The Boston runner who invented destination-running tourism. BY ROGER ROBINSON AND KATHRINE SWITZER

Thom Gilligan keeps his cool however boisterous the challenges of running travel.

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Courtesy of Marathon Tours & Travel

“T

om” in Swedish means “empty.” “I didn’t want to have a name that means ‘empty.’ So I decided to add an h,” Thom Gilligan said about his visit to the Council Chamber in Stockholm where he saw a lot of seats labeled “Tom.” That was in 1981, at the

first European marathon visited by Gilligan’s fledgling running-travel business, Marathon Tours & Travel. Since then, there has been nothing empty about Gilligan’s restless creativity or his record of business success. “Full” is the word for his contribution to the

running industry and to running culture—full of ideas, full of accomplishment. Thom Gilligan’s early life story has been told well in John Hanc’s excellent book, The Coolest Race on Earth (Chicago Review Press, 2009), highly recom

mended. Hanc covers the blue-collar Irish-American upbringing in Medford, Massachusetts, a tough town, and the sternly unionist father (also Tom), a football star and coach, who was even tougher. The son played good hockey but had brains and

an independent streak that took him to Northeastern and Merrimack for a degree in marketing. It also took him into work as an airline ticket agent and (in 1976, in a period when he was laid off) into the

growing, challenging new world of running. He loved both—travel and running. He got a job with a travel wholesaler, putting together tour packages to business conferences and the like. He joined the Greater

Boston Track Club and became a 2:31 marathoner. In June 1977, when Gilligan

and his running buddy Dave McGillivray (also Medford Irish) had the idea of going to Honolulu to run the exoticsounding new marathon, he had another idea—to put together a travel package through the company he worked for, a targeted trip for runners and their supporters. Running a marathon as a group-travel destination? In 1977 the very idea was way out there. Only elite runners traveled to races in those days. Road running was growing, but no one knew how long that would last. Six New England runners signed up for Honolulu. The next year, Gilligan tried the New York City Marathon, chartering buses from Boston. “We got 90 people, two busloads full, in the wink of an eye. That’s when I realized we were onto something,” Gilligan told Hanc. His employer took a different view. Gilligan realized five minutes after being fired that he was now an independent businessman in a business that only he believed existed. Two years later, it was called Marathon Tours & Travel. Today, it takes groups to 35 or more destination races a year and does a lot else, like arranging accommodations at Boston Marathon time. It’s a good story, and it goes on being good, because Gilligan still loves running and is never empty of ideas about how to make it better. Our interest is essentially in the man and the significance of what he has contributed to our sport. We have traveled with him, worked for him as speakers, run with him, and shared many great meals with him and his wife, Sharon, and the various feisty characters his business employs. So what follows is (more or less) how we talked about

Thom Gilligan when we heard that his 65th birthday, in July 2014, was approaching. Kathrine Switzer: I first used to see Thom around in the mid-1970s at races like Falmouth, usually with a gaggle of Greater Boston Track Club guys and a few women like Sharon O’Hagan. He was always lively, ebullient, blond, attractive, incredibly fit, kind of like a Scandinavian skier. He had done a lot of skiing, in fact. Sharon was blonde and beautiful, too, as well as one of the first excellent women

© Jacqui Kaufman

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Thom has a taste for exotic running locations and a talent for friendship.

Courtesy of Marathon Tours & Travel

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Thom in his 2:31 days—“A super-athletic version of Ken [and Barbie].”

runners, so when they became an item they were like a superathletic version of Ken and Barbie. About 1978 or ’79 he invited me to come with a group to the Bermuda Marathon. That was the first time I saw him in action. He made it all work

smoothly and [it was] great fun. I had a wonderful time. I was stunned that he could coordinate such a big group of very disparate people, from Joan Benoit and Dave McGillivray to four-hour-plus back-of-the-packers and yet stay relaxed and funny

as well as running hard and staying fit himself. I had just come from organizing one of the first Avon women’s marathons, and I was exhausted. I fretted about every detail in my work, but even in the middle

of his, Thom seemed to be still a bit of the bon vivant, able to stay relaxed. I’ve always been envious of that ability in him. He could be direct in manner, even blunt, but he was able to take everything in stride without ever getting anxious.

He knew what runners would like and so was able to take them to places they had never been, exotic places like Honolulu and Bermuda. Roger Robinson: And still give them a serious race experience. A big part of

his success was—and still is—that he knows running from the inside. He knows how much it matters to runners. They’re different from regular tourists or people who go as spectators to the Olympics or music festivals. They go to participate.

