On Sunday, Stephen Scullion booked his place in the 2020 Tokyo Olympic marathon.
The Belfast athlete finished fifth in the Houston Marathon, beating his personal best by nine seconds, completing the race in a time of 2:11:52.
He now joins the list of Irish qualifiers for the marathon for this summer's Games.
Fresh from that achievement and with plenty on the horizon in 2020, Scullion joined RTÉ 2fm Game On to look ahead to this summer's showpiece and his journey to Olympic qualification.
"I was really just mentally exhausted after the race and I guess I didn't get to enjoy the moment as much as maybe I would have if I was fresh," he said of crossing the line in Houston.
"But that comes with marathon running. My body's definitely been feeling it more and more the past 48 hours.
"It's funny. You can prepare as much as you want, but nothing comes for free in the marathon.
"You've got to be very, very mentally tough but physically strong too. And on this day, my body was good to me so it was great."
Athletics Championships
However, immediately after the race, Scullion had thought that he had missed out on Olympic qualification, having been 22 seconds outside the automatic qualification time.
He added that at that time, he was "not disappointed because I'd crushed it and raced really strong", before the confirmation that he had in fact qualified.
But by dint of a different mechanism, he secured a top-five finish in a gold label road race which confirmed his Tokyo 2020 place.
Scullion's achievement is all the more impressive having stepped away from racing for a period and then starting on the long road back.
"I recommitted to running three or four years ago when I didn't have a penny," he said.
"I was scraping together money doing web development jobs and frequently I had less than £100 in my bank account.
"So it was never really about the money. I was just surrounded by great people who let me stay in their house for free at altitude and things like this.
"Things have really moved forward since then, now that I'm performing at a high level. Financial things come from that, little boosts come from that."
