"My name is Pat O’Loughlin from Castlederg. About thirty years ago I was working long hours indoors a lot of the time and I was getting very tired. The more I slept the tireder I got. So I decided to do some exercise and I found out that when I was physically tired that I slept a lot better at night and I was much brighter during the day.

And then I saw an article in the paper about a mass marathon in Dublin and I didn’t think any ordinary person could run 26.2 miles. RTE radio organised the run to publicise their new radio station at the time and they gave out a training programme.  I followed it and I took part and I finished in about 3 hours 45 minutes.

I always ran for a charity and about the year 2000 I ran for MS to help my friend John Doherty raise funds for research, as his son Ian had been diagnosed with MS. A dance was organised as well to raise funds and the efforts were very successful, due to John’s promotion efforts and local people who were very generous to us. Over 33,000 has been sent to the Walton Centre for research (in Liverpool) in the last seven years about.

John and his family proposed me for an award for charity work in 2005 and I was awarded with the MBE and presented with the medal by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth in BuckinghamPalace.