19 February RIP David Sunderland

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March 1, 2014

19 February RIP David Sunderland

The endurance world, and coaches in particular, was shocked and immensely saddened to hear of the recent and premature passing of Dave Sunderland. He was a great coach, a great mentor and most fundamentally a very good man. He was involved in almost every aspect of the British endurance community, and indeed at international was a lecturer for the IAAF (the world Federation for athletics). Only as recently as last November he had been heavily involved in organising, presenting at and mentoring numerous coaches at the European Endurance Conference, where he described his role in coaching 800 metre runner Lynsey Sharp to a berth at the London 2012 Olympics. By the time I first met Dave, about 9 years ago, he already had about three decades of coaching under his belt, and he was always really supportive, communicative and entertaining, particularly when we liaised on the England Athletics coach mentoring work. He put in huge hours into his passion for coaching but always kept a fully rounded view of the bigger picture beyond endurance running. We will all miss him.

The Flying Runner
Pure Sports