IN APRIL this year, just a few days after securing her place on an Olympic team for the first time, Alyson Dixon was pacing a Sunderland Strollers clubmate to 22 minutes in a parkrun.
The next day she was acting as official starter and handing out medals at her local 10k road race, having also helped out packing finishers' goody bags.
It is clear that, although she may be about to realise a lifetime ambition by becoming an Olympian, Dixon is, more than perhaps anyone on the British team in Rio, a club runner through and through.
She sometimes helps out with club training sessions which are set by her partner, Ian White, too.
“Without them (Sunderland Strollers), I wouldn't be where I am now,” she told Running Monthly from Font Romeu, where she spent much of her build-up for Rio. “There's no better club to keep you grounded. They get more excited about someone going off to run 50 miles through the mountains than me running in the Olympics. So they give you that reality check.”
When she hasn't been training at altitude in the French mountains, Dixon has been competing in other local events like the Pier to Pier 7.5 and Blaydon Races.