Marcello Ausenda thought he was seeing a mirage. At kilometre 13 of a marathon in Cape Town, South Africa, he suddenly saw Bermuda flags waving and people cheering his name.

“I thought, ‘What the heck? Where are all these Bermudians coming from?’,” Mr Ausenda remembered.

The group of well wishers were part of the entourage of another Bermuda runner, Colm Homan, who was somewhere ahead of Mr Ausenda in the Sanlam Cape Town Marathon.

At kilometre 30 the crew appeared again, giving Mr Ausenda a much needed boost.

This was the hardest marathon he had ever done due to a lack of preparation.

Mr Ausenda, head of Bermuda corporate practice at Conyers Dill & Pearman, typically trains for more than 16 weeks, building up the number of miles every seven days. This year, however, he injured himself five weeks before the big day.

“I had a meniscus tear that resulted in a calf tear and a pulled hamstring,” he said. “My left leg was severely compromised and needed to heal.”

He could not run at all for a month. “It sounds ridiculous, but the first 20 miles of a marathon are comparatively easy,” Mr Ausenda said. “You train for the last six miles, which are always torture. We are not really engineered to run further than 20 miles.”

His time in South Africa was 4hr 28min, his slowest, but the race was one of his most satisfying. “At least I got through it,” he said.

The marathon was a special evaluation event to decide whether it was ready to become the eighth in the prestigious Abbott World Major Marathon series, known as “the Majors”.

This month the race was officially accepted into the majors, with Mr Homan and Mr Ausenda becoming part of a group of 1,993 runners to have done all eight Abbott Majors.

“There aren’t many clubs I want to be part of, but this is one of them,” Mr Ausenda said.

Mr Ausenda’s best time was the Tokyo majors in 2023 when he finished in 3:52.

His first marathon in the series was the Boston Marathon in 2012.

“That was the hardest to get into,” he said. “You had to be competent.”

He also had to win a lottery to enter it.

The night before the New England race he received an e-mail from the organisers offering him the chance to do the marathon next year. The race was predicted to be unseasonably hot.

“I had done the training and my family were here,” Mr Ausenda said. “I went for it.”

It turned out to be the hottest Boston Marathon on record with temperatures reaching 89F despite it being April.

“The theme song was the ambulance siren as people passed out from the heat,” he said. “I got through it in four hours and 21 minutes.”

He did have to go to the medical tent afterwards, but later was grateful he did not take the offer to do it the next year.

In 2013, two powerful explosives were set off at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring more than 500 others. The culprits were two radicalised brothers.

Mr Homan, 53, started running in his late thirties, just wanting to do something healthy. Before that he had never run more than a mile.

“I never got very fast, but I could go longer and longer — probably because I’m a little stubborn,” he said. “I went from 5Ks to 10Ks to half marathons, and then did my first marathon in Dublin, Ireland in 2014.”

Early on, he used marathons to relax and explore, but now they have taken on a more serious purpose.

Three years ago, his son, Eoghan, died after a battle with a rare, aggressive cancer called Ewing’s Sarcoma.

Paediatric cancer research is desperately underfunded.

“Most of the American Government’s funding for cancer research goes into widespread adult cancers,” Mr Homan said. “When it comes to paediatric cancers, particularly rare ones, there is practically no government research funding.”

Only 4 per cent of the American federal budget goes to paediatric cancer research.

“A lot of the funding for paediatric cancer research actually comes from private initiatives,” he said. “The St Baldrick’s Foundation is the largest non‑governmental funder of paediatric cancer research, basically matching what is coming from the government research side. I have done a lot of work with them.”

After the death of his son, he started running marathons to raise money for Boston Children’s Hospital. “We have raised around $330,000,” he said.

This year, his daughter Aisling, 22, ran with him in the London Marathon — her first such event.

“This year alone between the two of us, we have raised $100,000,” Mr Homan said.

Mr Homan is retired now, but was a partner with PwC in Bermuda for more than 20 years.

He has run 44 marathons and aims to make the 2027 Boston Marathon his 50th. That means he has to complete five races before April.

His fifth may be the Shanghai Marathon in China, which is slated to become the ninth Abbott Major next year.

Mr Ausenda is also looking at doing Shanghai in 2027. It will most likely be his last marathon.

“I am 58,” he said. “The injury I suffered earlier this year is my body saying ‘we are done’. I would love to keep doing the half-marathon distance, but a full marathon is an extra magnitude of difficulty.”

• To see Colm Homan’s Boston Children’s Hospital fundraising page, clickhere