Crean taking marathon ambitions one mile at a time

The Limerick native will toe the line in Dublin this weekend. 

A general view of Dublin Marathon finisher medals.  Pic: INPHO/Bryan Keane AR

When Ava Crean lined up for her first ever race, at the Manchester Marathon in May, she didn’t consider it a race, just a run. For the 19-year-old Limerick native, a marathon was a bucket-list goal, one she’d written in a letter to her future self when enrolling at University Academy 92 in Manchester last year – which was co-founded by members of Man United’s Class of ’92.

Crean hadn’t a notion about times so on the entry site, she listed 3:30 as her target. “I remember seeing influencers who were [running] over three hours and seeing the sessions they were doing and I was like, ‘I’m not doing anything like that, I’m just going out, enjoying running.’ But then with the adrenaline and the crowd, I was like, ‘This is so fun.’ I did 2:49 and was like, ‘What the heck?’” She had signed up for another marathon just a week later at the Great Limerick Run and figured she’d just run easy there. But as each kilometre ticked by, the wall just never appeared. Crean won the women’s title in 2:43:38. Heading into tomorrow’s Irish Life Dublin Marathon, it makes her one of the more unlikely contenders for a national medal.

A native of Raheen in Limerick City, Crean did climbing, karate and camogie in her youth but took a four-year hiatus from sport towards the end of primary school before taking up basketball, earning a place on the U-17 national team academy.

She started running as a way of staying fit during the pandemic, hopping on an old treadmill at home, unable to run 500 metres without stopping. But she stuck at it, covering her first 5K in “30-something minutes”. Over the next year or two, having quit basketball, she increased her training volume steadily until she was up to 22 kilometres a day. “I don’t want to go above that,” she says. “Some days are more, some are less.” At just 19, she’s defying conventional wisdom by running the marathon – traditionally seen as a distance you come to late in your career. But Crean has never raced on a track and she’s never known any other distance in the sport, her competitive career starting with that 26.2-mile outing in Manchester. Who knows where it will finish?

She never had a coach before her debut marathon but soon after, fellow Limerick native John Kinsella reached out. They met for a coffee, with Kinsella explaining heart rates and workouts. He’s coached her ever since. Kinsella grew up in Southill, one of Limerick’s most underprivileged areas, and he’d taken up running to lose weight a decade earlier, later becoming the first over-40 to complete all the Marathon Majors in under 2:30.

Having grown up in an area where wrong turns were easily taken, Kinsella remembers the impact in childhood of hearing his uncle’s tales from the Boston Marathon. That led him to start the ‘Back 2 Boston Project’, with a mission statement to “empower individuals from disadvantaged areas by providing them with the opportunity to run a marathon”, with Boston the ultimate ambition.

Crean loved the concept and joined his club. “Once you know someone who’s doing a really impressive thing, that gives you hope,” she says. “I love seeing what he’s doing.” Kinsella has brought structure to her training, with Crean now doing a weekly long run and interval session. Last month, she won the Charleville Half Marathon in 1:15:22, then ahead of the Manchester Half Marathon a couple of weeks ago, Kinsella texted her to run it at marathon pace and “be sensible”. Her response: “What happens if I’m not sensible?” She ran it as she always does – not thinking about time or places and just going by effort, and she had another big breakthrough of 1:14:06. Which brings us to Dublin, where she plans to just get through the first half and then maybe push on, relishing each step. When things get tough, she’ll tell herself that she’s free to slow down or stop at any point, then chisel her focus down and “try fight this kilometre”.

“It’s ticking them down, staying in the pace and whatever time comes, comes,” she says. “It’s the effort level I look at. Your effort level is what counts.”