If Josh Griffiths is at all fazed by his unfamiliar surroundings, he is incredibly adept at hiding it. Just a few months ago, Griffiths had been so far from the British Athletics set-up that it was as distant an aspiration as a semi-professional footballer looking to compete at the World Cup in the same season.

To go from Griffiths’s position as a self-coached amateur in rural Wales to representing Britain at the World Championships today is pretty much unheard of.

To recap: Griffiths was the 23-year-old student who produced one of the shock results of recent London Marathon history in April, breaking clear from the club running ranks to beat every British athlete that had lined up 15 metres ahead of him for the elite race.

The amateurish nature to his race build-up had been laughable. His warm-up run had seem him dodge hoards of City workers heading home for the weekend after he opted to head out on to the streets of London Bridge at rush hour the afternoon before the race.

His pre-race 5am meal consisted of a cooked piece of salmon that he had bought from the supermarket the day before and kept out overnight in his Premier Inn hotel room because he did not have access to a fridge.