Phil Healy: 'I'm enjoying the sport and running fast again'

At this weekend’s nationals, Phil Healy will race the 200m, trying to earn world ranking points to boost her chances of Olympic qualification.

Phil Healy of Bandon AC competing in the senior women's 400m heats during day one of the 123.ie National Senior Indoor Championships.

The stopwatch never lies, but for a long time Phil Healy couldn’t stand the truth it would deliver. Athletics has been the centre of her world for the past decade, so when things went awry in 2022, the decline was all too visible, too measurable, in those harsh, objective digits.

In training, 500-metre reps were Healy’s staple and she typically covered them in 1:18-1:20. But after a while, she’d have to bury herself just to hit 1:27. The same thing happened in the gym, the numbers not lying, Healy’s strength and power declining. 

“My body wasn't responding the way that it needed to, and athletes are always trying to push and push to turn the corner,” she says. “I was probably digging myself into a bigger hole.” 

The issue traced back to the spring of 2022. Healy had been in flying form that season, running an indoor 400m personal best of 51.66, but a bout of Covid-19 ahead of the World Indoors left her below her best. Whether related or not, her thyroid levels went haywire in the months that followed. 

“Post indoors, everything just crashed and burned,” she says. “My body was in a hole, it wasn't responding to anything. Everything became a struggle.” It took several months to find an answer, which came via a diagnosis: Hashimoto’s disease, an auto-immune disorder that affects the thyroid. It made sense, given the history of thyroid issues in her family. In March last year, Healy started medication – a daily tablet which she’ll take for the rest of her life. Slowly, things came around, her thyroid levels adjusting to where they should be. Though it was some time before she felt back to herself on the track.

For many years, Healy was the fastest Irishwoman in history, having run 11.28 for 100m, 22.99 for 200m and 51.50 for 400m. But in the summer of 2022, something was amiss, Healy unable to break 53 seconds at the Europeans in Munich. Last summer was no better, Healy clocking a 200m best of 23.70 and a 400m best of 53.00. 

“Last year’s Nationals was just an absolute disaster. I came fourth, in 54-something, and that was the deciding point that I need to stop my season. I didn’t know if I would ever get back to where I was.” Did she consider walking away?

“A hundred per cent, many times,” she says. “There were plenty of tears along the way during those 18 months. I’d got to an Olympics, a World Indoor final, been to World and European Championships, broken national records, achieved so much, and gone from the height of the sport to the lows. I've been doing this properly since 2013 so that's 10 years of sacrifice, 10 years of dedication, you give so much to it. I definitely became very anxious, irritable. I just wasn't happy. But I had good people around me, and I’m in a much better place now, mentally and physically.” After nationals last year, she opted out of the World Championships in Budapest. 

“At that point I literally couldn’t think of anything worse than training for another four weeks. For me that was stopping, pausing, getting that break to refresh mentally and physically, and get my body back around. Because all of last year I lived in hope of things coming back right. You go to training, there is so much expectation: will I (or) won’t I hit the times? But I know the ins and outs of training and there is no fooling me if something isn’t good enough.” 

She took a month off, returning home to Ballineen in Cork from her current base in Waterford, where the 29-year-old trains under the guidance of Shane McCormack, working from home as a software engineer for Sun Life. She reset, recharged and got back training in August. From the outset, her sessions felt better, the stopwatch telling a better story. It showed when she got back racing, Healy opening her season last month with an impressive double at the national league, clocking 23.43 for 200m and 53.18 for 400m. “Everything is under control now and training is back to where it always was,” she says.

At this weekend’s nationals, she’ll race the 200m, trying to earn world ranking points to boost her chances of Olympic qualification. She’ll run a 400m at the Connacht Championships the following week and hopes to go to the World Indoors in Glasgow the week after that with the Irish women’s 4x400m team. Her goals for the outdoor season? Well, there’s the World Relays in May, the Europeans in June and the Olympics in August. She’d like to do all three, but having dealt with what she has, her goals now run deeper than the results sheet. “I suppose it's back being happy,” she says. “Enjoying the sport and running fast again.”