CANVEY’S Dale Clutterbuck had all but given up on running last summer but six months on he’s glad he had a change of heart.

The 23-year-old middle-distance talent had become so disillusioned with the sport he spent most of the summer partying with friends, convinced he would not be returning to the track.

But, try as he might, the running bug wouldn’t die completely.

Encouraged by his friend and boss Kevin Quinn, Clutterbuck, inset, returned to training and was then introduced to Matthew Yates, the former Commonwealth Games 800m bronze medallist, who before he knew it became his coach.

And the results have been instant.

Despite not having run for much of the summer, Clutterbuck returned to racing indoors and won the Southern Indoor 800m title in style three weeks ago and then, last weekend, ran the seventh fastest 800m time in the country this year at the London Games when he clocked 1m 50.93s.

“I don’t know what it is, but I don’t feel like I can be beaten at the moment,” he laughed.

“Matt seems to think I can run some insane times and that has really put the confidence back in me.”

It is all a world away from 12 months ago when things really started to go wrong for the former Castle View School pupil.

Clutterbuck, then being coached by Rob Denmark, was part of an ambitious new Adidas-backed initiative that saw five of the country’s brightest middle-distance talents put under one roof and given specialist training, diets, physio treatment and more.

It seemed at the time a great idea, but things soured quickly.

“They wanted instant results and tried pushing us too much,” said Clutterbuck. “I was doing massive mileage for me. 80-odd miles a week and that doesn’t suit me.

“I was not getting the results and the other guys weren’t getting the results. The pressure was ridiculous.

“I was embarrassed to put on the Adidas kit to race if I’m honest.

“Everyone was falling out with each other and I just had enough really.

“By the summer I had pretty much quit. Rob didn’t want to coach me anymore. My head was not in the right place and I was going out too much.”

The turning point came the day after a lads’ holiday to Croatia.

“People were saying ‘you are going out too much, you are a good athlete and you are wasting it’ and the day I got back I went for a run.”

Chief among his supporters was Quinn, who Clutterbuck works for coaching athletics to children in London schools.

And it was Quinn who put him in touch with Yates, a man who Clutterbuck can see something of himself in.

Yates, who like Clutterbuck, started running at Basildon AC, is a larger than life character who enjoyed life both on and off the track.

And the two hit it off instantly.

“The first thing Matt said to me was ‘you are definitely an 800m runner, but you need to lose a bit of timber!’ “I didn’t want to be coached to start with.

“But we would talk on Facebook and he would set me a few sessions. Then he would turn up at St Mary’s (where Clutterbuck is studying) a few times, then a bit more often.

“It got to November and he was turning up every week!”

Yates certainly believes in Clutterbuck.

He thinks he can run 1m 48s indoors for 800m this winter and even win the British Championships next weekend.

“He is class,” said Clutterbuck of Yates. “We are quite similar in personalites so hopefully he can bring out the best in me.”

l Other stand-out performances at the London Games came from Basildon AC’s Isobel Ives, 16, who was second in the women’s 800m A race in 2m 11.58s.

A number of Southend AC athletes were in action with Inigo Iruskieta getting a 200m PB (23.67s.) Season’s bests came from Alex Milbank (200m/400m; 25.78s/56.74s), Jade Packer (200m/60m; 26.67s/8.14s), Lucy Shaw (200m 28.15s), Graham Eastty (400m 57.15s), Emanuel Gbegli (TJ 13.32m) and Victoria Staines (60m 8,97s).