When she reached the line after one of her greatest races Laura Muir slumped to the track and gasped for breath.
She lay on her back with eyes closed, her body throbbing in response to the trauma she had put it through. “Everything hurt,” she said as an ‘instant’ bronze medal, Britain’s first of these World Championships, was handed to her.
“That last 100.. my legs were just on fire, I felt like I couldn’t lift them, I was running in treacle. Everything was burning.”
The fearless Scot had said she was ready for the mother of all scraps in the final of the women’s 1500 metres. As the sun set on the fourth day of competition it was clear she had buried herself for the cause.
The result was Kenya’s Faith Kipyegon winning a second world title ahead of Ethiopia’s Gudaf Tsegay, with Muir third in three minutes 55.28 seconds.
But that does scant justice to the scale of performance put in by the trio who ran away from the field at the start and crossed the line fully six seconds clear.
Muir, 29, had been on crutches in February, lost six weeks of training and wondered if adding a medal to her Olympic silver was a forlorn hope.
“It was the most significant injury I’d ever had,” she said. “Two months unable to run, two weeks on crutches.”
Yet here she was, mixing it with two giants of the sport, just as she had so memorably in Japan a year before.
“I knew after the first couple of 100 metres it was going to be fast,” she added. “But I thought looking at the clock wouldn’t do me any favours so I raced it and stayed in contention as long as possible.”
A notable breeze had been factored into the Scot’s gameplan and she cleverly ‘drafted’ behind the pace-setters, preserving energy for the lung-busting finale.
They lapped in 58.82secs and reached the halfway point in 2:03.22.
“There was a lot of lactic and I was so tired,” said Muir, watched for the first time at a global championship by mum and dad, Alison and Crawford. "But if you are going to run as hard as you ever have this is the time to do it."
So she dug deeper and clung on for dear life until the line finally came into view and her ordeal was over.
“This time last year I hadn’t won an outdoor global medal, now I’ve got two against two of the best 1500m runners last year and two of the best this year," she said.
“I started my career wanting to run all six champs, I’ve done that. Then make the final of all six, I’ve done that.
“Now I want to win a medal at all six and it’s five down one to go. One at the Commonwealth Games would complete the set.”
As she spoke, Kipyegon revealed that she would not compete in Birmingham. It truly was Muir’s day.
