Bob Higgins
About to become a father again in midlife, Bob Higgins made some major lifestyle changes. His daughter has always been a big part of his running success
Bob Higgins was 46 and the father of four mostly grown sons when he learned that he and his partner were expecting a baby. It was a wakeup call for the two-pack-a-day, 28-year smoker, who was also dangerously overweight. Higgins started running, and Abby was born in September 2012.
Abby and Bob have been running partners since Abby was a year old, riding in the Thule Chariot. Bob enjoyed taking her along to the Runner’s Soul Marathon Club in Lethbridge, Alta., and she became a kind of mascot to the local running community.
Things didn’t work out with Abby’s mom, and the marriage ended. Bob had Abby most weekends, and they never missed a run. He would run eight-minute miles with her in the stroller, and at age three, Abby was running in kids’ races.
Higgins worked hard, completing three Ironman triathlons and qualifying for and running the Boston Marathon twice (in 2015 and 2016), with some smaller triathlons, duathlons and 10ks along the way. “My 2015 time at Boston (also my PB), 3:10:03, had me miss the coveted wave 1 red bib for 2016 by just three seconds,” he says. “The upside was that in 2016 I literally toed the line in corral one of wave two, and experienced a real start-line start in Boston – with news cameras, helicopters, security and so much excitement!”
Higgins branched out into trail running and took first place overall at the 20-mile Coulee Cactus Crawl in 2016. With the help of babysitters from the local running community, Abby has always supported her dad’s races on the sidelines, where her gleeful energy helped him kick it to the finish line many times.
In 2018, tragedy struck. Higgins got a phone call from Mexico, where Abby was on vacation with her mom and two others. There had been an accident, and her mother had died. Higgins f lew to Mexico to bring Abby home, later quitting his job and taking some time away from running to help her heal.
At six, Abby started pacing her dad on her bike. She is now nine, and the two of them recently completed a self-supported bikepacking trip from Winnipeg to Vancouver over the course of two summers. Abby continues to run one or two kilometres around the small lake behind their condo every week, and enjoys tracking her runs on her Garmin watch.
These days, Higgins is participating in small, socially-distanced runs with his local run club, and treadmill Zwift running when it’s too cold for Abby to ride the pace bike. He is currently enrolled as a full-time student at the University of Lethbridge, pursuing a degree in environmental science.
Every now and then, Higgins ref lects on where he’d be without his daughter, who was the impetus to his becoming a runner. It’s a sobering thought: “Without Abby,” he says, “I’d still be that overweight smoker who scoffed at the idea of exercise.”
Chantelle Erickson is a Lethbridge, Alta.-based marathoner, ultrarunner and coach with Personal Peak. She’s also a certified personal trainer and group fitness instructor for Kinetic Indoor Cycle & Fitness.