WITH his family there to greet him at Cramond at the weekend, Alistair Thomson crossed the finishing line of his sixth marathon in sixth months and looked pretty fresh.

Which is just as well as the 35-year-old accountant from Edinburgh still has another six marathons to run to reach his target of 12 to raise funds for the Marie Curie hospices.

He has already smashed his original fundraising target out of sight – he set out to raise £8129 to fund a single day’s care by Marie Curie, but told The National yesterday that with Gift Aid and matching support from the Pears Foundation, he has already raised £36,000, almost five days of care at Marie Curie’s nine hospices. And this from a man who had never run a marathon until earlier this year.

It was back in January that his mother Sue died in Marie Curie Hospice in Edinburgh. She was diagnosed with secondary metastatic breast cancer in September last year around 15 years after undergoing treatment for primary breast cancer.

Thomson explained: “Despite knowing that it may not be successful and the horrible side-effects of chemotherapy she still wanted to go through treatment even if it would only give her an extra day. Over the months she underwent five rounds of chemotherapy and coped with numerous overnight stays in hospital alone and without visitors due to Covid-19 restrictions.

“Despite enduring all of this, the treatment ultimately started doing more harm than good and the heartbreaking decision was taken at the end of the year to transition to palliative care.

“She moved into the Marie Curie hospice in Edinburgh at the beginning of January where she was looked after by the incredible team and also where we were able to visit her. As well as visits from me, my wife and my dad, it also meant she got to see Hamish (our two-year-old little boy) running around in the snowy hospice garden which brought a warming smile to her face.”

Lockdown rules meant restrictions on who could visit Sue, but these were relaxed in the final days before her death. Alistair said: “The compassion, sympathy and understanding that the staff showed both her and us throughout was phenomenal and we are so grateful that she was able to live out her last few days in relative comfort while being afforded the dignity and support that she deserved.

“Words will never express our current sadness but we have found some solace that she was surrounded by her family and being cared for by such a dedicated team.”

He decided to raise funds for Marie Curie as “it gave me something to focus on” – and as a keen long-distance cyclist, his family and friends expected him to take to two wheels. Instead, Thomson decided to do “something different” and that turned out to be a marathon every month for a year.

One of them was around his home city of Dundee, where he was brought up in Broughty Ferry. His family, including wife Nancy and son Hamish, have supported him all the way and were at Cramond to greet him at the halfway mark of his task.