Callum Hawkins’ reaction was as telling as his performance after Scotland’s leading marathon man smashed a course record in once again demonstrating that he has pace to go with his endurance at the weekend.

The 24-year-old Kilbarchan AC runner took more than a minute off the course record in winning Bellahouston Harriers’ Brian Goodwin 10K in a time of 29 minutes 14 seconds, his performance also providing the latest evidence of the way that the whole of Scottish athletics is benefitting from the way he and others are raising standards since Giffnock North’s Luke Traynor, the previous record holder, also hugely improved on that time, coming in just 13 seconds behind the winner.

Yet, for all that he was pleased to get another win under his belt and get the competitive juices flowing, Hawkins – who has recently returned from a stint of altitude training in Colorado - was to register mild disappointment at his time in spite of having prepared for the race by putting in a challenging training session earlier in the day which had seen him a half marathon in total with six miles at his normal pace, just under six minute miling, then five miles at what he described as ‘quicker than marathon pace’ averaging four minutes 53 per mile, before a two mile warm down.

"I really enjoyed the race. My legs felt not too bad, but when I do these double workouts I usually do the race first then the session second. I was slightly disappointed to not be under 29 minutes, but I was out to race first," he said.

Such a schedule is another indicator of just how high Hawkins is setting his sights having shot to global prominence when he claimed the lead for a chunk of last year’s Olympic Marathon in Rio, then followed that up with a highly impressive win at the Great Scottish Run in the autumn before becoming the first British runner to beat Mo Farah over any distance when he set a pace that even the double Olympic 5000m and 10,000m champion could not cope with at the Great Edinburgh International Cross Country.

In early January that put down a marker for the year and, after the disappointment of being denied a new Scottish half marathon record when it was discovered that the course had been incorrectly measured, he duly made up for that in Japan in February when he ran exactly the Kagawa half marathon in exactly an hour and followed that up by proving his versatility in winning the Scottish Cross Country Championships on a mud-soaked 10K course in Falkirk later that month.

His performance in Japan meanwhile knocked close to two and a half minutes off Allister Hutton’s 30-year-old previous Scottish best and Hutton’s Scottish marathon record, set two years earlier in London, now seems a realistic target for Hawkins. Yet with expectations rising he is still very much in the early stages of his career and determined to remain realistic about his prospects in both the short and longer term as he acknowledges the feats of his predecessors.

To date he has run just two marathons and while both have been completed impressively, his time of two hours 10 minutes 52 seconds in London last year which qualified him for the Olympics, followed by 2:11:52 in finishing ninth in Rio, he needs to improve on that significantly to challenge Hutton’s 2:09:16, then improve by the same margin again if he is to beat Steve Jones’ British best 2:07:13, which similarly dates back to 1985.

"My aim for London is to improve on Rio and put my face into the mix, but really to just go out and enjoy it,” he said.

"I am still a long way from Steve Jones' record. It would be nice to get it but it is a ridiculous time when you break it down."

Hawkins is set to test himself further next weekend at the Olomouc Half Marathon in the Czech Republic.