Theresa Montgomery

1 October 2025 - By James Montgomery

I met Theresa at a Social night in St James Tavern, just off Piccadilly Circus, organised through the now-defunct Runners World forum, it wasn’t so much as eyes across the room as drunkenly staggering into each other… I missed my train… and then I was sort of moving myself in the following week. I mean, it was a much shorter commute into London from Witham than Ipswich.

My proposal a few months later was just as laissez-faire. I don’t suppose the northbound Piccadilly Line between Leicester Square and Holborn has ever really been considered a romantic location?

We were married in August 2004, by which time we had been members of WRC for 4 or 5 months and very quickly getting involved in committee meetings and the organisation of our XC and BD5 races, in partly due to the club being much smaller in those days, but it was good to get involved. We invited members at the time to come along, celebrate and enjoy a few drinks with us.

T had already run London Marathon in 2003 when we met and had Dublin that year all lined up. It was about this time that I began to get a better idea of T’s excess side. She harboured a plan which she largely kept to herself to run one of the most extreme races on the planet. I really didn’t see an issue with this, yeah, quite a normal thing to want to do. More of that later, a lot happened in between.

One night out with our old forum friends, it was being touted around that some were interested in doing an Ironman in Switzerland in 2005. “Oh yes, James would love to be part of that…”. I don’t think she’d yet grasped the fact that I couldn’t swim… But copious amounts of alcohol were part of the negotiations and the “Enter Now” button was clicked.

7 months later, having a had a very wobbly stomach nearly 16 hours earlier at the lakeside, I hauled my sorry arse across the line 12 minutes before cut-off. However, Theresa now had a new role – as my triathlon bag lady! Over the course of the next 15 or so years I dragged her, quite literally, around the world; she was an amazing companion and incredibly supportive. She was also very direct, even telling me I “looked like shit” during the run at Ironman New Zealand (she didn’t know the half of it…).

Theresa ran many marathons including: London and Dublin in 2003, Halstead (2005, 2006, 2009), Locharber, the one-off Hastings Marathon in 2008, the marathon leg of the Challenge Roth triathlon (naturally, I’d done the bike leg), Bungay Black Dog and Frankfurt and countless 10 milers, half-marathons, Cross Country and pretty much every distance in between.

Coming to running later in life, T may have lacked pure athletic ability but she more than made up for it in mental strength, ambition and application. Her focus for a long time lay overseas in a very warm place. The Sahara Desert in Morocco to be precise. She’d always wanted to run the Marathon de Sable and in 2009 she finally secured a place. For those that don’t know this race, it’s 250kms split across 6 days, self-supporting carrying your own equipment. It was a good year from one standpoint as we knew some friends also taking part that year, some of whom I’d done Ironman Switzerland with and another who was something of a multi-MdS legend, who she spent a couple of days training with. But it was not so good for a different reason; for the first time in 20 years it rained.

The MdS route normally followed tracks and dried-up riverbeds with a day of sand dunes included for a bit of fun. We’re not talking Norfolk Coast dunes but soft dunes that are 3 – 400 feet high. With the last-minute change in route it became 6 days of sand dunes since there was nowhere else to run. This hadn’t been factored in and resulted in T pulling out on day 3 in a lot of pain due to a worsening hip condition that resulted in her having a hip replacement just last year.

I was always very proud of her even attempting this event, she was devastated that she didn’t complete it. She always said I’d have loved the race but would’ve hated the heat – while she was in the desert I was 3500 meters up a mountain in Austria!!

During her training, I joined T on many of her long walks (since, being realistic, her plan had been to walk most of it), she with a 10 kgs pack on her back (see her kit photo, that’s an anti-venom pump in the green box), me holding a water bottle and I struggled to keep up her walking pace! We also did our first Ultra (me more by accident). She took part in the “Moonlight Challenge” event down in Kent, a favourite at the time with MdS wannabes and a multi-circuit race (a bit like “Backyard” events, long before Backyard events). My plan had been to join T for every-other loop, but we ended up running all loops together along wet and quagmire-ish farm tracks and not forgetting this was all in the dead of night, covering around 30+ miles.

Unfortunately, Marathon de Sable was to put an end to Theresa’s running ambitions although she did still take part in the Bungay Black Dog marathon in 2011 and Frankfurt 2012 (the last marathon for both of us). She found CrossFit as an alternative to keeping fit and really got into her weightlifting, eventually dragging me along (in an attempt to stop me breaking bones).

T even had a go at triathlon, taking part in the popular Harwich Triathlon and Ely “Monster” Triathlon in 2013, for which she was awarded WRC’s “Rookie Triathlete of Year”. She also did the swim leg of The Vitruvian middle-distance triathlon in a ladies team including Liz Stuckey on the bike and Brigid Wallen on the run.

Even though Theresa could no longer run, she still kept involved with WRC in other ways. Taking the Chairperson’s role in 2011 and handling the club kit for many years (which contributed to her winning CMOTM in October 2017) and whenever possible, would marshal at BD5/MD10 and on hand at XC events to take numbers and hold on to car keys; usually preceded with an eyeroll!

Around 2007/8 we did a committee double-act while I was Chairperson, Theresa held the position of club secretary; we also took on between us RD for BD5 and our (NESS) XC event at Notley Park and her organisational skills were invaluable in organising the paperwork and ensuring we got Race Licenses, Course measurements and so on completed in good time, since I was trying to do this around a busy career that often took me out of the country.

It was an absolute honour for us both to be awarded the WRC Recognition of Commitment award in 2024.

On a lighter side, T liked excess and this extended beyond her running and I’m sure the long-time members will have memories of Theresa at Benidorm weekends, Dinner Dance evenings and skiing weeks with WRC friends.

All I can say is that with Theresa’s passing, she has left a massive hole in many lives, not least mine and I am going to miss her tremendously.