He gave me a wonderful quote when I was writing recently about the Greater Boston Track Club and trying to evoke what running was like in the early 1970s: “You pursued your passion first and somehow made a living to support your

addiction,” he said. That fit perfectly with the dedication to running that I had seen in those same years in England and New Zealand, not only with top elite runners but regular club-level guys and increasingly some women. You had to have passion to get

anywhere. The GBTC was so strong that it became an addiction in itself, demanding an ever-greater level of commitment to training if you wanted to move up through the ranks. “I was running 2:31 marathons and I could only make the

club’s D team,” Thom told me. All good runners were doing in effect two full-time jobs. Whether we were office workers, teachers, or house painters, we were also twice-a-day committed runners, without pay. It’s hard to make runners today real

ize how restrictive the amateur rules were and how little disposable income most people had. As Thom said, you somehow had to make a living outside running.

Roger: Thom in his mid-60s is still in great shape. He only races a few times a year, but he runs often with his tour groups, as I saw in Kenya. These days it’s golf he takes most seriously, and he’s good—as he is at everything he does. Much of his spare time is arranged around tournaments. He claims that he hates it but is addicted. Golf can be frustrating for runners because your results don’t directly reflect the amount of work you put in, as is mostly true in running. In the best possible way, Thom’s very competitive once he’s in motion. He loved that Greater Boston scene, all battling for team places. You remember when ▲

Thom in his sixties is still competitive, whether in running or golf.

© Amazing Maasai Girls Project

Kathrine: He was also attuned to the needs of less-dedicated runners. That Bermuda trip was the first time I had seen four-hours-plus marathoners travel to a big-time race. Thom made that happen. With that larger market, running travel could grow. He understood that, and he focused on making the trip about having an enjoyable and memorable experience, whatever your race pace.

Yes, for sure he knew running from the inside. And understood fitness. In the early 1980s, I had a summer weekend place on Cape Cod that I shared with a runner girlfriend who lived in Boston, and she knew Thom and the whole GBTC gang. One time I arrived from New York on Friday night, exhausted from work as usual, and Eleanora told me that Thom and Sharon were driving in to stay with us two nights and run Falmouth that Sunday. Falmouth was a big weekend for Cape Cod, with runners coming from all over New England. I slept deep, and on Saturday morning when I woke, I heard this weird clack-clack-clack noise from the kitchen. I staggered out, and it was Thom and Sharon trying to make coffee without disturbing me but wearing their racing-bike cleats because they were going for a long, hard ride. That was the day before they ran near the front of the field in Falmouth! Two such busy people! Sharon was a senior nurse and mother (from her first marriage) and also increasingly helping Thom with the business, and they had driven late from Boston, yet there they were in the kitchen in their high-fashion bike apparel ready to go out and slay the roads of Cape Cod. My recollection is that they even rode to the startline on Sunday, but maybe I’m making that up.

they stayed with us last year, and he and I ran together in the Mohonk Preserve. It all went sociably until I made the mistake of heading up the trail to Skytop, a big climb. Well, guess who gunned it all the way up and left his older host in the dust. I like him for that, a kindred spirit. I would have done it to him if I could.

It’s a good point about how busy they were, and still are. He’s one of the best time-managers I know, combining a complex business with a high level of personal fitness as well as making time to enjoy a good wine or scotch. Even when he’s traveling he quietly gets it all done. I doubt there’s any empty time in a typical full Gilligan day. Kathrine: He’s also very good at delegating. His staff all seem to be like he is—selfpossessed, efficient, gregarious, never ruffled. He makes sure they have empathy for his clients as runners, so most of them are runners themselves or involved in organization. Some also work for Dave McGillivray’s race-operations business, so they know the sport from that angle and can handle any situation. When we were with him in Athens, 900 guests were moved around, fed, entertained, informed, and supported as runners. You don’t want to use a term like “efficient management” because it all seemed a lot more relaxed than that implies. Roger: He always thinks about adding value. Athens that year was the 2,500th anniversary of the Battle of Marathon, so he invited us two as speakers for his group because of our knowledge of the history. That meant his runners got special insight into the legendary story we were all there to celebrate. He gives awards to those who complete the seven continents, too, and other things. Kathrine: Taking runners who are often inexperienced to arduous races in exotic locations is full of risks—there can be problems with water, altitude, heat, hygiene, wildlife, or crime, as well as regular illness and injury. On the trips I’ve done with them, the main feeling is that everything runs smoothly, and whatever the circumstances you feel secure. When I was going to run the Safaricom halfmarathon in Kenya, I was anxious about it being my first race in Africa, and especially the altitude, but on the bus I sat with one of Thom’s staff, and she was not only going to run the race but then head off with some of the tour group to climb Kilimanjaro. They’re intrepid and seem to be always good-humored. I’ve never seen Thom flustered. He told me that when the ship that was booked to bring his tour to the 2013 Antarctica Marathon was damaged by an iceberg just days prior to the expedition’s planned departure, he got the news while he was shaving. “

