THE Highgate Harriers’ night of the 10,000m PBs is a bit like what an ordinary athletics meet might look like if Barry Hearn got his hands on it.One step up from doing laps of Ally Pally, for a start, the eight-lane track at Parliament Hill is condensed to just three at points, allowing a football terracing style crowd to form behind it and get close to the action. Then there are the large marquees or beer tents on both the back and home straights where the early evening crowd, fuelled by live music, DJ sets and no doubt a beverage or two roar the runners onto new heights in rather rowdy fashion. The event has grown in stature on an annual basis since being introduced, incorporating the British Championships ever year since 2014. Having included the 2016 Rio Olympic trials and the 2017 London World Championships trials, tonight’s running also includes the European Cup.

There is something about all this which appeals immensely to Giffnock’s Luke Traynor, when he watches past runnings of the event on YouTube. “The atmosphere is electric, which is something I think track races lack, particularly if people are away from the lane one action,” the 24-year-old tells Herald Sport. “Hopefully someone is waiting on the finish line for me with a cold beer.”

While Traynor was a talented distance runner from his early years, locking horns with the likes of Callum Hawkins and Andy Butchart – all three are only two years apart – it wasn’t so long ago that he was frequenting beer tents and the like on a more regular basis. Whilst a student at Glasgow University, Traynor freely accepts that he wasn’t the most fastidious when it came to his preparations. The chance to move to an athletics scholarship out at Tulsa, Oklahoma – Chris O’Hare is one alumnus whose path he briefly crossed with – changed all that though.

He bought into the life enough out there that by the time he left Tulsa he had landed a training gig with the Mammoth Track Team out in California – he trains periodically at altitude at Mammoth Lakes – and given himself a genuine shot of making the Commonwealth Games team for Gold Coast over 10,000m. A race in Manchester had been set up which would have allowed him to get the qualifying standard only for him to suffer a small car crash back in Scotland just days before.

“Realistically I should have qualified,” says Traynor. “When I started the race, I thought I was still fine, but my back then seized up. I finished the race but I had to slow down a lot. That was when the cut off was, my only chance to run that time.”

That proved to be a blessing in disguise, with qualification and a creditable finish at the World Half Marathon Championships in March. At one point it might have appeared like the other two were heading off towards the horizon but Traynor hopes to return to a form of friendly rivalry with his Scottish distance-running contemporaries. Butchart, of course, is still resting up the broken foot which cost him the chance to compete in the Gold Coast, while Hawkins has yet to return to action after the ill-fated end to his bid for Commonwealth marathon glory. “Andy [Butchart] was definitely late developer and I see myself as that too,” said Traynor. “As a teenager I was making Great Britain junior teams too but I wasn’t taking the sport that seriously. I was an undergraduate in Glasgow and leading the normal student life, fitting training around nights out and stuff. But just really going out to Tulsa and training at 6am kicked me into gear.

“I would have been very close with Butchart when we were both juniors, he was a few years older, but I certainly beat him a few times,” Traynor added. “Callum was always very, very talented when he was younger, he always seemed to live that semi -professional lifestyle, as a kid anyway he was winning junior European Championships so I don’t recall beating him so much. But I beat him last year in a local relay race. At the end of the day it is running, you don’t hate each other. You travel to races together, so you have to get along. I want to compete against those guys for sure but it is just a case of getting on the start line when everyone is fit and your seasons come together. It is a rare occasion when you do all get together at the same race.”

Most people would watch Hawkins’ trauma on the Sundale Bridge and think marathon running isn’t the greatest of career choices. Traynor, on the other hand, thinks why not. While he hasn’t given up running on the track, he feels he performs better over longer distances on the road and there is evidence to back that up. Currently the Scottish 10-mile champion, and the owner of the third fastest Scottish half marathon time in history, there is more than double the glory, not to mention the potential rewards, when you move up to the full marathon.

“I don’t think I will excel as much on the track as I will on the roads,” he said. “So the plan in the future – possibly even the near future – is to move up to full marathon distance on the roads, possibly by the end of 2019 and start of 2020. I know that is where I will be even better. Moving up to half marathon this year I did really well, with the worlds in Valencia, and the month before I ran a fast half marathon in Barcelona and ran the third fastest time over that distance for a Scottish runner. For me, the marathon is even more exciting, knowing you can compete with the biggest guys on the biggest stage. You just have to get it right on the day.

“But I have not given up completely on the track yet. I know I have more potential. This Saturday will hopefully be another good performance. I will hopefully turn a few heads but marathon is the future for me.”