As Courtney McGuire weighs up her chances of achieving a qualifying standard for Paris 2024, the reigning women's national marathon champion has good reason to feel confident.
Last year the Clonmel AC athlete raised many eyebrows – not least her own – in crossing the line as the third fastest woman in the Dublin marathon behind Ethiopian pair Nigist Muluneh and Hawi Alemu Negeri.
Having decided to move away from shorter distance running, she started training a little over eight weeks out for her first ever marathon.
A time of 2:32.52 put her straight in at seventh on the Irish women's all-time list, but the 23-year-old admitted she really had no idea what to expect.
Apart from the outstanding run itself, McGuire’s optimism in chasing down a sub 2:30 time for next year’s Olympic Games stems from how she felt on the day. There was more in the tank.
"Speaking to a few people the other day at the photo launch, they were saying I had plenty of running left in me when I finished," she tells RTÉ Sport at the launch of the 2023 Irish Life Dublin Marathon.
"I did aswell. My first thought when I finished the marathon last year was, what am I going to wear tonight?
"I think I covered an extra 15km walking around the city trying to get a dress after the marathon. If I look after myself I should be OK. I would be confident I’d hit the standard."
McGuire recently spoke candidly about her childhood where her mother’s substance abuse meant she and her younger brother spent years going back and forth to their grandparents.
She wasn’t expecting her story to make so many headlines, and the response has taken her by something of surprise.
"I have received a lot of positivity from it and it seems that a lot of people have taken something nice from it."
In the lead up to the 2022 race, McGuire kept the schedule to four days running and two days for low-impact cardio workouts.
She wants to take what worked so well and use that as a starting point. Her Exercise and Performance Psychology Masters in UL has been deferred to January next year – and that could be subject to change if the Paris 2024 plan continues to script – and there is an appreciation that less can be more for a full-time athlete.
"It’s more so a break from college. I needed that after last year, and the running kind of ties in with that luckily.
"You just have to make sure you don’t overdo it as you have so much time on your hands. I have a good group around me and they keep me in check."
Similar to the women’s race, Martin Hoare wasn’t tipped by many to take the Irish crown last year.
The plan, set out by his coach Brendan Hackett, the former inter-county football manager, was to sit in with the elite runners as far as the Phoenix Park, and take it from there.
"Brendan plays a lot of mind games," he said.
"Winning the national title, we never even discussed it, but I remember him saying, 'look, to be honest, you're in great shape, don't have any barriers in your head, you can achieve whatever you can achieve whether it's a time or whatever it is, just be open to whatever that is.
"You kind of lean into that when you're running so when you're running up Chesterfield and you're in the pack, I remember thinking, 'Brendan says whatever I think I can do I can achieve here', so he kind of opened it up to me.
Morocco’s Taoufik Allam took victory ahead of a trio of Ethiopians, but behind them, Hoare took control in the battle to be crowned national champion, breaking clear of Conor Gallagher at around the 20-mile mark before crossing in a time of 2:20:22.
He will be a father of three by the time it comes around to defend his title, and throw into the mix the day job as an accountant at a multinational company means boxing clever around a training plan.
"I have actually reduced what I used to do. I used to be someone for this 100-mile week and it doesn't suit me at all.
"It's about 14 miles into work so I might do that two or three days a week and that's kind of how I get it in because when you're working in a job that's nine-, 10-, 11-hour days and you've kids at home, you're fitting a lot in, there's a lot of balls in the air."
The run from his home in Celbridge to the office in Ballsbridge takes only 10 minutes more than hopping on the train.
A personal best in Rotterdam last month would suggest that the plan is certainly working.
"I knocked 90 seconds off in Rotterdam this year. I was able to jump into that and came out with a really good result for myself. Hopefully there's a lot more in the tank as well."
