Bruce Tulloh

Bruce Tulloh0:00

This download is the only extract the BBC has of this edition of Desert Island Discs. The presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:07

You're a Devon man, Bruce, is that right?

Bruce Tulloh0:10

Yes, as much as anywhere, and I've lived in Devon for quite a lot of my life.

Presenter0:15

Yeah.

Bruce Tulloh0:15

Uh

Presenter0:15

You were at Wellington College. How did you do at athletics at school?

Bruce Tulloh0:19

Um, well, not very well. I wasn't a star by any means, but it was the one thing which I could do, and I wasn't big enough for Ruggo, and I couldn't see a cricket ball to hit it.

Presenter0:27

Yes, one's inclined to think of the long distance runner as as as the

Bruce Tulloh0:27

Twenty

Presenter0:30

Very tall, thin chap. You're not that type.

Bruce Tulloh0:33

Um I'm a small thin chap.

Presenter0:36

Uh

Bruce Tulloh0:36

The the great thing about running is it's one of the few sports where the small man's got an equal chance against a big man. It's just a matter of carrying your own weight over the distance. Mhm. So if you've got a very light weight and long legs you're you're on good terms.

Presenter0:43

Mm-hmm.

Presenter0:49

What did you want to be as a boy?

Bruce Tulloh0:52

Um I think I probably wanted to be a novelist first of all. And then uh after seeing Zappek in the nineteen forty eight Olympics I didn't uh rather dreamed of being a runner. Yes. And it inspired me from then on.

Presenter1:05

When you left school you did your national service.

Bruce Tulloh1:08

Yes, I failed to get into Cambridge and uh so I thought, well, go and do my national service and have a couple of years' break from academic things and uh I was very lucky there,'cause I went to Hong Kong, and had a marvellous time, mhm started running uh seriously there.

Presenter1:23

and then the University of Southampton.

Bruce Tulloh1:25

Yeah.

Presenter1:26

Followed in fact by a year at Cambridge.

Bruce Tulloh1:26

Uh

Presenter1:28

What were you reading?

Bruce Tulloh1:29

Um I did botany at at Southampton and then I went on and did ag agricultural science at Cambridge afterwards. Um well my mother's a botanist and we've I've always been sort of inclined towards biology and uh we're a medical family.

Bruce Tulloh1:43

As much as anything, and I didn't really see myself being a doctor, and this is a sort of compromise.

Presenter1:48

Yes. What about athletics at the universities?

Bruce Tulloh1:51

Um well I came out of the army in being keen but not very good and uh gradually worked my way up up the ladder at university. We had lots of competition and we had a very good little bunch there at Southampton. I think we had only ten of us in the club and we won the

Presenter2:00

Mm-hmm.

Bruce Tulloh2:06

National University is cross-country, which demands a team of eight and a reserve.

Presenter2:09

Oh, that's pretty good.

Presenter2:11

You were eventually chosen for the Rome Olympics in nineteen sixty in the five thousand metres.

Presenter2:17

And uh just skipping from

Presenter2:20

Highlight the highlight. You broke the British three mile record.

Presenter2:25

And in nineteen sixty two you were the fastest British athlete over one, two, three, and six miles. And you always ran in bare feet.

Presenter2:34

Now that sounds very, very painful running on cinders in barefeet. Grass, I understand, but

Presenter2:40

What was your thinking there?

Bruce Tulloh2:41

Um well, it's not really very painful. You get fairly uncomfortable running anyway, you get tired and out of breath and so on. Um and I don't think I've suffered any worse um than people running in shoes who got blisters. In fact, I I very rarely blistered, and I've got fairly big horny feet.

Presenter2:57

You won the European Championship at five thousand meters.

Presenter3:01

And then ill health kept her out of the Tokyo Olympics.

Bruce Tulloh3:05

Yes, I think that was my greatest disappointment. I really felt I had a good chance of winning the Olympics in that year. And I I w I'd won the British title and I'd beaten the Americans in 1963 and I won the pre-Olympic meeting in 1963 and the sixty-four season was going very well and then I got measles, a ridiculous thing to get, in in about June and then it was never really the same as the rest of that season.

Presenter3:26

You caught that from your small ton? Yes.

Presenter3:28

Well, after that sad experience of not going to Tokyo, I believe you rather rethought your athletic career and decided to go for the longer distances.

