During her running career, it was the way that she finished that turned so many heads, the brilliance of Paula Radcliffe charging home in a marathon to worldwide acclaim.
And now the Great Britain star wants one, final farewell on the major stage, if nothing else than to say goodbye to a sport that she has graced.
Radcliffe, 40, has her heart set on running the last competitive marathon of her career in either London or New York, possibly next year.
Sentimental reasons means London has such a special place in her heart because it is on this course where she rewrote history in 2003 by producing a world record time of 2:15:25 which remains as healthy now as it did then.
“I’m not being unrealistic,” said Radcliffe, who has won in New York three times and whose last marathon was her third place in Berlin in 2011.
“I am not thinking I can get back and run two hours 15 minutes but if I could come back and run a sub 2:30 then I'd like to do it.
'I would love to come back and run a marathon or even a half-marathon and just be able to finish my racing career on my terms. Very few people get to do that. I would just like the chance.”
She was speaking to the BBC, with whom she will have her now-regular key role in the commentary box when this year’s London Marathon takes place on Sunday April 6.
One of the iconic sporting weekends in Britain; it will take on an even greater stance this time because double Olympic champion Mo Farah is making his debut over the distance.
Farah became one of the heroes of the Olympics in London with his 5,000m and 10,000m gold medals but the Games were also a disappointment for Radcliffe, who was forced to miss out due to injury.
Plagued with a succession of problems during her career, she has so often defied the odds and how fitting it would be if she could write the final chapter of her career by crossing the finishing line.
Her career record is magnificent, with her 2005 world marathon success sitting alongside her three major track golds and six cross country titles.
When she won the SPAR European Cross Country Championships in Ferrara in 1998, it was the first major senior title of a career where she had entered the sporting public’s attention six years earlier by taking the World Junior Cross Country crown in the snow of Boston.
Having missed out on global track gold, the roads beckoned, and they could have been made for her because of her brilliant endurance.
She made a glorious marathon debut in 2002 in London when she won in 2:18:55, a world’s best time for a women’s only race, and then later that year broke the world record in Chicago with 2:17:18, a time she lowered in 2003 in London.
She has been training in Kenya and the desire has not disappeared.
'If I had to choose, sentimentally, it'd be London,' said Radcliffe. 'I will never say 'retire' but if I run one more marathon; I would love it to be New York or London.'