Tom Humphriesfinds Ireland's finest distance runner settling gradually into the slower lane but still a bundle of pure energy and still eager to be involved

CHEAP DATE. You meet her in the café of the Farmers' Market in genteel Hampton Hill. People with money are grazing amidst the ripe, fresh produce and the wafting smells of lunchtime. It's raining outside.

Sonia arrives. Menus are proffered. Sonia sits and orders a cup of hot water. She pours a soup sachet into the hot water when it is served.

She is toting a sandwich too, a thin, bedraggled version of a real sandwich, it must be said. The sandwich is the size of a slender ipod and it sits in a little red box in her bag and it won't meet its destiny as food for another two hours or so. If she eats her sandwich at three she will feel good at the track tonight.

If she eats it now it will just be a sandwich. It will just be food - like ordinary mortals consume. In two hours it will be fuel.

It's not much this track session tonight. Well, so you would think. Not for a woman who went to four Olympics, won a medal at one and should have won medals at perhaps three, not for the greatest Irish athlete of all time, a former world champion and one-time goddess of the track. This track session can't be the sort of thing you would postpone a sandwich for. Can it?

It's like this, she explains, laughing because she knows you will think she is mad. Today is Tuesday and we are in Hampton Hill. Two days ago it was Sunday and Sonia was in Philadelphia for the Philadelphia Distance Run.

While the world was sleeping she was up with the girls, Ciara and Sophie, at 5.30am and down with 13,000 other loons at the course start near Eakins Oval to set off at 7.45am.

13.1 miles. Nic babysat. Sonia warmed up with a girl from Slovakia, Katerina Janosikova. They'd never set eyes on each other before, but in that wanton way of runners fell into stride together. Katerina had a target for the race. So had Sonia. Sonia was allowing for age and for the fact of having to run this track session on Tuesday night so allowed herself a window for finishing of between 75 and 80 minutes.

Katerina hoped to go faster. Sonia told her she could bust 70 minutes. Katerina asked Sonia what her personal best was for the half marathon. Sonia said casually that it was 67:19. Katerina almost veered out into oncoming traffic.

What?

"Long ago," said Sonia, "long ago."

It was six years and she and Craig Mottram ran the distance wearing Sunderland jerseys, but for a thoroughbred six years is a lifetime.

Now, although she has come all the way to Philadelphia, she has this track session on Tuesday to think about and doesn't want to kill herself on the streets of Philly.

So they ran south to Washington Square and then ran up Martin Luther King Drive, over the Falls Bridge and back to the Art Museum on the steps of which Sylvester Stallone stood iconically with his arms raised in Rocky.

Twelve years ago when she was queen of the track and on her way to conquer Atlanta she had her picture taken at the top of those steps doing the very same thing. This Sunday morning though she finishes in 1:19:44, just, just, within her window, and turns away to find Nic and the kids. Katerina finishes a minute ahead, wondering still what it would be like to even come close to 70 minutes.

There are races for the kids. A mile for Ciara's age group. She is the third girl home. Sophie does better in the half-mile race, nearly wins the entire thing, but just gets beaten by a boy.

"That boy's father was running along coaching him," says Sonia to Nic afterwards.

"You were doing the same thing," says Nic gently.

Sonia smiles guiltily.

"I was just showing Sophie where to go!"

Same old competitive wolf. Just wearing some sheep's clothing.

Only little vestiges of the past survive. She ran that morning in a Villanova singlet and met up a day or two before the race with Gina Procaccio, an old friend from the circuit who is now the women's coach in the Villanova. It had been four years since they had seen each other. She occasionally emails Alison Wyeth the English runner. And that's it. That world has vanished.

Of course, there is still Marcus O'Sullivan and Frank O'Mara, her two guardians from the beginning, to keep her amused. They were in Arkansas when she hit Philly last week. Frank is on a cycling kick right now. He'd got Marcus kitted out for an 18-mile spin.

Marcus reported back that they looked like refugees from the Tour de France.

"At one stage they were doing 25 miles an hour. Frank was shouting at Marcus, "get on my wheel, get on my wheel". Marcus was shouting back, "Frank I have never been dressed like this before or on a bike like this before. And you want me go get on your wheel?"

And that was it. Old friends and old ghosts. The odd feeling of surprise that she had once been so quick or so dominant.

So they flew home through the night and hit the ground at Heathrow at 6am. Sophie and Ciara slept on the flight and were deposited at school as usual. Sonia got to thinking again about this track session.

It's a life more ordinary that she leads now, but not a life that many of us will ever know.

The drives and desires which once blew like elemental forces through her mind and body have let up somewhat and the scars from the bad times are healed.

Atlanta, she says, is buried in some sort of tunnel so deep in her psyche now that it would take archaeologists and miners years to get to it. On the little DVD she has of her career highlights Atlanta doesn't exist at all.

