Arthur F. H. Newton

Arthur Francis Hamilton Newton, born on 20 May 1883, was an English-born long-distance runner who won the Comrades Marathon in South Africa five times and held world records for 50 miles, 100 miles and 24 hours, the last with 152 miles. Educated at Bedford School, he went to South Africa in 1901, taught there, and settled on a farm in Natal in 1911. After a land dispute with the government he restarted running on 1 January 1922 at the age of 38 and, just 20 weeks later, ran the 1922 Comrades Marathon as a publicity stunt, winning it. The success set him on a new path as a professional athlete and then a writer, and he became an early pioneer of high mileage training at slow speeds, later called long slow distance. He died on 7 September 1959.