Bruce Tulloh3:39

Yes, I thought I'd move up to ten thousand meters then, six miles, um which is uh fairly common amongst athletes. You generally move up in distance as you get older and you find uh that you can't get in the team as a three miler and you have to go

Bruce Tulloh3:52

Try and become a six-miler. Um so I built up my training a lot and I even ran twenty miles once or twice.

Presenter3:54

Yeah.

Presenter3:59

How did that work?

Bruce Tulloh3:59

Well, it went very well. Um I only ran it ran the distance twice and won both times. Um so perhaps I might have made a marathon runner. But uh it's a principle of laziness. If you can get on the team as a six miler, there's no point in running twenty six.

Presenter4:12

Yes. You broke the British record for six months.

Bruce Tulloh4:15

And yes, that was nineteen sixty six. That was the first year I really went for that distance seriously. I had a great race with uh Gamoudi, who won the Olympic title in sixty eight, five thousand metres, and a great competitor. He just beat me, but I managed to break the record.

Presenter4:32

Yes.

Presenter4:33

Now

Presenter4:34

The Mexico City Olympics were coming along, but you had reservations about that. You decided not to go.

Bruce Tulloh4:40

Yes, well, as a biologist I knew

Bruce Tulloh4:43

the effect of running at that sort of altitude, seven and a half thousand feet, and like a lot of distance runners, I thought it was very unfair to have Olympic Games at that altitude.

Bruce Tulloh4:54

Um it was bound to affect people who couldn't acclimatize, and those people who hadn't been used to living at altitude. It also meant that those people who could afford to train at altitude would have an advantage over those who couldn't afford it. So it was very much um an unfair Olympics.

Presenter5:09

I believe you've changed your job. You've been working in industry, haven't you?

Bruce Tulloh5:13

Yes, um I was in agricultural research for about five years.

Bruce Tulloh5:18

And eventually I changed over to teaching, that was in nineteen sixty five.

Presenter5:22

Teaching what?

Bruce Tulloh5:22

Biology. Teaching biology, yes. I felt then, I do now, that as a teacher you can you're using far more of yourself, far more things you can do, different parts of your personality you can express. As if if you're in a commercial world you're you tend to be forced more and more in into just selling something and uh narrowing yourself.

Presenter5:39

Mm-hmm.

Presenter5:41

Well, it was after you had decided to retire as an athlete that you decided to tackle the longest distance of all, to run right across the United States.

Presenter5:50

Where did you get the idea?

Bruce Tulloh5:52

Um, when you Guinness Book of Records for the Yes, I just a friend of mine had the book and I was looking through it and it uh came to me in a flash, they say.

Presenter5:54

As simple as that.

Bruce Tulloh5:59

Who had the previous record?

Bruce Tulloh6:01

Um it was held by a South African, um called Shepherd, and he'd done it really the hard way, he just

Bruce Tulloh6:07

Taking a bus to

Bruce Tulloh6:09

Orzan's leading run back to New York, and carrying everything on his back.

Bruce Tulloh6:13

Um

Bruce Tulloh6:14

I I don't believe in suffering more than is strictly necessary, and uh I I did much more comfort, so

Bruce Tulloh6:20

I I ought to have recognised

Speaker 16:21

Record.

Bruce Tulloh6:22

My quantity

Speaker 16:23

I did. How did you organize it for for food, sleep and so on?

Bruce Tulloh6:26

Um well

Bruce Tulloh6:27

My wife came with me, and uh we had a car and a caravan, and so we'd sleep in the caravan at night, and

Bruce Tulloh6:34

Um, we'd have then the caravan would go on and

Bruce Tulloh6:37

Have a meal.

Bruce Tulloh6:38

Ready for me, Nag, run on to it.

Bruce Tulloh6:40

And uh I'd also have somebody to make a rendezvous for water and so on ev every few miles.

Bruce Tulloh6:47

Was it difficult to get backing?

Bruce Tulloh6:49

And

Bruce Tulloh6:50

Yes, it wa was pretty difficult. We started about a year beforehand and uh

Bruce Tulloh6:54

Trying to get hold of sponsors.

Bruce Tulloh6:57

And we got some sponsorship.

Bruce Tulloh6:58

Um but we didn't really get any anything big until in fact six days before we were we were due to leave. We were going ahead anyway, we thought we were going to do this and

Bruce Tulloh7:06

We we did.

