Infertility. A miscarriage. Crohn’s Disease. It would be easy to give up. But quitting simply isn’t in Debbie Ivins nature.
You don’t expect someone who has been given five years to run the Comrades Marathon. Or achieve her best time ever. But then Debbie Ivins is all about bucking expectations.
She’s also about living life to the full. That’s why, when she found herself crying on the floor after miscarrying the twins she had finally conceived after years of infertility, she made a decision. Rather than giving in to depression, she would challenge herself by trying something new and different every year.
Her first venture saw her self-publish a book on her struggles with infertility. To her surprise, it quickly amassed interest from readers around the world. Perhaps even more importantly, it also helped her develop a community of others who were facing similar emotions as they dealt with the same problem … something she especially valued, as at the time, there were few resources available to couples who desperately wanted to have children, but couldn’t.
Next, she took to the stage … something she says was completely out of character. Her stint as a dancer in an amateur theatre production led, also unexpectedly, to a successful career as a film extra.
By Year Three, Debbie was ready to move away from trying her hand at the arts, and wanted to focus on a sport. She chose running, because it’s accessible. “I certainly didn’t think that I would fall in love with running!” she says. Although she had a natural ability to run short distances with speed, it was the long runs that she really enjoyed … the hours spent alone with her own thoughts, and the will to keep going even when it felt like she had emptied her tank. She also loved the community she had become part of … a tightly knit group that eagerly supported each other. And she supported them in turn, encouraging them as they trained for marathons until she found that she was fit enough to complete first one, then another, Comrades.
In spite of her new found passion, she turned her attention to weight lifting the following year, once again embracing the opportunity of doing something that had previously not been part of her world. She excelled, earning provincial colours twice and representing South Africa at the Arnold Sports Festival.
Unable to choose between the two she went against convention and ran while lifting weights competitively – and so was shocked when, in 2019, her body started showing signs of weakness. What started with a sharp stabbing pain in her hip ended (after many years, hundreds of hours in doctors’ offices and loads of tests) with a diagnosis of Crohn’s Disease – an auto-immune disease which caused her to lose excessive amounts of weight until she was so weak she could barely move. Wracked with almost constant pain, her heart under immense strain and her bones left brittle from osteoporosis, she was informed that she was unlikely to live more than five years longer. And if she did, she would never run again.
“That was the part I found truly heartbreaking,” Debbie recalls. Refusing to believe her doctors, she continued to enter Comrades year after year – until last year, with help from a new medical team made it possible to regain both her fitness and her strength, she finished the race once more, running her best time ever.
And although Debbie has since had a relapse, she is still refusing to give up on her dreams.
‘I’ve come to realise that when you live with a chronic disease, you’re always ill – even if you don’t look it. It doesn’t go away. But that doesn’t mean you have to stop life. You simply live around it. So, I run twice a week instead of six times. And I look after myself as best I can.’
Debbie also insists on finding meaning through her experiences. “I live by the mantra, look for the joy. I try to use my pain for purpose – I want people to know that, whatever they are struggling with, they are not alone.”
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Text: LISA WITEPSKI. • Photo: Ben Myburgh
