Well before Ava Crean became the October bank holiday running sensation, John Kinsella would often pass her during his lunchtime training sessions around Raheen Business Park in Limerick.
With no clue who she was, Kinsella was struck by her swift and graceful running style, and the smile on her face. The exact same impressions Crean made on anyone watching the Irish Life Dublin Marathon last Sunday, when, at age 19, she became the youngest winner of the national marathon title.
Crean finished as sixth best woman overall in 2:34:12, nine minutes faster than she’d run before, leaving behind several contenders of far weightier reputation and experience. If Crean was a complete unknown before last Sunday, her Dublin debut will be talked about for years to come.
Kinsella certainly isn’t taking any credit for first recognising Crean’s talent. Last May, he did get talking to her for the first time, after she’d won the Great Limerick Run marathon, in 2:43:38 – just eight days after completing her debut marathon in Manchester.
READ MORE
“I work with Analog Devices, in Raheen Business Park, and for the last two years I used to see Ava at least twice a week,” says Kinsella. “I never knew who she was, I’d just see her running by.
“I’d do a lot of training on my lunch break. But we never got talking. Then the day she won the Great Limerick Run marathon, I heard her talking after about also doing a marathon the week before, in Manchester. I mean, I’d done some of that before, racing close together, and I just thought ‘I’ve got to help this girl’.
“Like one year, I ran the Boston Marathon, then London a week after, it was the stupidest thing ever. I got a stress fracture a few weeks later.”
Little did Crean or Kinsella realise, their running lives already shared other parallels. Crean, who is from Raheen, is a relative latecomer to competitive running at 19; Kinsella came to it later still, at age 35; and if winning the national marathon title last Sunday has changed Crean’s life, Kinsella’s life was also changed immeasurably through running.
Now aged 45, Kinsella is evangelical about the benefits of running. Earlier this year he started up the Back 2 Boston club project entirely on goodwill and aimed at promoting running in disadvantaged areas such as Southill in Limerick, where he was born and raised. Inspired by the tales of his uncles who ran the Boston Marathon in 1983, Kinsella had already entered some club runners for Dublin, then Crean, although not from Southill, wanted to join in too.
Over the course of 26.2 miles in Dublin last Sunday, Crean single-handedly put the yellow singlet of the Back 2 Boston club on the national running map.
Her name wasn’t top of the elite entry list for last Sunday, but it was at the bottom. Currently studying accelerated sports and exercise science at the University Academy 92 in Manchester, founded by Gary Neville and other top players from Manchester United’s “Class of 92”, her marathons in Manchester and Limerick last May hadn’t gone entirely unnoticed.
When Crean ran 74:06 for the half marathon just a fortnight before Dublin, her potential was evident; still, she’d precious little experience, only taking up running during the pandemic as a means of gentle exercise, and only on the treadmill at first, too shy to run outdoors.
There was clearly some competitive nature: Crean used to be part of the national under-17 basketball team, having also competed in camogie, climbing and karate as a youngster.
“One of the first things I said to her was the marathon is tough on the body, you’ve got to respect that distance,” says Kinsella. “After she won the Limerick marathon, we met for a coffee, I looked at some of her training data, the fact she wasn’t taking in gels or anything, and straight away I knew she was going to run way faster.
“Then I met her dad, told him what I thought, and they were ‘all right, let’s get a plan’. She went back to Manchester, then came back about a month later, we did our first session together. A 5km time trial, and she ran 16:40. I was thinking she’d drop off, but she kept up, not a bother on her. She just loves the long distance, loves the marathon.
“So I wasn’t surprised at all when she ran 2:34 last Sunday. I knew it was in her, at the same time I wanted to take the pressure off her. I could see from our sessions, her heart-rate at 2:43 pace, which she ran in Limerick, was fine, it was just her steady pace. Ava runs because she loves running. She didn’t start running for fast times.”
Kinsella clearly practices what he preaches, also running Dublin last Sunday, finishing first in the over-45 category in 2:26:50: “A nice way to mark my 10th anniversary of running,” he says. “And for Ava to win a national title for Back 2 Boston is just amazing. No one knew anything about us before Sunday.
“Running is a big part of my life now, but I’d also say that everything that happened to me growing up was the catalyst for what happened in the future. I never ran before I was 35, hated running. But once I got into it, it gave me a sense of accomplishment.”
When Kinsella first dreamed up the idea of starting a running project in Southill, the ultimate hope was to get some club runners to the Boston Marathon. That might now happen as soon as next April, possibly with Crean on board too.
“Back in the 1980s, Fr Joe Young in Limerick had great contacts around the world, and lived a couple of doors up from me in Southill. Around that time Southill was probably one of the most disadvantaged parts of Ireland, and through some friends from South Boston, he raised £27,000, back in 1983, to bring over a group of about 60, including kids doing music and sport, and my uncles were part of the group that ran the Boston Marathon.
“Then I would always hear the stories from my uncles about running Boston. It was like a seed, I suppose, that was planted in my head. Something I never thought would lead to anything.
“Because at the time it was pretty grim. I mean Southill had some of the poorest families in Ireland, and we were probably the poorest family in Southill. There were 10 in my family, 14 in my mother’s family. It was a tough place to grow up, I won’t lie.”
Indeed crime, addiction or murder ruined the lives of many of his contemporaries. His aunt died of addiction at age 32, and one of her daughters, his cousin, later took her own life.
“I only found running at age 35. I played soccer, then I hit my early 30s, I’d nothing else. So drinking, eating, I went up to 17 stone. I just woke up one day, after being out until 6 or 7 in the morning, and something just said to me, ‘I need to change my life’.
“That was January 2015, and after starting running I quickly lost 3½ stone. My supervisor at work asked if I fancied the Great Limerick Run. Seven weeks later, I ran 39 minutes for the 10km. It was after that someone mentioned qualifying for the Boston Marathon, that gave me a lot of motivation. A year later, I ran Dublin, ran 2:50, and qualified for Boston.”
Crean doesn’t turn 20 until January, which means she’s eligible for the under-20 title at the National Cross-Country later this month, and possible selection for the European Cross-Country in December.
“I’m suggesting she does it, it’s her last chance to qualify for Ireland at under-20,” says Kinsella. “We’ll have to see how she recovers, but she is already thinking about running the Boston Marathon next April.
“That in a way will bring it full circle. With the Back 2 Boston club now, we’ve about 16 runners, some of them come from addiction background. I want them setting big dreams, of qualifying for the Boston Marathon.
“That’s one of the things with Ava. She’s only 19 now, has all these dreams and hopes of her own. Even if I’m not coaching Ava next year, I grew up with a lot of people who never realised their talent, and she’s such a bright future ahead of her.
“She’s not the type of girl looking for any attention, she just wants to run. And she’s already such a role model for young people around the city. Even the Southill project, they feel the connection to her now, it’s given them all even more motivation.”
