Keith Anderson (born 10 August 1957Association of Road Racing Statisticians: Keith Anderson.) is a male British former runner who was the national fell running champion and competed in the marathon at the Commonwealth Games.
Athletics career Anderson did not take up running until he was thirty, at which time he was overweight and had an unhealthy lifestyle.Tom Knight, “Changing Lifestyles can be a Marathon Experience”, The Telegraph, 6 Jan 2002. He made rapid progress and in 1989 won the Edale Skyline, Sedbergh Hills and Three Shires fell races.Graham Breeze, “Equi ad Circos (Classic Fell Races Part 3)”, The Fellrunner Magazine, Feb 2003, 24-26. Also that year, he won the Ben Nevis Race, noting that losing three stones in weight had contributed greatly to his victory.Hugh Dan MacLennan, The Ben Race (Fort William, 1994), 172.
In 1991, Anderson won the British Fell Running Championships.Steve Chilton, It's a Hill, Get Over It (Dingwall, 2013), 329-30. He is popularly considered one of the best descenders in the history of the sportUKClimbing forum; FRA forum. and an investigation of downhill running speeds found his sustained descent rate of 1.365 m/s in the 1990 Pen y Fan Race, when he descended 580m vertically in 7:05, to be the fastest recorded in any race for which relevant information was available.iRunFar: Anthony Kay, “The 30-Minute Kilometer? A Look at the Vertical Kilometer Record”.
He made more use of science and technology in his running than many of his contemporaries, basing his training around heart rate and often having his blood lactate levels tested. He also did many of his speed sessions on a treadmill in order to be able to complete them in a controlled environment.Keith Anderson, "Scientific Training", Peak Performance.
Anderson’s focus later shifted to cross country and road running. In 1994, he finished fourth in the English National Cross Country ChampionshipsAssociation of Road Racing Statisticians: Keith Anderson. and he won the Scottish National Cross Country Championships in 1995, his father being Scots.“Keith Ready to Serve a Surprise”, The Herald, 4 Mar 1995.
In one of his 5k road races in 1994, Anderson placed second to the future 3000m world record holder Daniel Komen.Association of Road Racing Statisticians: Reebok Grand Prix Series, Manchester, 8 May 1994. Anderson ran the 1998 Boston Marathon in 2:17:08Power of 10: Keith Anderson. and was selected to represent England in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in the marathon at the 1998 Commonwealth Games where he finished in tenth place at the age of forty-one.Graham Groom, The Complete Book of the Commonwealth Games (2013), 47.
After his retirement from high-level running, Anderson became involved in coaching the sport. He still holds the course records for the fell races at Pen y Fan,Pen y Fan Race. Sedbergh Hills,Sedbergh Hills Race. DunnerdaleDunnerdale Fell Race. and the Black Mountains, all set in the early 1990s.
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