Somewhere out on the course at her first Dublin Marathon in 2023, Amy Thomson ran past a stranger holding a sign: "If you've given birth, you can do this."
She hasn't forgotten it. "It's so true. It's the closest thing I can compare it to."
She'd know. Eight weeks after her first son was born, Amy was on the start line of a sprint triathlon in the Phoenix Park.
"It was more for the fun of it. It was to prove to myself that you can actually do anything you put your mind to, even after having a baby. But my pelvic floor was not very happy."
A few months later she went back and did the Olympic distance.
On the last Sunday of October she runs her third marathon, Dublin again, and this time she's running for Team Hope.
From Durban to Dublin
Amy grew up in Durban and has lived in Ireland for eight and a half years. She and her husband moved over three months after their wedding, when he was offered a job here.
"Born with an Irish passport, but I had never been to Ireland, and then my husband got offered a job. And we were like, well, it seems too easy to go, so let's just go."
Two boys later, now aged one and four, Ireland has become home. Amy works for herself as a graphic designer and photographer, mostly family photography, after years in branding agencies.
The move came with some family history. "My great grandparents are from Ireland on my dad's side. They left due to the famine and ended up separately in Durban, South Africa, which is where I'm from. And apparently a priest introduced the two of them."
Her great-grandfather was from Rathmines. Her great-grandmother was from Glenealy in Co. Wicklow, where her dad still has a cousin and where the family have been to find a headstone.
"It feels so cool for me being back in Ireland now after they left. It's quite special."
Five Kilometres, Then Eight
Amy did athletics at school, where 1,200 metres felt like a serious distance, and then left running alone for years. She started doing parkrun in 2016, partly to get through a breakup, and partly because she'd just met the man who is now her husband, who was already deep into his running.
Then one afternoon she went out to see what would happen past 5k.
"I thought, let me see if I can run further than five kilometres. And I ended up doing eight. I remember being like, wow. I didn't realise I was capable of that."
Her first half marathon came later that year. It was hard, and she was hooked anyway.
When people tell her they could never run, that afternoon is what she points them to. Not the marathons or the triathlon, just the day she kept going past the distance she already knew.
Trail running came courtesy of her husband, on an early date.
"He was like, why don't we go for a trail run? And we started running up a slow hill, and then we got to this drop off where it literally was a steep drop, this tiny path that went down so steep. And he just was like a rabbit and hopped down there. I was like, are we running down there? That's crazy."
She loves it now.
Eight Years With Team Hope
Amy's connection to Team Hope goes back almost as far as her time in Ireland. About eight years ago, mutual friends introduced her to them while she was freelancing on the side of a full-time job, and she has designed their promotional material ever since.
That's given her a closer look at the charity than most fundraisers get. "Coming from South Africa and seeing the poverty there, it really hits home, and it's quite personal for me. So I see the difference that this kind of work makes."
Most people in Ireland know Team Hope from the Christmas Shoebox Appeal, and Amy knows the guidelines by heart. They call them the four W’s:
Something to Wash with: toothpaste, a toothbrush, soap
Something to Wear: a hat, gloves, socks
Something to Write with: pencils, erasers, copybooks
Something to make a child go WOW: a teddy, a ball, sweets
Mr Price stocks the boxes, which children can colour in themselves, along with everything to fill them. Drop-off week is in November, at Mr Price stores and Team Hope's headquarters.
Her four-year-old is just old enough for it to mean something. "I showed him the little promotional video, and he was like, we must make a shoebox."
But the shoebox isn't the part Amy most wants people to hear about. All year round, Team Hope works with communities in countries in Eastern Europe and Africa to help them become self-sustaining, supporting people to set up their own businesses and look after themselves.
"I love that it's not like they're just doing one-off projects. They're working with the local communities to help them thrive."
She hasn't visited the projects herself. But her parents, who drive around Africa in a Land Cruiser, have witnessed first hand the kind of impact an organisation like Team Hope can have.
"Whenever they travel there, these kids are asking for pens and pencils. Something we take for granted can honestly be so important for them, and bring them so much joy. We think, oh, putting pens or pencils in a box, what difference does that make? But it really does."
Her mum always keeps pencils and paper in the car.
Running for Something
For her first Dublin Marathon in 2023, Amy bought her own entry and then, off her own bat, set up a fundraising page alongside it. It did better than she expected, and she thinks the idea came from here.
"In Ireland that's actually a really big thing, and I love that there's a big culture of doing races and fundraising for good causes. In South Africa we would just do races. So it actually got me thinking about doing something I love, but also making a difference."
