Bedford was born in London. In the 1960s, at Whitefield school, in Barnet, he used to train during his lunch hours, running up to Golders Hill park and back. It was at Whitefield he was entered in the Inter-counties Orienteering competition. He came in second. He was a leading
distance runner during the 1970s. Indeed, he still remains, after more than 50 years, the last Englishman to have won the International Cross Country Championships (later the World Cross Country Championships) in 1971. However, his greatest achievements were largely against the clock. Despite setting a European record of 27:47.0 on 10 July 1971 at Portsmouth, by a margin of 17 seconds over Jurgen Hasse's record, he suffered in championships due to his lack of a fast final lap. He led for lap after lap in the 1971 European 10,000 m final but still the pack swept past him. He finished sixth to the
Flying Finn Juha Väätäinen, who won in a last lap sprint against
East Germany's
Jürgen Haase. He came twelfth in the 5000 m and sixth in the 10,000 m at the
1972 Munich Olympics. He represented
England at the
1974 British Commonwealth Games in
Christchurch, New Zealand, finishing fourth. Bedford was a five-times
British 10,000 metres champion after first winning the British
AAA Championships at the
1970 AAA Championships and then winning the title every year from 1971 to 1974. His later career was hampered by injuries, principally achilles tendonitis, believed to have been caused by his high training mileage. He never ran the great marathon of which many fans thought him capable. He did run the first
London Marathon in 1981 but only as the result of a bet. He had been in a
nightclub the previous night where
David Coleman had remarked on how unwell he looked. Having consumed a
curry on the way home from the nightclub, Bedford completed the impromptu marathon but was pictured vomiting at the roadside part way through. However, later in the same year he did manage to win the London Cross Country title at the age of 31. == Post retirement ==