In New York Marathon week, Rosie O'Grady's is the place to be. Just off the junction of Seventh Avenue and West 52nd, the Manhattan bar and restaurant is a mecca for runners. They all gather there. In the space of 15 minutes at the weekend, I met two old friends I hadn't seen for years. And there was a familiar-looking tall dark guy in a kilt: Andrew Lemoncello, the Fife steeplechaser.
Once picked out by a talent scout and offered a career as a fashion model, the Scot turned it down. Photo shoots in New York did not appeal. "It would have compromised my running," he said.
Now he was in the city to learn about the marathon and support one of his training partners as part of an apprenticeship which he hopes will lead to him contesting the marathon at the 2012 London Olympics and the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, if the vote goes the city's way in Abuja later this week.
But New York turned out to be a horrific experience. Soon after running past where Lemoncello was spectating, his training mate Ryan Shay, a former US marathon champion, collapsed.
Shay was one of 136 American men racing in the hope of gaining selection for the US team in Beijing. "Less than half a mile after he passed me in Central Park, he was dead," said Lemoncello who trained with Shay in Flagstaff, Arizona. "We did our long Sunday runs together."
The ING Marathon less than 24 hours later, with a world record 39,085 starters - only a handful of them as fit as Shay - suffered no fatalities. He was known to have an enlarged heart, and was aware he might require a pacemaker in later life, but the results of a post mortem proved inconclusive.
Shay reckoned he was an outside bet for a place on the team to Beijing. "You just hope you have the perfect day," he had said on the eve of the race.
Suffice to say Lemoncello was stunned. Shay had also won the 2003 and 2004 US half-marathon titles, the 2004 20k and 2005 15k championships. For Shay's wife Alicia, a former NCAA champion, it was more desperate misfortune. "Her boyfriend in high school was killed in a car crash," said Lemoncello, "and her two dogs had recently died."
St Andrews-raised Lemoncello, who has twice represented Britain in the steeplechase at the World Championships, has made Flagstaff his base after graduating from Florida State University, where he set university records at 10,000m, 5000m indoors, and the 'chase.
"The aim is to be doing the marathon by the time the Commonwealths - hopefully - come to Glasgow," he said. "It has been pretty exciting and motivating, seeing all the stuff about staging the Games in Scotland. But I also hope to be doing the marathon in 2012, in London. However, what has happened here puts athletics in perspective.
"I'm coming to events like this in New York, and watching, to learn what I can. The steeplechase is to keep up my speed meantime."
Ryan Hall won the US Olympic trial in 2:09.02, which was two seconds quicker than the Kenyan Martin Lel ran 24 hours later to take the ING event and become the first man to win the Flora London Marathon and New York in the same year. With Dathan Ritzenhein and Brian Sell running 2:11.07 and 2:11.40, marathon running in the United States is resurgent, and this is creating the kind of training environment in which Lemoncello believes he can get the best from himself. It does not make the Kenyan athletes who monopolise the marathon seem so invincible.
"There are always guys here to stretch you," said the former Madras College pupil, who is coached by Ron Morrison, a St Andrews computing professor.
However, while the quality of training partners is higher in the altitude of Flagstaff than he would have if he were to return home to Scotland, financially it is a struggle. There is no lottery support.
The 25-year-old Lemoncello, who regularly works as a waiter in the Old Course Hotel while spending his summers in St Andrews, is now funding his Olympic and Commonwealth bid in the catering trade in Arizona.
"I'm working in a sushi restaurant, just greeting people, and hoping that I get a waiter's job soon, which pays much better. You can make $200 a day in tips. I'm working 16-20 hours per week, and that is perfect. It leaves me plenty of time to train."
UK Athletics is to announce today the list of athletes who will receive funding through to Beijing and beyond. It is likely to involve several household names being axed, following their failure to deliver at the world event in Osaka.
Lemoncello is not holding his breath. He is determined he will make it, though, with or without the system.
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