Thomas Tracey

Tom has always been sporty and played football as a boy. He became a Scout leader in his teens. Tom went to the University of Glasgow and gained his MA Degree in maths and then qualified as a teacher. He was always involved with school sports, so much that people thought that he taught PE instead of Matths! He qualified as a football referee and climbed to junior level. At this time he got interested in Marathons. He ran his first Marathon in 1981 and has ran forty seven marathons with the latest being Edinburgh on 2011. During thirty years he has raised thousands of pounds for charity. Probably the most amazing thing that Tom did, was that in 1986 after Inverclyde District Council decided to cancel the planned Marathon,with only a few weeks to go, he decided that he would run a solo marathon and he did. This grabbed the attention of many people. The next year he was injured so Tom and I walked the route pushing our 8 month old daughter in her pram around the course. This took over eight hours. In 1988 he ran a solo run again and this time more and more people became interested. By 1989 the Inverclyde Marathon was re-instated and Tom became the secretary of the Inverclyde Athletics Initiative. This group spent many years organising countless races. Tom is a member of Inverclyde Athletics Club. He takes part in races throughout the year and most times he is the last man to finish but he loves running and he says that he`ll still be running marathons when he is one hundred years old!