Prague followed in 2024: hot, cobbled and hard going. This year Team Hope offered her a charity place at the start of the season, with €1,000 to raise. Her first thought was whether she'd be fit enough to run a marathon at all. Getting back into running after her second son was much harder than after her first.
She said yes anyway.
"Getting back into running after my second was much harder than after my first," she says, “it’s more of a juggle with two kids and much harder to get out the door when you’re breastfeeding and getting broken sleep” and the training this year has been built around accepting that rather than fighting it.
In September she organised her own fundraiser: a 5k in Blackrock Park with 20 to 30 friends, a lot of them South African, some pushing buggies. She ordered a box of energy balls from El’s Big Juicy Balls, a producer in Greystones for the finish, and they went down a treat.
If you're looking at a fundraising target and wondering how to get past the first few donations from family, it's worth copying. A park, a date, a 5k, and a coffee at the end.
The Rota
Two small kids and two running parents means a schedule, and in Amy's house it's strictly kept. Her husband runs Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and turns Friday into a 20k trail run over the mountains, commuting from Stepaside to work in Cherrywood. Amy runs Tuesday and Thursday, with her long run on Saturday. His is Sunday.
That's the main reason she isn't in a club, along with the fact that a lot of her running happens at hours no club is out. Instead she has a group of friends that works much the same way. She can text someone and get company for 10k of a 30k, which is usually all you need.
This year she followed a structured plan for the first time, and her paces have come down across the season. The tempo sessions hurt early on. The long runs were hard in a different way.
"When you go for three hours on a Saturday morning, there's a little bit of guilt, and you feel like, oh, this feels so selfish to be away from your family for so long. Even though it's absolutely fine, and the kids are absolutely fine. There is an element in the back of your mind where you're like, why am I doing this?"
The thing she's actually fixed this year is her stomach. Maurten never sat well with her, so she switched to Alter, the Irish brand. She knows the founder's wife, Mel, who set up a hiking mums group where a gang of them carried their babies on their backs around Dublin and Wicklow and went for coffee afterwards. She uses Precision Fuel chews and gels alongside it.
"It's just so lovely that it's Irish."
The shoes have changed too. She ran her first Dublin and Prague in barefoot-style shoes, and Prague's heat and cobbles made for a rough day. She's in Adidas Adizero Evo SLs now.
The boys have grown up around start and finish lines, and they come prepared. "They have their bells," Amy says. The weekend before we spoke, both were shaking them at the side of their dad's 50k in Northern Ireland, a race with over 4,000 metres of climbing. "It was very sweet."
Two years ago he carried their eldest, then two, up Carrauntoohil. "My husband always tells them, you have to be patient. We have to try and teach them that hard things are worth putting in the effort for, and that this is how you build strength and endurance."
Freedom
Ask Amy what running means to her and the answer has nothing to do with times or distances. It goes back to being a teenager in Durban, wanting to go out running on her own, and her mum saying no.
"She just thought it was unsafe for a young girl to be running outside on her own, even with a dog. And I remember longing to be able to do this by myself and just go. That sense of freedom."
Ireland gave her that.
"Coming to Ireland now, I've really felt so grateful that I feel safe running on my own in the streets, in the mountains even. And that means so much to me. Running definitely represents freedom."
Her advice is for anyone who hasn't started yet, and especially for mums who feel they shouldn't be taking the time. "Just get out, go for ten minutes and see how far you get. And then if you're feeling good, keep going."
And for the guilt she talked about earlier, she has her own answer.
"It's filling your own cup, but then you can pour out to your family. Obviously you're using your energy, but it gives you so much energy. It's not a selfish thing. It's definitely not."
Sub Four
Amy is going for a sub-four-hour marathon in Dublin, and she has unfinished business with the number.
"I was on track for that with my first Dublin Marathon. But then the last 10k, my stomach was really nauseous, and I really slowed down because I was feeling so sick. Now I've changed nutrition and feel like that's all in order, so I feel like it's attainable now. I know I can. It's just a mental thing."
Her husband and the boys will be at Milltown, around 30k. He offered to hand her gels there. She's told him not to bother, because she's too nervous about missing him in the crowd, so she'll carry the lot herself.
Milltown has history for the family. In 2024, the year her husband ran his sub three, Amy stood there with a sign she'd made that said TAP FOR POWER. Her eldest held it. Colin Farrell, running that year, tapped it.
"I have a video of that."
For a week afterwards her son wanted to play a game at home where he held the sign and his parents ran past and tapped it.
"I love the marathon. It's one of the best days of the year in Dublin. Everyone's there, there's so much energy. It's one of the most well supported races."
