent in the sport it’s hard to separate truth from humility.
But by the metrics of those he has gone on to coach there is some justification. Personal highlights include a battle for victory at the Slough marathon and the Rhyader Round the Lakes 30km (or something around the distance).
Chalfen’s own running journey isn’t self-aggrandising in the same way you can sometimes moan about some running authors. It’s interesting and crucially serves a purpose. Chalfen’s move into coaching as he approached 40 came knowing despite some obvious opinions, he didn’t possess all the answers.
Embarking on coaching with more or less the leading coaches of the time as mentors, Chalfen offers something for the individual fascinated with coaching philosophy, but intersperses it with anecdotes that makes the book far more than anything approaching a manual.
His coaching sees him coincide with the uptick of Serpentine Running Club, Hyde Park’s traditionally more social club through the 2010s found itself in an unpredictable sweet spot.
A mix of younger athletes making major breakthroughs and an older guard rewriting the limits of what you’d expect late into your 30s, Serpentine found themselves at the sharp end of national competition, most notably winning silver at the South of England 12 Stage in 2017.
The right time
Chalfen said he first thought about writing this book six or seven years ago, but didn’t feel he had the weight to carry it through at that point.
But it is these stories, of the lawyer, accountant or marketeer by day finding some solace in an increasing obsession to stomp the pavement, to varying heights of success, that give the book its weight.
Though Chalfen’s recent years certainly enhance it, I find myself invariably drawn to these objectively “lesser” moments.
And in a sense I get the impression Chalfen is too.
His time in the sport has included rubbing shoulders with some of the world’s best, and at one point he even went as far as to raise money to set up a permanent camp in Kenya, before being defrauded by an athlete he would have previously admired and respected.
For those looking for a bit of stardust, A Few More Laps will not disappoint but Chalfen hints at the strength of the book in a comment about an athlete who goes on to achieve more or less nothing additional under his watch:
“it’s the experience rather than the Garmin data or Power of 10 listing that really matters.”
And for me, it finds itself at its most compelling when going back to those personal moments. The loss of his father at a young age and the space running found in its chasm, or an athlete under his guidance discovering and excelling at a sport in which tradition dictates he or she came to it too late.
For anyone that likes running, that recalls with fondness, their own Hampstead Heath, the clarity of their own personal pursuit, A Few More Laps will leave your mind wandering, wishing you could do it all again.
The book can be purchased directly from the website https://runcoach1to1.com/product/a-few-more-laps/
