International recognition worth the wait for Ashley Ryan
By Thomas Conway
The very fact that Coolbawn native and Longford AC athlete Ashley Ryan got to last weekend’s British and Irish Masters Cross Country International in Leeds, England, in itself, an achievement.
The weather did everything in its power to prevent her and her Irish team from making it to the Yorkshire venue. But the real story here isn’t the weather. And it isn’t really the race either - Ashley came a highly creditable seventh following three laps of a punishing, rain-sodden course, while Ireland secured the team silver medal. The real story, though, is the story of how Ashley got there - in an athletic sense.
She wasn’t destined to wear the green singlet or excel at international level from an early age. There was no prodigious rise through the ranks, no trophy cabinet at home, no pushy parents. She took up running in her mid-teens purely for health reasons, and then very gradually, as her surroundings changed and her life developed, she awakened as an athlete. It wasn’t instant. She was a late developer. But that, she feels, has stood to her.
“It was really I suppose a mechanism to get fit and it kind of evolved as the years went on,” she admitted.
“By the time I hit my twenties - I had been to UCC - and I never really engaged in it competitively in my undergrad years. But I went over to the UK to do my post-grad in psychology and I joined Chorlton Runners, which were based in Manchester. That’s where I really found my love for athletics.”
Eventually, people began to notice her. She began to notice it herself. She was running races in the company of international athletes, holding her own in a high quality field. It was suggested that maybe, just maybe she should take this hobby a little more seriously - she may not have realised it, but she was actually very, very good.
Chorlton Runners might have been the catalyst that sparked her running career, but the key ingredient was a coach, the late Jerry Kiernan. Jerry’s influence on her was profound, not just in terms of athletics but also in a much broader sense. He was a phenomenally well-rounded man, who could talk about anything and had strong, well-founded opinions on everything. He changed Ashley’s thinking on athletics, as she explains.
“He tried to take me out of the short term and take a longer term view about how I could focus on my athletics. And he always told me to play a long game. That was fundamentally what got me to where I am today,” she added.
Ashley has enjoyed remarkable success in recent years, both on the road and at cross-country level. Yet her training methods are unconventional. Stunningly, she spends minimal time each week running, simply because she doesn’t have time. She has learned to adapt her training methods to her circumstances, prioritising quality over quantity and incorporating other modes of exercise like cycling, cross-training and even aqua-jogging.
“I would have done the 120km week back in 2016, 2017 before I got injured. But right now, there’s no way I could do that,” she says.
“My body wouldn’t have the capacity to recover. In addition to working at the university, I also have a travel business on the side. And then I have two small kids. So, life is very busy and I just don’t have the hours to do the runs.”
She pays tribute to her coach, former Irish international athlete Enda Fitzpatrick, and her family - particularly her three and four year-old children - for spurring her on.
There’s a refreshing sense of humility about her, perhaps because she was a late-bloomer and only started to excel at an older age. Now living in Longford, she hasn’t forgotten her Tipperary roots either. She’s proud of where she came from, and indeed where she’s got to as well. Like Jerry taught her, she’s been “playing the long game”, and she has no intention of stopping any time soon.