Presenter7:07

You've got newspaper sponsorship and and a commercial sponsorship. Now how many miles a day does it work out at?

Bruce Tulloh7:12

Well, the average was about forty-five. Um this conceals quite a number of ups and downs.

Presenter7:17

Um

Bruce Tulloh7:19

at the latter part when I was running well, when I was fit.

Bruce Tulloh7:22

Running about forty eight to fifty miles a day.

Presenter7:24

What time of year did you search?

Bruce Tulloh7:25

Um we started in the middle of April.

Bruce Tulloh7:28

Um you can't start too late, otherwise it will get very hot crossing the desert in the summer. If you start too early in the year then you'll find all the the passes are under snow.

Bruce Tulloh7:36

And you wouldn't get through then.

Presenter7:38

You surely are not allowed to run on freeways. Can you take direct routes?

Bruce Tulloh7:42

Um w well, where it's the only route, then uh

Bruce Tulloh7:45

You're allowed to run on it. If one's going out of a town and there's a freeway and another road, well you you'd have to take the other road. If you're going from one state to another across the desert, then you you just bash along the freeway.

Presenter7:55

With the traffic thundering past with exhaust fumes slip streams north restwards.

Bruce Tulloh7:58

Yes, it's just like running up the M one and pretty uncomfortable.

Presenter8:02

Yeah. What was your time?

Bruce Tulloh8:04

Um, it was just under sixty five days, it was sixty four days, twenty two hours, something like that.

Presenter8:08

Has it been beaten since?

Bruce Tulloh8:09

Yes, it has, yes, by quite a chunk. Um by an American beast and then a South African.

Bruce Tulloh8:17

Beat it. No, an Englishman has beaten it again. In fact, he walked across. He didn't run I think twice as long.

Bruce Tulloh8:23

on the road every day, but he did considerably faster time.

Presenter8:26

Do you feel like going and getting your record back, or is once enough?

Bruce Tulloh8:29

Uh it's the kind of thing you do once.

Presenter8:32

Now, Bruce, you're campaigning for fitness. You don't think we'd take enough exercise.

Bruce Tulloh8:38

No, Roy, I'm quite convinced we don't take enough exercise.

Bruce Tulloh8:42

Whether I can persuade t people to take more is is rather doubtful. Are the Britons a a lazier nation than most, do you think?

Bruce Tulloh8:49

No, I don't think so. I think we've got a a pretty good record. We've got games built into our social system which most countries

Bruce Tulloh8:55

don't have. And of course the weather we've got to keep moving to keep warm.

Bruce Tulloh8:59

Yeah, I think you've really got to

Bruce Tulloh9:00

to get your heart beating pretty fast.

Presenter9:03

By it doing what?

Bruce Tulloh9:05

Well, something which is pre pretty active. Running, obviously, d will do. Uh, squash will. Skipping will. Something which is fast and continuously active for several minutes.

Presenter9:15

Every day.

Bruce Tulloh9:16

Most days. I think three or four days a week would be enough.

Presenter9:20

Is your campaign succeeding?

Bruce Tulloh9:22

Um I don't think so, no. I think I'm I think I'm pretty cynical about the prospect of changing human nature.

Presenter9:28

Are you getting official support? I mean, for example, the government delights in plastering the country with posters telling us to do this, that and the other. Uh do you think they should be telling us to take more exercise?

Bruce Tulloh9:38

Um no, I don't think so. I think being b being British, if they if they tell us to, then w we just go the opposite way.

Presenter9:44

What about your own ambition to be a novelist?

Bruce Tulloh9:46

Um well the ambition is still there. Um now I've stopped being

Bruce Tulloh9:51

A runner? Seriously?

Bruce Tulloh9:53

And uh I'm working towards it.

Presenter9:55

Good.

Bruce Tulloh9:56

I'm hoping to live uh to be a hundred and twenty, so I've got plenty of time as a writer.

Presenter10:01

Your keep fit system is going to keep you going until you're 120.

Bruce Tulloh10:04

Well, I think it is, yes.

Presenter10:05

I hope so. Well, you ought to write a book about that.

Bruce Tulloh10:07

Oh well I intend to.

Presenter10:09

Oh, thank you, Bruce Tanner.