Josh Kerr gritted his teeth and pushed himself through the pain barrier once, and now he may have to do it all over again.
1500 metres bronze on Saturday night took him from agony to ecstasy in the blink of an eye once his three minutes and 29.05 seconds of lung-busting graft was done.
The 23-year-old from Edinburgh went for a Sunday morning run in the rain of Tokyo to process the mania of the night before. The journey begins afresh, toward Paris in three summers time. Yet if he’d walked away empty-handed, this would have been two weeks of his life that he’d have rather airbrushed from history than the looming possibility that it may be indelibly recorded in multi-coloured ink.
“The first question you get when you make the team is 'are you going to get the Olympic rings tattooed?'” Kerr said. “I was like: ‘No. Not if I don't run well. That sounds like the worst thing ever. Like you got a tattoo that reminds you not having a good race.’
“So it was about coming here and performing. And then I can enjoy being an Olympian because when now people ask about it, I'll have a smile on my face thinking I performed on the big stage.”
Which begs the question of whether the clean-cut, well-spoken public school boy from the Burgh will bow to pressure to follow the lead of so many Olympians and head down the parlour for a commemorative souvenir on his skin? “Probably,” he shrugged. “I don't know. I'll see. I'll get my permission from my parents. My brother will batter me if I don't.”
What he won’t be doing is embarking on a victory lap, on an open-top bus, to next weekend’s Scottish Championships in Grangemouth or any stop the rest of the Diamond League tour. This was what the entire summer was all about, claimed Kerr. Cash in? He’d rather check out and chill.
“I'm going to Hawaii with the missus. I said this beforehand and I'm not going to change now. This was the end goal. This was the goal for so many years. Like this weekend. I couldn’t think a day past that.
“For me, everything is going to be comedown off this. I don't want to go out and run a fast time. It means nothing to me. I went out and ran a great first time on the day that it mattered, and that's what I do. I've already made a fair amount of cash. I'm happy with it.”
But not fully with third place in a final where he was beaten by two titans in the form of Jakob Ingebrigtsen and Timothy Cheruiyot. Three years until Paris. Worlds and Europeans next summer. Maybe a Commonwealth Games thrown in for some fun. Once vacation’s over, it’ll be back to work at his New Mexico base, all to earn another ring fling.
“This is never the end goal,” Kerr said. “This isn't the end of the story. Yeah, it's my first Olympics, and I wanted to come away with something. But I wanted to come away with a gold. That was always the plan. But, when the race is won in 3:28, like I threw everything I had at it, and I got a bronze.
“I would have been really disappointed if I got fourth and I feel like I ran a smart race. But it's a stepping stone for me. I'm now second-fastest in the UK ever. So we're starting to get towards the Cram, Coe, Ovett era. So that's an exciting time for us as British 1500m runners.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here