Published: Wednesday, 14th November, 2007 5:15pm

Back to the future

by Sportsdesk

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CROSSING the finishing line of a marathon is a triumph for the human spirit no matter what the circumstances.

But in Neil MacLachlan"s case, breaking the three-hour barrier at the New York Marathon earlier this month was tribute to the tenacity of this gutsy 23-year-old from Alder Grove, Pitcorthie.

Just before his pre-school check as a five-year-old, doctors diagnosed a form of juvenile scoliosis, an abnormality which causes curvature of the spine.

For the next three years, he was stuck with a bulky back brace for 24 hours a day and all the cruel playground taunts that went with it.

Through his teens he was allowed to take the brace off for a few hours at a time and even managed to represent the school teams in football and cross-country as he sought to silence the bullies.

Then, at around 17, he underwent an eight-hour operation which saw surgeons remove a couple of vertebrae and then fuse his back with a steel rod, inserting pins down his spine.

Fusing his back meant he could not grow and he lost around a couple of inches in height but the op was a success and his back was straighter and stronger.

'It has made me mentally stronger, the stuff I had to deal with when I was younger,' Neil told Press Sport this week.

'You have to rise above it and keep your focus throughout the worst times. There was bullying because I was different because of my back. A lot of people saw that as a weakness and there were a lot of hard times at the start of high school.

'If someone had told me then that I would be running marathons 10 years later I would have been laughing the way everybody else was because I just couldn"t physically run more than a couple of hundred metres at first.

'But there is a saying I have always used in my life: Impossible is not a word to believe. Aspire to what you want to achieve.

'Throughout the negatives it"s important you keep pushing to do what you want to, no matter how many people say it"s impossible or try to put you down. Always believe and always push on to achieve what you want.' Free at last of the problem that had plagued his childhood development, Neil began swimming then two years ago, travelled to Berlin to run the marathon there because a few of his pals thought it would be a laugh.

With little in the way of training, he clocked four and a half hours in his first attempt but the seeds had been sown.

He"s gone on to complete the marathons of Edinburgh, Dublin, London and latterly New York, where he finished 673rd out of the biggest-ever marathon field of 36,000 in a personal best time of 2 hours, 58 minutes and 12 seconds.

His New York efforts saw the Asda St Leonards check-out assistant raise nearly £3000 for Diabetes UK, a condition from which both his parents suffer, and his running has also seen him raise cash for national and local concerns such as Childline, Muscular Dystrophy, MacMillan Cancer Relief and the Pitcorthie playgroup.

Not surprisingly for one who"s overcome so much, Neil"s not content to settle for what he"s achieved up to now.

He"ll try to do London again or maybe the Paris Marathon in the spring and says, 'I"m looking now to go under 2:50 at my next marathon and I would love to go under 2:45 as I would be able to class myself as an elite runner then.'

He"s not stuck for an answer when asked for his ultimate dream either.

'I"d love to reach the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow,' he said.

'That would be a great achievement and it"s been one of my aims. To represent your country is every person"s dream in whatever they do. It"s a great incentive to push on.'