ATHLETICS: Ian O'Riordan talks to Anne Keenan-Buckley abouther second coming

By four in the afternoon, Anne Keenan Buckley is ready to sit down. Her training for the day is done, and the two kids are off playing. Some time then before making dinner.

We're here to talk about running, and how at age 40 she is ready again to take on the world at a time when the body should be slowing down and not speeding up, and most athletes are happy just to reminisce about the good old days.

Except the last thing Anne Keenan-Buckley wants to talk about is her age.

"With people making such a big issue about it now, I'm starting to feel like a pensioner out there running. And I'm starting to wonder is something wrong here."

Besides the age thing, this is clearly an athlete who has turned back the clock. Next weekend in Leopardstown, she will be one of the Irish frontrunners at the World Cross Country championships. She reckons she can improve on last year's 20th place. She feels she is peaking, and knows she's in the best shape of her life.

This is not the first story of an athlete taking their second chance, hitting a second peak. Remember Eamon Coghlan running the four-minute mile at 40. Keenan-Buckley's peak, though, comes some 14 years after the first. And it carries a lesson for anyone who thinks it's too late to keep chasing those dreams.

When she settled down to family life in Portlaoise a decade ago, those dreams seemed realised. The sport had been good to her. From her youngest schoolgirl days, she had left her mark in distance running around the country, and her first peak in 1988 saw her go to the Seoul Olympics.

"Looking back on it now, there was some success there, but at a limited level. I went to the Olympics, running nine minutes flat for 3,000 metres, and I know the training I was doing then wasn't nearly as intense as it could have been.

"But I wouldn't have been particularly motivated then, not that I ever am.

"I do feel fortunate that I am getting this second chance. And that helps me apply a little bit more discipline than years ago. But it's not that I regret anything, and there's no part of my life where I'd feel sorry about not doing more."

They were the days when she ran not for prize but because she had the talent to win. She remembers too the joys of hitting Dublin for the first time at a young age, going out on weekends before races and drinking maybe one too many. Or later on, going to the Canaries and drinking for a week.

"I never once ran for fitness' sake or health's sake. And without competing I would never really think about exercising, or work myself that hard. Races are about the only thing that motivate me, and now more than ever.

"There is definitely a desire there to be successful, and to win. I think you have to be a bit of a dreamer in any sport, and that one day you'll become world champion or whatever. Now that might be too late for me, but you have to be thinking that way, and always wanting to get better and better.

"And I suppose there aren't many athletes who've gone on as long as me. I'll accept that. But I've never been obsessed with running. Whenever I'm away on cross-country trips Jerry Kiernan (the manager) says I'm the only normal girl on the team."

This is truly the most remarkable thing about Anne Keenan-Buckley. How she has once again become an exceptional athlete with the minimum of fuss. She's not out there training night and day and living away from her family just so she can compete with the younger athletes. She lives a remarkably normal life and still competes with these younger athletes, and still beats them.

It was the winter of 1999 when she finally got back in tune with her body, building up to 60 or 70 miles a week - nearly twice as much as she'd done in her younger years. At the World cross country in Belfast she was top Irish finisher and that brought her onto the Sports Council's elite grants list. The following year she won her first national senior cross country title, aged 38, and with seven silver medals already to her name.

"I said if I was getting this grant then I better get my act together. And it did push me a little more into making the effort, and maybe think a bit more professionally and concentrate a bit more on running. I took a few physiological tests and the signs were good.

"What was important then as well was that I started running with other people, like my brother Jimmy and his mates and sister Una. We met for sessions, and working with a group makes it that bit easier. But it's only in the last two or three years that I've actually been able to motivate myself."

All through the 1990s she did make efforts to return to the top. It wasn't just raising the kids that got in the way - her husband, Donal, did everything to help out. She also studied massage therapy and also qualified in acupuncture. Injuries also had their say.

"When I'm injured, that's it, I stop. I'm not one of these people who get on a bike or into the pool. So the running just wore off a little. And even if I trained through the winter I would usually run out of motivation by the summer and skip the whole track season. It wasn't intentional. I mean, I do like the running, but it's something I do rather than any sort of lifestyle or career thing."

Together we wonder what might be possible if she trained like Sonia O'Sullivan or Paula Radcliffe, hitting 100 or 110 miles a week and adding the weights and the circuits that apparently make all the difference.

"I don't know if I would still be in tune with my body. I decide on all my own training now because I know what works for me.

"But I know a lot of athletes that train harder than me and I still beat them. To me it's more important to stay fresh. It's all about conserving energy, and channelling it into the right areas. And I don't believe the body deteriorates that much with age."

Eventually, the talk turns to drugs. For her it's a simple question of morals, of right and right: "It's like stealing or not stealing. Whether people are found out or not, that's not the issue. It's about being content with yourself. Of course it has ruined the sport a little, with people always wondering who is or isn't taking something. I mean, some people probably look at me and say I must be on something."

Then Donal arrives home with daughter Ashling, and the family takes precedence again. We wonder who might turn up in Leopardstown, and if some of those less moral athletes might stay away and visit their blood doctors instead, the athletes who stop at nothing as long as they've got a million dollars in the bank.

"Well we won't ever be millionaires then, Donal," she smiles to her husband.

A real smile that few athletes can raise anymore.