TEN days on, Callum Hawkins allows himself to be transported back to that bridge. Perhaps part of him will always be there. Or at least until the 25-year-old gets the major marathon medal which might finally help him get over it.

This, you may recall, was Sundale Bridge, an unforgiving, shade-free final stretch of last Sunday’s gruelling Commonwealth Games marathon. Hawkins went on to it with a two-minutes plus advantage on eventual winner Michael Shelley. He left it in an ambulance bound for Gold Coast University hospital.

Having hit the wall both metaphorically then physically in temperatures conservatively measured at around 30 degrees Celsius, the traumatic scenes which followed sparked outrage. First Hawkins picked himself up to continue a while longer before careering hopelessly off a roadside railing, then he was left to suffer without medical attention for 90 seconds or so as the authorities pondered what to do next. So what exactly does he remember about it all? And what are the lessons he feels must be learned?

“At the end of the day, I was the one who pushed it,” says Hawkins. “I probably could have gone a bit slower and finished. But as an elite athlete, you do have that competitiveness.

“And the fact is I didn’t feel it,” he added. “If I had known I was at my limit, I would just have coasted it in. But I didn’t feel anything at all, I didn’t feel I was overheating one bit, and then my legs just went from under me. Something needs to be done to help athletes before they get to that stage.

“Someone should definitely have stepped in. Because, once I got back up, I have no recollection of that. I was on autopilot.

“I probably didn’t have the ability to even say ‘help’. I just had the instinct to keep going, pushing through. It’s the same in boxing. A lot of fighters want to keep going – but they can’t. When you are rolling around the ground for, like, 90 seconds, there should be a point where someone decides ‘Yeah, he’s not getting back up’.”

Having fallen to the ground for a second time, the exact form of words he used to warn off the medics may never be known. “I think, when they tried to lift me, I said ‘no, no, it’s all right – my Dad will get me’. Although I think it was a bit ruder than that!”

His memories of the entire affair are incomplete, incoherent. But re-watching TV footage has helped fill the blanks. So what are Callum’s overwhelming emotions now? Is he critical of Shelley for running on to victory, with hardly a look in his direction?

No, not a bit of it. “At the end of the day, it’s a race,” says Hawkins. “What could he have done?”

Is he apologetic that he had put his nearest and dearest – some watching back in the UK in the middle of the night – through such a trauma? Certainly. “My Mum couldn’t watch it,” said Callum. “She had to leave the room, especially seeing me there helpless. My Dad was at 35k and he had to rush to the hospital by tram, not knowing what condition I was in. My girlfriend was pretty shook up as well.

You never want to put them through something like that.”

Is he determined to ensure that authorities take more precautions to safeguard the health and safety of runners? You bet, and that was even before the news this weekend that a runner at Sunday’s London Marathon had died. This is important, with the 2018 World Championships marathon set for a midnight start in Doha and the next Olympics set for Tokyo in 2020 when temperatures in the mid 30s are not uncommon. His comments chimed with a release from scottishathletics yesterday seeking answers.

“Maybe not a maximum temperature [for marathon races] but maybe a

plan B with timing,” said Callum. “If you’re expecting certain temperatures, maybe you move it earlier or late at night. Perhaps better information on road temperatures because you see it in F1, when the temperature might be 21 but the road is 40. The wheelchair races went off at 6am and the actual Gold Coast Marathon, which is in mid-July in their winter, starts at 7am.”

He is sheepish too about becoming the story of the Games when he didn’t get a medal and is determined to “right the wrongs”. While he won’t compete at the Europeans in Berlin in August, he is weighing up the world championships in Doha and is dead set on Tokyo.

“It is not the way I would have wanted to be the story of the Games. I would rather have won the gold. Hopefully I won’t detract too much from the people who won the medals. What will it take to get rid of that tag? Probably a gold in Birmingham.”

For all this, having only flown back to the UK on Friday – he attended the London Marathon on Sunday and is re-energised by the prospect of taking on Mo Farah – it must be said the 25-year-old seems in remarkably good fettle. He ended up with a medal after all, a mayoral one, presented to him by the mayor of the Gold Coast

He jokes about the hero’s welcome he got at the athletes’ village after overnight observation in hospital from some other members of Team Scotland. “I think most of them were just coming in from the night before,” he says. “I think I looked in better shape than a lot of them!

“I think everyone and his dog messaged me. It was really nice. The mayor of the Gold Coast sent me a really nice letter and the mayoral medal, which was a really nice touch.

“Paul McStay is out there and his son used to run with our club [Kilbarchan]. So he sent me a nice letter and a boomerang, to show that I’ll come back – and come back stronger. I need to find a place on the wall for that.”