TORONTO — Brenda Baskind has been a long-distance runner for some time. When she first took up the sport nine years ago, she thought it would help her stay fit and lose weight.

Unfortunately, running didn’t prove to be a magic bullet. While training for last month’s Toronto Marathon, Baskind learned the breast cancer for which she had been treated seven years before had recurred and would require a mastectomy.

Undaunted, the day before her surgery Baskind joined her husband for a 16-kilometre run. More remarkably, six weeks after her breast and lymph nodes were removed, Baskind was back at it big time, running in her seventh Toronto Marathon.

Baskind, 64, not only finished the 42-kilometre race, she felt great doing so. She ran the course in a personal best time of four hours and 57 minutes. Her previous best was five hours and 11 minutes.

“I was hoping to complete the marathon. That would have been good enough for me. But it was like the wind beneath my wings. I was so happy just to be out there,” she said.

“When I was running, I felt fantastic and I went faster than I ever did before.”

Originally from South Africa, Baskind was one of only four runners in her age group of 60- to 64-year-olds. Sixty-three at the time of the run, “I was the oldest and I came in third in my group.”

A nursery school teacher at Holy Blossom Temple, Baskind runs only one marathon a year. “I’m not such a youngster,” she quipped.

She came to running rather late in life, beginning at age 55. Her first diagnosis of breast cancer came not long afterward.

“When I got breast cancer the first time, it was a bit of a shock,” she said. She had been losing weight and feeling good.

But the diagnosis was “scary,” and treatment consisted of radiation therapy and a lumpectomy. Her oncologist, also a runner, advised she could continue to run. All through her 25 days of treatment she did so, because, “running made me feel great.”

Marathons took it to another level:“There’s no greater feeling than finishing a marathon,” she said.

In past years, she and her husband, Colin, prepared for the Toronto Marathon by training at the Running Room.

This time, they did all the training themselves. “It’s a 20-week schedule,” Brenda said.

The intense training regimen was interrupted in September by the surgery. Her doctor cautioned her to avoid running for four weeks afterward, but once that period was up, she was back pounding the pavement.

“I wasn’t sure if I could run 42 kilometres,” she said, but about 10 days before the race she completed a long run of 30 kilometres. “My husband said, ‘I think you can do it.’”

After that, “I rested. I was fresh and I felt great,” she said.

Colin believes Brenda’s story is inspirational.

“For people with a similar illness, there’s a way around it,” even while “beating one’s best time after surgery,” he said.