My eldest sister teaches at Assumption Grammar School in Ballynahinch, the alma mater of Irish runner, Ciara Mageean.
I remember asking Brenda a few years ago if Ciara stood out much from her peers when she attended the school.
Brenda, who has absolutely no interest in sport, told me she had witnessed Ciara in action at one of the school’s sports days.
“It was like she belonged to a different species,” said Brenda.
The naturals are just different. It’s genetic.
I had a similar experience when I moved back to Maghera from Belfast.
Helping out at an Under 16 training session, I noticed a young lad running with the unmistakable poise and grace of a natural.
Silky smooth, he just bounded across the grass with a long, elegant stride.
Like all things done well, it was just good to watch. You are drawn to the spectacle.
As I still didn’t know most of the players, I had to find out who he was. I asked the manager, Stephen Murtagh.
“Who’s the runner?”
“That’s Aidan Hughes - he's a nephew of Tommy Hughes.”
It was all that needed to be said.
As the late Weeshie Fogarty loved to say: “An ounce of breeding beats a tonne of feeding.”
Tommy Hughes is our running man. He’s our champ. He has won the Derry marathon twice, the Belfast Marathon twice and the Dublin marathon.
He has won marathons all over the world. In 1992, he represented Ireland at the Barcelona Olympics.
More recently, Tommy and his son, Eoin, set a world record for the fastest parent and child marathon.
Nowadays, we all know Tommy Hughes is our runner. However, 40 years ago, even Tommy didn’t know he was a runner.
His story began on the pitch where I saw his nephew - at Watty Graham Park, Glen.
Tommy is a Lavey man, but he married young and settled in Maghera. At 21-years-of-age, he decided to train with the Glen senior squad.
He joined for two reasons.
“I had just got married and had started to put on weight, and I was new to Maghera so I thought it would be a good way to get to know people,” said Tommy.
During winter training sessions on a heavy pitch when laps of the field were standard practice - one thing quickly became very apparent.
Tommy Hughes could run and run and run. It was like he was a different species.
“I found I could just keep going. In a game, I never had to slow down,” he said.
Initially, Tommy’s primary ambition was to graduate from the reserves to the senior team.
“I think I managed to play one game for the seniors,” he said laughing.
Tommy’s true talent lay elsewhere.
“I was just better at the running. Everything just flowed with it,” he said.
Unlike today where there would be a pathway set up for a genetically-gifted athlete like Tommy Hughes, no such structures were in place at that time, especially not in the South Derry of 1981.
In fact, there was only one athletics club in the area - Ballinascreen - so Tommy joined it.
Genuine expertise was thin on the ground.
Survivors from those days recall epic training sessions taken from the Emil Zatopek handbook of pain. Countless 400m intervals.
“No one would do it now,” said Tommy.
“We trained really, really hard - maybe too hard - but I have always trained hard.”
What Tommy has discovered over the years is that what makes him faster would injure or break most other athletes.
The gods have gifted him with a remarkably high tolerance for lots and lots of miles.
Three years after turning up for Glen training, he won the Derry marathon in a time of 2:24.
The following year, he won it again, clocking 2:19.
Soon Tommy was running up to five marathons a year.
Again, it wouldn’t be done today, but Tommy could do it.
“You find out over the years, that it’s all very individual. What works for me, might not work for someone else.”
Tommy is convinced that the high volume of work was perfect for him.
Six weeks before he won the Dublin marathon in 1991, he ran a marathon in Hull, recording a time of 2:20.
“The marathon in Hull set me up perfectly for Dublin,” he said. “I was flying in Dublin that day.”
At 60 years of age, the self-employed electrician is still pounding the roads. When preparing for a race, his ritual is set in stone.
He does 10 miles in the morning, and 10 miles in the evening - six days a week.
Rising at 5:30am, the morning run is done on an empty stomach (his race weight is 9st 12lbs). The pace is kept under seven minutes a mile.
His running route is Lavey to Maghera, then the warren of lumpy back roads around Culnady takes him back home.
A father-of-four, he never pressurised any of his children to follow him into running.
But recently his son, Eoin took up the family trade.
Eoin waited until he was 32 years old before he started his apprenticeship.
His improvement has been staggering.
When the father-and-son duo set their world record in Frankfurt, Eoin (35) set a PB of 2:31:20 - and he knows he will get faster.
“Eoin has taken up the mantle and I support him 100 per cent,” said Tommy.
In lockdown, with no races on the horizon, Tommy has relaxed his training regime.
When I spoke to him last Sunday, he only did a six-and-a-half mile run that morning.
Then, that evening, he did a totally unplanned 50 miles on his mountain bike!
“I don’t know. It just seems to be in me,” he said.