You have this impression of her leaving behind those places we will never know and freshly discovering a world we all take for granted. On the way home from Philly she watched a series of movies while everyone slept.

"I saw this movie Manhattan on the plane," she says. "Woody Allen."

Yes? "I have never watched a Woody Allen movie in my life before. Are they all black and white."

She is at peace with this world of ours, having discovered in the past couple of years that the universe isn't actually track shaped. Last year on the day that Pádraig Harrington won his first British Open title she was for instance in Santry at the National Athletics Championships.

She felt, as she often has, at that event, distinctly unwelcome and cold shouldered. She left early, bemused as to why such a dizzy fuss was made about Alistair Cragg for showing up at all. "I just felt like, I don't really want to do that again."

A couple of weeks ago, though, she was to be found in Irishtown Stadium hard by the Liffey posing with the blazeratti of Athletics Ireland and spearheading a Little Athletics drive in conjunction with McDonald's to get more young children involved in her sport.

For years it bothered her and hurt her that nobody from BLE (which got a makeover to become Athletics Ireland) had ever invited her to put a single thing back into Irish athletics. The current connection came through McDonald's, but she is happy and grateful for the chance to make an impact and to remain relevant.

"The Athletics Ireland people, yeah, they seem okay," she says, half surprised to be saying it. "They seem more proactive and keen to listen to people and talk to people. They have been nice."

It turned around a bit when she did a talk at the Athletic Awards at the end of the year. She had been invited to come and talk and was well looked after and didn't notice any chilly winds or sharpening blades.

"I felt than that - even though that had come through McDonald's too - there was goodwill there."

So that's sorted. As for the rest of her life? It's a work in progress. For once she isn't in a hurry.

"I'm happy doing what I am doing now. I have accepted the level I am at. Even this year going back to the track I do it as a social thing. Even though you have caught me eating special things today!"

This year she has had little bits and pieces to do. RTÉ kept her very busy for the Olympics and she loved it. The work. The hustle. The country.

"I got started thinking that I would like to live in Ireland. Convincing Nic would be near impossible and then to convince Ciara and Sophie, even though I shouldn't have to convince them. I came home last week with the page of the property paper. Found the house! In Kildare! Have to win the lottery now."

She's not sure yet where she will end up living, but fairly sure those around her aren't jumping up and down to make the big adjustments for living in Ireland. Thinks she will be back looking after the Australian team at the World Cross Country next year.

Before that she wants to sit down and have a chat with Pat Hickey about the future of Irish middle-distance running at the Olympic Games.

"It was disappointing this year, the lack of Irish women distance runners. It's not that difficult. If I had kept my head down and wanted to really stay in it I could have got to 15:08.

"People don't realise early enough, far enough out, what needs to be done. A lot of girls aren't realising until it is too late how much forward planning is needed to get to the Games in four years' time.

"I think the commitment is not there. The commitment in every part of your life. Everyone sees themselves as training hard. A lot would be pretty soft. I wouldn't look at them and say they are really fit and ready to go. Some of the runners we sent were but further down? You have to do everything you can possibly do just to get a one-per-cent benefit.

"There is a good group there. If they could get working together - to help each other, and I'd like to be involved in that. I probably shouldn't be telling the world - Athletics Ireland mightn't be too happy - but we have to get them all together."

Now there's a thought that should be grasped and turned into a commitment.

So it's an hour or so now to sandwich-eating time. She has this session tonight with the club, the Thames Hare and Hounds. Her training partner these days is Robin, a 62-year-old club runner.

She suspects Robin will be on his third session of the day by the time they get to the track. She spied him going to meet Rachel for a run this morning and knows they were off to the cricket field for some laps.

On Sunday they have a road relay in Aldershot. A few years ago she ran the second and fourth legs for the club and they finished second but were denied medals because superwoman ran two legs.

This weekend she travels knowing she won't be able to run one leg as fast as she ran the second one a few years back. That's okay.

"What I do now isn't anything compared to what I did before but I have accepted I can never be as fast as I once was. It's just a hobby now."

She fits the running in with life now rather than the other way around.

"I only run once a day. I get more busy. I do more things. It's such a freedom. Might watch the kids doing something after school. Stop on the way home to shop. Still end up chasing my tail."

Tonight she will be in the second-ranked group at training. They arrive at seven, warm up, do the session and be on the way out by 8.30. And it will be fun. Mainly.

"Halfway through the session I'll be thinking, I can't do this! This is too hard! But I don't even look at the times now. I don't care! It's more about the people I run with."

She has just come from the opticians. It's time now to go and pick up the girls. Nic will still be jetlagged later. What will the track be like tonight? Outside it's still raining.

She doesn't care.

You say goodbye and rush off.

She dawdles to shop.

Sonia dawdling?

Enough said!

Read an extract from Sonia O'Sullivan's autobiography - which

is co-written by Tom Humphries - inThe Irish Times this Monday