Barbara rises above adversity after her illness

Aoife O’Brien

SANTRY native Barbara Tobin is the ultimate iron woman after overcoming a number of serious health issues to complete her first full Ironman in October of last year.

The 54-year-old athlete suffered a breast cancer scare while training for the major event but decided that nothing was going to stop her from competing in the race.

Barbara had surgery to remove the pre-cancerous cells in her body in May of 2018 and within 10 days she was back training.

“I went in, in May and I had the little bit of surgery and I just went off and did a little bit of research on waterproof bandages and went back sea swimming about 10 days later,’’ she said.

Barbara then postponed radiotherapy treatment to compete in the race which consisted of a 3.8km swim, followed by a 180km cycle and finished with a full 42km marathon distance run. Despite her health complications Barbara exceeded her own expectations completing the race almost three hours faster than expected.

“I had given myself 15 hours to finish the race but I finished it in an absolutely super time of 12 hours and 15 minutes,” she said.

Barbara started radiotherapy treatment within a week of finishing the Ironman and said that despite her decision to delay treatment she never felt worried about her health.

“I knew I was going to be okay,” she said. “That might sound very arrogant but I just felt very grateful that I had my training and my racing to fall back on and that just saw me through.”

However, this was not the first setback Barbara has suffered during her racing career.

After taking up running at 39-years-old she joined a local running club which helped her to build up the stamina to run the 10km Women’s Mini Marathon without stopping. Shortly after, she ran her first Dublin City marathon.

However, during this time Barbara was diagnosed with endometriosis and needed a hysterectomy.

Despite the incredibly painful condition Barbara continued her training, noting that if she had developed the condition prior to when she started running she might not have had the same resilience.

“Maybe if I had been unwell a couple of years prior to that I would have lain in bed and been happy to do so, but because your running, it’s such a good feeling, you forget your day’s work and it’s just uplifting and invigorating.”

Barbara now has her sights set on completing her sixth Ironman 70.3 or half Ironman in Mallorca in May 2020. She then aims to go on to compete in her second full Ironman the following year in either Portugal or Italy aiming to beat hear already amazing time from last year.