Nigel Tillott is preparing to run the Boston Marathon in a couple of months’ time.

That’s Boston in the USA, not Boston in the east of England, although as it happens, he has already run the marathon in Lincolnshire.

In fact, he’s run close to 50 marathons and the 58-year-old has ambitions to join the rather select 100 Marathon Club.

“I’m hoping to run a marathon every month this year,” said Tillott, who has been chairman of Tewkesbury Running Club for the past four or five years.

Every marathon is special, of course, but the Boston Marathon in Massachusetts – it takes place in April – is one of the more prestigious races on the calendar and Tillott is certainly looking forward to it.

“I’ve actually had to qualify for it twice,” he said. “I qualified just before the pandemic and then I had to qualify again for this year.”

Tillott is a pretty decent runner – he ran the aforementioned 26.2 miles in Boston, England, in three hours, 17 minutes – and even though he says when he goes over to the US he is “looking forward to having a holiday” he wants to run well too.

“I’ll enjoy it,” he said, “but hopefully I’ll have a decent time. It’s a strange course, it’s a straight line with a hill after 19 miles, they call it heartbreak hill!

“If I run well I think three hours, 20 is possible.”

A lot of people would be very happy with a time like that, of course, and what makes Tillott’s performances all the more impressive is that he has done all his running only in the last 20 years.

“I used to run cross-country when I was at school in Hampshire,” he said, “but then apart from playing a bit of football I didn’t really do anything after that.”

That all changed just after the turn of the century when he reached a landmark age.

“It was when I got to 40,” he explained. “I thought I should be doing something and when a work colleague, David Stokes, said he was doing the London Marathon, I thought, ‘That’s a good idea’.”

It certainly was because Tillott secured a charity place and ran the London Marathon in April 2004.

It was the first time he had run over 26.2 miles and he completed the race in the very respectable time of three hours, 34.

But although very respectable, it’s fair to say that Tillott, a solicitor who works in Gloucester, was a little disappointed.

“My birthday is in June and when I first started running I took it quite slowly,” he explained. “I thought if I could run the London in under four hours I’ll be really pleased.

“But from the September to December I got myself fit and then I found a book that told me all I needed to know about running.

“From January to April I was surprised by the times I was getting in half-marathons and I thought if I’m doing one hour, 36 – I also did a 20-miler in around 2.30 –  I can beat 3.30 at the London Marathon. Of course I didn’t!”

He’s probably being a bit harsh on himself there because at this stage Tillott, who lives in Pendock, eight miles west of Tewkesbury, was still running without a club. However,  that was about to change.

“It was at the 10K at Pitchcroft in Worcester,” he said. “I bumped into a neighbour, Roger Bennett, who said I should join a club.

“I said, ‘That’s a bit serious’, but he persuaded me to join Tewkesbury Running Club and I’ve been with them ever since.”

That was in the summer of 2004 and from the get-go he has enjoyed every minute.

“I was getting fit, it was fun and I was relatively competitive,” he recalled. “I was doing something for myself.”

In those early days he did a lot of road runs but as the weeks, months and years have gone by he has found himself doing more and more trail runs, so much so that the Boston Marathon will almost be something of a culture shock for him.

So why does he like the trail marathons so much?

“I love being out in the middle of the countryside,” he said. “It’s the views. I love the hills and the mountains, I love running through woods and the different terrain, you’re in the open air and away from it all.

“I enjoy the ambience, it’s not all about the times. I call myself a diesel because I don’t have any great speed but when I get up to my best pace I can sustain it!”

He’s recently run a marathon on the Long Mynd in Shropshire – “That was tough,” he admitted – and has a couple of marathons and an ultra-marathon around the Lake District on his CV as well.

That CV also includes the Berlin Marathon – he enjoyed that – and he’ll soon be running the Black Country ultra-marathon through industrial Birmingham.

Ironically, considering he is running so many marathons these days, he does not consider 26.2 miles to be his best distance.

“I’m probably best at half-marathons and 20 miles,” said Tillott, who is married to Liz who herself has run a couple of marathons. “I’m not the lightest built.”

He weighs in at around 12 stone and although he says “I’m not quick,” adding, “but getting older and slower is perhaps more the issue!,“ he’s obviously in pretty decent shape.

And Tewkesbury Running Club are in pretty decent shape too. Tillott was on the club’s committee before taking over as chairman and he said: “I love doing the job, I wanted to give something back.

“I’m still very active so I’m very involved in the club. It’s a lovely club, it doesn’t matter how good at running you are, everyone is welcome.” 

And as chairman of the club, Nigel Tillott is leading the way, of course, as he is in other parts of the county.

“I’m Race Director of and very much involved in organising the Gloucester 10K and the Pendock Spring Chicken Runs with all monies going to local charities and the local school respectively,” he said.