16-05-2025
Ryan Creech embracing the rocky road
The one certainty in the marathon is that it'll never be perfect. Both the build-up and the race are just too long, too arduous, not to be laden with difficulties.
But some marathons are more imperfect than others.
Ryan Creech, 33, has long been an athlete whose undeniable talent and work ethic have been coupled with a certain fragility, his injury list one that could rival a jump jockey.
'The lads (at Leevale AC) would be laughing at me,' he says. 'I get out of the car for training and every nut and bolt would be falling off me. The shit thing about marathon training: you're sore every day.'
On the build-up to the Seville Marathon last February, his body withstood the trial of miles, with Creech the fittest he'd ever been.
But just over a week out from the race, his partner's father, Kevin Murphy, had a heart attack, with Creech spending the next several days at the hospital before Murphy passed away just seven days before the race.
Read More
Paul O'Donovan misses out as Ireland name squad for European Rowing Championship
Creech wasn't training during that time, and was barely sleeping, living off takeaways with his mind a million miles from running as he supported his partner, Chloe.
Her father was buried on the Wednesday before the race, and she and Creech then flew to Seville on the Friday, two days out from it. While in Seville, Creech said to his clubmate, John Shine, 'I've no idea how this will go,' given the physical and emotional fatigue he was carrying.
But to his surprise, the early miles felt like 'an absolute breeze.'
At 10K, however, Creech was reminded of the marathon's ability to land punches in places you couldn't predict. Another competitor fell in front of him at a water station and Creech jarred his foot while trying to dodge him, feeling a pop in his Achilles tendon.
'I was like, 'f**king hell, what's that?' In training, you'd pull out straight away but after bringing the missus all the way over to Seville after burying her dad, to (drop out) – I couldn't be dealing with it.'
He forged on through piercing pain, though at halfway it briefly subsided. Then he felt another pop and it returned, Creech running the last 12 miles 'literally like fighting cramp'.
He reached the finish, against the odds, clocking a personal best of 2:12:28.
'It was a real kick in the hole,' he says. 'There was definitely a 2:10 there that day if everything stayed together, but that's just the joys of (the marathon).'
He was diagnosed with a huge tear in his Achilles. He didn't run again for five months, but in April last year he had a welcome distraction with the arrival of his baby daughter, Zoe.
Creech avoided going down the surgery route for his Achilles, heeding the advice of Dr Joe Jordan in Cork to just give it time. He had a couple of platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injections to try speed that process and last July, he started back running, getting up to 30 or 40 miles a week by the end of the month. The Irish Life Dublin Marathon, in October, was then looming into view.
'Of course, being an idiot runner, you're panicking,' he says. 'So I went from that to 80 miles (a week) and then 80 to 100.'
Read More
Mission accomplished for Irish in Guangzhou
He wasn't shooting the lights out in sessions before Dublin, but Creech laid down a solid block despite the difficulties of being a new parent, often sleeping just two to four hours a night.
Given Hiko Tonosa planned to go through halfway in 65 minutes – a touch too fast for Creech – he recruited an old college teammate, Britain's Sam Stabler, to pace him through halfway in just under 66 minutes.
But then the marathon launched another jab, Stabler sustaining a calf injury in the second mile, leaving Creech to run the rest of the race alone.
He figured Tonosa might come back in the latter miles but he never did, the Dubliner breaking the Irish marathon record with 2:09:42 while Creech, given the year it had been, was content enough with his effort, clocking 2:13:49 to finish as the second Irishman and ninth overall.
'It was so controlled, tempo pace the whole way, but there was no one to race against,' he says. 'That was my own fault for not being brave enough.'
He had hoped to race another marathon in Valencia or Seville but his winter training was hampered by illnesses and small injuries. With his daughter sleeping better recently, so too is Creech, and in the last six weeks he's got 'back swinging' in training.
He's currently preparing for the National 10-Mile Championships in Dublin in July, then plans to race a half marathon in Prague in August and another half in Copenhagen in September, where he hopes to run 62 minutes or faster. After that, all roads lead back to Dublin for another crack at the national marathon title.
In recent weeks, his Achilles flared up after a track session and Creech is learning not to ignore such distress signals.
He's been getting saline injections to strip his Achilles of residual scar tissue and if he can stay healthy over the next five months, he's 'really confident' of running 2:11 or faster in Dublin, which would put him in contention for the national title.
But Creech knows that in this game, nothing is a given, the only certainty being that the road to Dublin will be rocky, something he's long come to accept – and embrace.
*Ryan Creech was speaking at the launch for the 2025 Irish Life Dublin Marathon. The transfer window for this year's race and the Irish Life Dublin Half Marathon will run from 24 July to 26 August. A refund window for marathon entries will be available from 3-16 July. Returned marathon entries will then be made available for resale on a first-come, first-served basis from 18 July via the official event website.
