Long-distance running has never been lonely for Paula Radcliffe. Even with her tortuous style, even with the label of track's perennial loser, those enduring moments of isolation have carved out an unconquerable spirit.
For years now that spirit has touched the world of athletics. That image of the Sydney Olympics, or the various scenes from past World Championships. Rarely has an athlete become more admired for excelling rather than winning.
Next weekend, when the eighth edition of the World Championships open in Edmonton, the concluding chapter in Radcliffe's track career is set to be written. After almost a decade of silver, fourths and worse, this is most likely the last shot for gold.
As of next spring, Radcliffe will be a marathon runner. She is committed to run in London and a big show there is certain to bring tempting offers from other cities. Few athletes have successfully come back to the track after the 26-mile chase, perhaps making these championships the definitive test. Yet the inevitability of defeat still remains.
Like Sydney last year, and Seville the previous year, the effort will be total. Radcliffe knows or cares for no other tactic than burning off the opposition with relentless front running, even if that invariably ends in heartbreak. Her exhaustive collapse after being out-kicked for an Olympic medal last year became one of the cruellest tales of the Games.
There have been some consolations since then. First a World Half-Marathon title on the roads, and on a rainy Belgium racetrack last March, her greatest achievement so far. The honour of world cross-country champion had been a quest for the nine interim years since winning the junior title, and the relief was obvious.
"Okay, you get more shots than the Olympics," she said afterwards, doubly satisfied that she had actually clawed back Ethiopia's Gete Wami in the final strides. "We do this every year, but it's just as hard to win. This is the Olympics for cross-country."
The only surprise there was how she won. Wami looked to have cracked her (again) in the home stretch but Radcliffe fought back, and actually won the sprint. So far, however, her appearances on the track this summer have followed the familiar trend. With the exception of the London Grand Prix last weekend - where she was out on her own - the last lap burn-up was too hot to handle.
"It will be very interesting to see what Paula does in Edmonton," says Sonia O'Sullivan, so often her rival on the track, road and country. "She will have to do something different to last year, obviously. When it comes to the 10,000 metres though, she is always prepared as well as anyone can but in some ways it's not very difficult to do what she did in Sydney last year.
"By then I had been concentrating on the 5,000 metres and given up training for the longer race but anyone with the strength and endurance work behind them would be quite happy if someone takes the lead and runs 72 seconds for every lap. There's no surprise there. She is faster over 3,000 metres than most people running 10,000 metres. So why run hard for 10,000 when you can run hard for 3,000. I wouldn't be surprised if she ran the same but I think she could try to run differently."
With so much of Radcliffe's career falling parallel to O'Sullivan, her allure within Irish athletic circles now runs deep. When O'Sullivan took the World 5,000 metres title in 1995, Radcliffe was fifth. In winning her first World Cross Country title in 1998, Radcliffe was second. Later that summer O'Sullivan's European 10,000 metre title again saw Radcliffe in her shadow.
As O'Sullivan sits out the summer through pregnancy, the interest in Radcliffe's 10,000 metre fortunes in Edmonton is even more compelling. Derartu Tulu, the other Ethiopian who conquered in Sydney, will return to the hunt. Wami will also be there to defend her world title.
"Well you know if you are in a race with her that it's never going to be easy," adds O'Sullivan. "Whenever it's just the two of us in the race then it's a pretty good head to head. At this stage no races are easy but she will never just run around. She knows her strength and she's not going to let other people play to their strengths if she's feeling good."
Whether Radcliffe can successfully change her approach to racing remains to be seen. It's been embedded now since her youngest years, born out of a desire to get away from the opposition before they get the chance to get at her.
At the age 12, as an ambitious schoolgirl from Cheshire, she had her first serious race in the English minor girls cross-country. And she finished 299th. If her parents had any sense they would have bought her a violin.
Instead her father Peter taught her how to run downhill at top speed and Alex Stanton began his meticulous coaching. Just six years later, she emerged from the snow flurries of Boston's Franklin Park to win the world junior title, an honour normally reserved for young African prodigies.
Her exhaustive preparations of 100 plus miles a week have become as much a trademark as her knee-length socks. She spends at least three months of the year at altitude training in the French Alps, faces regular physiological testing in the lab, and takes every sore muscle to her masseur Gerard Hartmann. Her workouts on the track are consistently pressed by Gary Lough, former world class 1,500 metres runner from Northern Ireland whom she met at Loughborough University and married last year.
The problem of that rolling head and twisting shoulders, as if someone is turning a knife into her back, is, as she once explained, not a problem: "It's something that I've always done. What I have started doing as well is rolling my eyes back in my sockets so you just see the whites. I think it might be from the altitude training. It takes me a moment to react when I'm being passed because I don't always see it."
With each disappointment, though, she seems to grow stronger. Now 27, most people would think her Olympic dream has slipped but she is certain to be in the mix somewhere come Athens. Many have said that her effort in Sydney deserved not just a medal, but all three.
"For the last 300 metres of that race I knew I was nowhere near getting a medal," says O'Sullivan, "and by then I was watching the end of the race more than anything else. You just had to feel for her after leading the whole way and setting such a hard pace. To see her not come away with a medal just didn't seem fair."
O'Sullivan is less sure that the marathon will finish Radcliffe's track career. Some of the Africans, especially Tulu, have mixed both but the only problem with marathon running is that it's reputed to kill off whatever speed an athlete has. Not good then for an athlete like Radcliffe. Nor does a good track runner automatically make a good marathon runner.
"Well it's difficult for me to say how Paula will do in the marathon because I still don't know that much about the event. I've run one but it was just a training run. I've read a lot about it and people do say it's not so simple. You go through a lot of different stages in the marathon that you never experience on the track.
"People do say that moving up to the marathon is the end of the track but I don't think she will leave the track behind. And I don't think you have to do that. I don't see it as moving it, I just see it as another event, and I think she will be back running on the track."
With all certainty, though, Radcliffe will produce one of the supreme efforts in Edmonton - and a clean one. For a few years now she has been supporting the cause started by French distance runner Blandine Bitzner- Ducret. By wearing a red ribbon, signifying the support for blood tests, Radcliffe's stance on drugs is clear. Test me anyway you want, anytime you want.
It's just another side of an athlete widely respected and liked on the typically selfish athletics circuit. Off the track, O'Sullivan would always see her as one of the girls that you would be quite happy to have dinner with. There was a scene also before the World Cross Country in March when Radcliffe and Wami sat in a press conference, relaying compliments. They couldn't have found a bad word to say about each other if they tried.
