When CommunityAd featured the Hawkinge Hurricanes Running Club in our last edition, founder and lead coach Sam Miller informed us about their runner, volunteer and soon to be qualified coach Daniel Newman, also known as Dynamo Dan for his incredible race times in marathons.
After a frustrating 2020 which saw Dynamo Dan’s plans to run the London Marathon alongside his wife cancelled, Dan is now fully motivated to get back to action with the return of the club and several races in his sights including the London Landmark Half Marathon.
CommunityAd caught up with Dan as he spoke to us about his love of running, most memorable achievements and the 2019 world record he set…
What are your earliest memories of running and when did you realise this was the sport for you?
My earliest memories of running go back to running cross country at school but my running didn’t really go up to the next level until 2016 when I was 29. I’d done races before then (5k’s, 10 miles and half marathons etc) but never really took them seriously I just ran them with no real training or goals just because I could. Then in 2015 at my work Christmas party, and obviously not with a clear head, I signed up for the 2016 Brighton Marathon only 4 months away thinking it wouldn’t be particularly difficult; how wrong was I?
Again, I didn’t train properly and completely underestimated it and after going out too fast ended up walk/jogging the last 10 miles and never having done anything so difficult finishing, in 4 hrs 17 mins. It broke me! It was then that I joined the Hawkinge Hurricanes to not only get structure in my running but to make it fun and enjoyable. After that, my marathon times started to tumble:
- Brighton 2017 03:27
- Richmond Runfest 2017 03:23
- Manchester 2018 02:54
The Manchester time qualified me for the Boston Marathon (USA) and London Marathon in 2019, the two races I’ve always dreamed of running.
Can you inform readers about your world record? What was this for and how hard was it to accomplish?
In the build-up to the Manchester Marathon, my wife’s nan Viv who lived about 4 doors down from us became really unwell and had to go into hospital and died shortly after the marathon from encephalitis. She was a huge part of our lives and especially in our children’s lives. The 2019 Boston and London Marathons took place about a year after Viv passed away so I decided to run both for The Encephalitis Society in an attempt to raise some money and more importantly awareness about the disease as we and so many others had never heard of it.
Now, everyone runs marathons for charities and I wanted to do something different so not only was I going to run 2 marathons, 13 days apart and over 3000 miles apart, but I thought why not try and set a Guinness World Record and try and get the cause out there more?
So, I settled on running it in a full football kit which included wearing studded football boots, shin pads and carrying a football for the whole duration of the London Marathon.
I did a few training runs in the boots up to about 10 miles and felt fine in them. On the race day everything was going great, I went through halfway in 1:30 and felt really good, then at mile 15, the wheels came off. The shin pad had dropped and had been rubbing at the top of my foot making it excessively sore, also the boots had been rubbing away at my little toe on each foot and suddenly I was really hurting.
I saw my wife at mile 19 at Canary Wharf and I was in tears by then from the pain, and she recommended I saw the St John’s Ambulance people but I said to her if I took the boot off, I wouldn’t be getting it back on. I cracked on for another awful 7 miles of jogging, walking and limping but was really buoyed on by the crowd especially one lady who had seen my story and said I had really inspired her two sons (hopefully not to run a marathon in football boots).
I eventually finished in 3:42, even stopping to help someone up who collapsed not far from the finish until marshals arrived. I had never been so relieved to finish a race and get those boots off. After finishing I’d found that where the shin pad had been rubbing had caused a cut on the top of my foot and the boots rubbed against my toes so much that my socks were soaked in blood.
Later in the year, I received an award from the Encephalitis Society for outstanding achievement. Also, my record has now since been broken in Canada so it’s definitely on my mind to have another go and get it back this time with slightly bigger and more padded boots, just don’t tell my wife!
What would you say are your most memorable achievements in running?
There’s 3 that come to mind. I’ve always wanted to run London Marathon since I was a kid and seeing my great uncle’s London Marathon medal and bib framed on my great Nan’s wall, so running that and setting a Guinness World Record was brilliant.
I still vividly remember running across Tower Bridge and that was a great experience. Then there was Boston. I remember reading about the Boston Marathon in a Runner’s World magazine in my early 20s and how it was the most exclusive marathon in the world with no ballot and the only way in was to run a quick time and qualify. What an achievement it would be to just qualify for a race with such strict qualifying standards and such prestige, let alone run it.
That was the big dream for such a long time to finally do it and tackle Heartbreak Hill and that turn into Boylston Street was just amazing, the crowd, the atmosphere, the history and also the fact that thousands of runners and fans still attend despite the terrible scenes in 2013 pays amazing respect to everyone that we will not allow terrorism to stop us living our lives. I was also very fortunate to meet 2018 winner Yuki Kawauchi.
Then there was Manchester in 2018. Neither of the other two would have happened without that race. I remember turning towards the finish and thinking “I’m actually going to run under 3 hours” and as I approached the line there was just a complete outpouring of emotion. I crossed the line in 02:54:21 and just broke down in tears, it was the result of so much training, hard work and sacrifice not just on my part but of that and my family. It has been 6 months of early morning runs, 20+ mile runs, lots of treadmill miles and talking nothing about running, I think my wife and kids were happier I had done it than me so we didn’t have to talk about it anymore.