If the hip injury which will prevent Ava Crean from defending her national marathon title in October wasn’t troubling enough already, then not knowing the root cause is making things even worse.What is certain is that she won’t be rushing to get herself right, and if anything, the learning experience has already made her a stronger runner. Crean made headlines last October when, still only 19, she finished sixth best woman overall in the Irish Life Dublin Marathon, her time of 2:34:12 some nine minutes faster than she’d run before. As the top Irish women’s finisher, that also earned the Limerick runner the national marathon title, the youngest Irish athlete to achieve that honour.“I was getting away with a lot,” she says. “To be honest, I was not doing what I should have been doing. Because I was still thinking of myself as just a normal runner, who just put on my shoes, and went out the door. “So I wasn’t doing the strength training. I wasn’t doing any warm-up, any cross training, or anything like that. So that’s definitely what I’ll be taking forward.”Despite an excellent start to 2026, Crean clocking 32:46 for 10km in Valencia on January 11th, two weeks before turning 20, by the end of February, she started to feel a dull pain in her hip. It soon stopped her from all running – and she’s still not entirely sure why.“It’s a bone stress injury, not a fracture. I got an MRI and it came back fine first. Then I tried to go back running, because they said I could go back. But it wasn’t getting any better. It was getting worse, so I got the MRI rechecked and they came back saying you have a bone marrow oedema [build-up of fluid inside the bone marrow] in the iliac crest. “People are saying that maybe it’s overuse, but not really 100 per cent sure. I’m only starting to try do light cycling, but I can still kind of feel it. So it’s definitely been really hard, probably the hardest couple of months for I don’t know for how long. Not knowing what it is, is kind of the most frustrating part.”Ava Crean finished sixth best woman overall in the Irish Life Dublin Marathon. Photo: INPHO/Bryan Keane Before Dublin last October, Crean ran two marathons in May, both largely for fun, winning the Great Limerick Run in 2:43:38 just eight days after completing her debut marathon in Manchester.Although she won’t make it back to Dublin this year, she is eyeing up a marathon in Valencia in December, if not in Seville in January. She’s also due to meet sports medicine specialist Dr Ronan Keaney this week to help established a better course of recovery.[ Ava Crean withdraws from Boston Marathon with hip injuryOpens in new window ]In her final term as an Accelerated Sports and Exercise Science student at the University Academy 92 in Manchester, Crean also recently met Sonia O’Sullivan for some advice: “It was just general chat, and to maybe start running on softer surfaces now and then. Maybe implement cycling, which is what I was doing.“I’ll probably go back into a half-marathon or something first. I do love the longer stuff, so I don’t see myself on the track. Well, I haven’t tried it, so I can’t say it. But there’s just something about the marathon, it’s just a big thing. So trying to do everything that gets me closer to the start line, that’s all that’s on my mind right now.“Missing Dublin is disappointing, but at the same time, I’m 20, there’s going to be another, I don’t know how many, probably another 15 more.”The 2026 Irish Life Dublin Marathon takes place on Sunday, October 25th.