Sonia O'Sullivan says she loves life in Australia, but she still feels most at home in Cobh.
The track and field athlete says 'everything makes sense' when she arrives back in Ireland.
The 50-year-old is currently in Co Cork, but she frequently travels back and forth between Ireland and her home in Melbourne, Australia - at least when the planes are operating as normal.
Speaking to The Hard Shoulder for today's Thursday Interview, Sonia said she sometimes wonders what she's going to do when she's flying back to Ireland.
However, she observed: "As soon as the plane touches down, it's like all of a sudden everything makes sense and you fit in. Life is just what you expect it to be.
"Every time I go back [to Australia] it's like you have to restart and find what was nice... what you liked.
"When I do get back into [the routine], I love it - but then there are always times when I'm ready to move again, and to come back and reconnect.
"It's just easier to slot back into things in Ireland than it is in Australia. It's just different... it's hard to explain it."
20 years since Sydney
Sonia won many international championships during her running career, but she's best known for taking the silver medal in the 5,000 metres race at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
It's now 20 years since that accomplishment - although Sonia said you 'don't really count' the years like a birthday.
She said: "You get to 10 and 15, and all of a sudden it's 20."
Ireland's Sonia O'Sullivan celebrates winning the Silver medal in the Women's 5000m final at the Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia. Picture by: Toby Melville/PA Archive/PA ImagesSonia told Kieran how her aunt Fran collected many newspaper cuttings about her career - and the Olympic medallist believes there's "something special" about having such a physical collection of printed stories.
She said: "When I see that now, you really appreciate that somebody would do that for you - it's not something you would do when you're living in the moment.
"I used to cut out bits and pieces, but a lot of these things would be buried in books.
"To have an organised collection from all the different years... it's something you treasure more as you get older, and when you get to share it with younger people, particularly your children."
Pre and post-Atlanta
As a successful Irish athlete, Sonia often received intense media scrutiny over her performances - and she says that was particularly the case 'if things didn't live up to expectations'.
Perhaps the most difficult moment in her career was during the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, where she failed to qualify after struggling with health problems during the crucial race days.
Sonia recalled: "After 1996, I definitely went into hiding for a while.... I definitely didn't read too much of any media coverage around that time. It was too raw to read stuff like that.
"I think If I read too much into it, then I would have probably questioned myself a bit more.
"Whereas I still believed I was capable of getting back to the levels I know - and more than determined than ever to do that."
1996 ultimately proved a turning point in her career - a 'part two'.
She observed: "Sometimes.... you have to make a change... to achieve the same levels of success again."
She recalled she was becoming 'very obsessed' with running before Atlanta, and "that was all I had in my life".
However, that approach changed afterwards - and she began to be able to relax more during the downtime and enjoy the success she was experiencing.
20 years on from her eventual Olympics success, Sonia says runners these days have a very different experience than she did in the 1990s and early 2000s.
She explained: "We didn't have any Garmin or measuring devices back then - the only time you know how fast you were running was when you were running around the athletics track.
"If you were on the roads or in parks, you were just going on effort."
