Late-bloomer Ann-Marie McGlynn happy to smell the roses ahead of European marathon bow

It was the definition of agonisingly close.

Just over a year ago, Offaly woman Ann-Marie McGlynn ran 2:29.34 in what was just her third career marathon, in Cheshire. She was four seconds outside the Tokyo Olympics qualifying time.

"It was tough," she admits. "All the calls and messages were coming in and that was hard. I think I just shut down my phone."

She tried again in Austria next month but conditions were against her.

"I just had to put it behind me. There was no point in dwelling on it. As my Daddy said, 'Maybe I was meant to be there,' and maybe I wasn’t."

McGlynn's philosophical attitude is rooted in how she ended up as an elite runner on the verge of her European Athletics Championship debut at the age of 42.

A talented underage middle-distance runner, she went to UCD on an athletics scholarship but drifted away from the sport in her 20s.

Ten years ago, her newborn son Alfie was critically ill in the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast. McGlynn turned to running as a distraction. And rediscovered a passion that persisted long after he had made a full recovery.

"When Alfie was three weeks he got sick. It turned out to be the worst strain of bronchiolitis and his lung collapsed," she said.

"It was something I never thought would come to my door. It definitely knocked us. Trevor [her former international sprinter husband] was a lot stronger than me. The doctors told us it didn't look good and we probably wouldn’t be taking him home and I thought, 'Well, that’s not good enough.’

"I thought I was getting pulled into this blackness and I remember saying to Trevor that I needed to get out. I left and went for a walk/jog and I kept that up for the three or four weeks he was in hospital.

"Thankfully, we got good news and Alfie