Las Vegas man to run Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon’s 10K while battling lymphoma

When the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society approached Bob Ashby about running a marathon in 2010, he laughed and told them they had the wrong guy.

He was 71 and had just beaten cancer for the second time. He couldn’t run for more than 12 seconds at a time.

But the Las Vegan’s cancer battles couldn’t have been won without Rituxan, a drug the LLS funded the research for, so he was determined to give back.

Within five months, thanks to Team in Training, Ashby was running his first marathon in Dublin.

On Sunday, he’ll be running the Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon’s 10K while he battles through his third bout of lymphoma.

Ashby was determined to run despite the prognosis and will be running alongside more than 550 members of Team in Training, including a Las Vegas contingent of more than 30 runners, despite having a bad reaction to chemo six weeks ago in which he was hospitalized and dropped 30 pounds.

Because of that, he opted for the 10K rather than something longer, but he was still determined to be out there running.

“(Monday) I got up and felt like a million bucks, and (Tuesday) I got up and felt like a million bucks,” Ashby said. “I did a three-mile run (Monday) and a three-mile run (Tuesday), and it just felt great, so I don’t think I’ll have any trouble doing a 10K. In fact, I’m almost thinking ‘Jeez, maybe I should try that half marathon.’”

Coach Brooke Allen-Burnstein said Ashby has served as an inspiration for the group.

“He doesn’t draw the attention to himself,” Allen-Burnstein said, “but people gravitate toward him and they see that he is able to do it, even most recently he’s in his third round of chemo or just finishing up his third round of chemo, and he’s out there trying to stay up with the team, and he’s doing it and people are just amazed by that.”

Ashby is now a longtime member of the LLS’ Team in Training program, as he has run six full marathons with it and numerous half marathons.

The group trains together on Saturdays, and no matter what, Ashby is an active participant.

“You sometimes see patients who can’t even barely move or use sometimes their treatment as more of a crutch, but he’s out there every Saturday, whether he’s able to run, he’s feeling well enough, or he’s working the water station or he’s at the finish station cheering them on,” Allen-Burnstein said. “He is out there every Saturday.”

She said he underestimated himself at the beginning of his training in 2010, but eventually got ahold of what it meant to be a runner within the first two weeks of training.

Quickly, the Team in Training group became a running family for him, as he says thanks to those who ran before him to help fund the research for the drug that saved his life.

Ashby runs two races for them every year and helps raise money in a variety of ways, including picking up donations from those close to him for every mile he runs.

“There are runners that for 13 years ran races like this and fundraisers,” he said, “and so the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society could pay for this research, and so all those people literally saved my life, so now it’s up to me to continue this and pay it forward. For all our runners right now, we don’t know whose life we’re saving, but we know we’re saving someone’s life.”

Ashby has raised thousands of dollars since he’s started and has no plans of stopping anytime soon.

“He really truly symbolizes what it means to be a running family, and he serves as an inspiration,” Allen-Burnstein said. “He’s motivating. I don’t know what it is. He just attracts people to him. He has that ‘it’ factor, and he’s just so genuine and real and people gravitate to him, and so everyone just uses him as a motivator because if he can do it, then everyone should be able to.”

Contact Betsy Helfand at bhelfand@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BetsyHelfand on Twitter.