In the end, it all played into McCormack’s hands.

Six months after giving birth, here she was, not just back but producing a calibre of performance that no one in her spikes had any real right to find.

She finished 18th in the senior women’s race, just four places down on her best ever showing and the second non-African across the line, with Danish heroine Anna Moller finishing 15th and Hellen Obiri of Kenya taking gold.

“We all know how much I love cross country,” said McCormack. “They built it up to something brilliant and they pulled it off. The crowds were unbelievable.”

Having missed 2018 while pregnant, McCormack relished this return to the international scene, fighting through the field over the latter half. “I was saying to myself that the top-25 is what I wanted, but in the race itself I wanted top 15 so I’m a little bit disappointed I didn’t get it.”

With runners dropping like bowling pins after they crossed the line, McCormack was one of the few left standing, a measure of her capacity to endure. “It was real cross country,” she said. “This was proper tough – real hills, real muck, real water, everything was real about it and the support was as well.”

Elsewhere there was little to cheer for the Irish, with McCormack’s teammate Sara Treacy finishing 73rd. Sean Tobin led the way in the senior men’s race, the Clonmel man far from satisfied with 62nd place, a race won by Uganda’s Joshua Cheptegei. “I got my arse handed to me today,” said Tobin. “We’ve got a lot of work to do if we want to be competitive.” Kevin Dooney was 105th in the same race, while in the U20 race Darragh McElhinney was 53rd and Jamie Battle 68th.