I went straight into the office. It wasn’t till some hours later that I noticed I was only half shaved,” he said. That’s about as flustered as he gets. Roger: Another year, when severe weather prevented the ship from landing in Antarctica, they ran the race on board, round and round, so the runners could still

check off that they really had run a marathon in Antarctica. I happened to be with him at the Boston expo in 2010 and could watch him up close as he handled the colossal travel and accommodation problems caused when the eruption of the volcano in Iceland disrupted all air travel from Europe. “

We have to carry the loss, not the client,” he said. He doesn’t get upset, even losing so much money. There are inevitable complaints, with hotels and so on, and some runner-tourists would drive me crazy, but Thom’s temper is as cool and well pressed as his clothing. He never complains. He prefers to tell stories like the time he sat in a tent at the Sahara Marathon, in Islamic territory, with the great British marathoner Ron Hill, drinking illicit beers that Ron had smuggled in. Thom still has some of the old 1970s spirit, when love of running was mixed with a slightly rebellious relish for doing things outside the norm. Though their characters and lives are so different, you can see that he was a suitable teammate for Bill Rodgers. Kathrine: Love of running plus creativity of mind—that has been a good combination for the sport as well as his business. Thom knows how to implement his ideas. He created the concept of racing on all seven continents and then invented the Antarctica Marathon to make it work. He had to get through complex negotiations with conservation agencies and various governments as well as refit a Russian freighter to carry passengers. John Hanc’s book has the whole story. It was a daring idea and motivated thousands of runners, often giving them the single greatest moment of their lives as runners. Many now do their own versions—seven continents in seven months, and so forth. Roger: Innovations like that added a whole dimension to the big picture of the modern sport. A lot of races around the world are successful partly because Thom takes Americans there. He has worked with the World Marathon Majors to create incentives that appeal to nonelite runners. He does a lot of behind-the-scenes discussion with the movers and shakers in the sport. I like reading his column in New England Runner, where he writes with exactly that mix of seriousness and fun, a creative thinker who also enjoys a colorful travel yarn. He is Irish, remember.

© David McGonical

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Thom single-handedly created the Antarctica Marathon to complete his “Seven-Continents” concept.

Kathrine: Here’s another story. After he created running travel in the late 1970s, with the Bermuda Marathon one of his first destinations, he began adding other, even more exotic, foreign events. The demand for Bermuda naturally waned. But Thom knew it was still a beautiful and accessible winter running destination for Americans, so he thought about how to revive it. Thirty years after his first venture there, and knowing the appeal of a term like “Bermuda Triangle,” he had the idea of creating a triple-challenge running festival—three races in one weekend. The Bermuda Triangle Challenge immediately became a top destination event. The point is that Thom understands that once runners accomplish something, they want to go to another level. Roger: In his racing days, runners wanted to graduate to a tougher GBTC training group, a higher team in whatever club they ran for, and run better times. Now they want to make it harder, more extreme, more exotic, more original, more memorable. At the same time Thom knows they don’t want it to be a hassle to get there. The challenge has to be in the race, not the travel. Kathrine: One other thing—he listens to his clients and he’s really current with newer runners’ interests and priorities. Like medals, something those of us who were running 40 years ago only got when we finished in the top three. Today’s runners are obsessed with medals, and in Bermuda Thom designed them personally to make the best possible reward for each race and then one for the overall Triangle Challenge. Some of us walked away with four gorgeous medals, and I’ll bet some did the trip just for those.

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Thom and the authors, Kathrine Switzer and Roger Robinson, at the Boston Marathon expo.

© Patrice Malloy

Roger: That skill in taking the pulse of each generation of runners is part of why he’s important as well as a very interesting man. He’s much more than an enterprising businessman. In the long term of history, Thom will go down as a significant contributor to the growth of the running movement. He’s one of a group of committed

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1970s runners who saw opportunities to develop the sport and at the same time create income, even though they were banned by the old amateur rules from being paid as runners. There were the writers and journalists (like Bob Anderson, Jim Fixx, Hal Higdon, Don Kardong, and George Sheehan), the shoe and apparel innovators like Phil Knight, and those who worked inside corporations, for shoe companies or, like you, Kathrine, inside Avon Cosmetics. The most adventurous were those who started new, independent businesses where nothing had existed before. Jeff Galloway was probably the first to invent an industry, starting Phidippides, the world’s first specialist running-shoe store, in 1973. Then came Jim Davis with MarathonFoto in 1974, and, right up there, Gilligan with the running destination-travel business in 1977. All three did more than ride the wave. All three encouraged more and more nonelite people to try running and feel welcome and significant, and all three enhanced the experience of being a runner. Galloway with his stores gave them a social center of their own (plus running camps, coaching, and other innovations), Davis took photos that helped them feel heroic, and Gilligan took them to exciting new places and races and gave them challenging incentives that don’t demand being fast. The history of the running movement has never been written (though I’m working on it), but

Thom Gilligan will have an important place. He helped running to boom.