KEY POINTS:
Controversial athlete Liza Hunter-Galvan is considering running the marathon at the world championships in Berlin next year - if selected.
The San Antonio-based runner said that, after a year in which she has had "some life sucked out of me", she needed some time to take stock of her future in athletics.
However, on a recent training run with husband Ariel, a former middle-distance runner, she "rediscovered her love of the sport".
The journey hasn't been easy for the mother of four. Initially left out of the team for Beijing despite posting an A qualifying time, Hunter-Galvan took her grievance to the Sports Tribunal and won.
It was a tempestuous few months that Hunter-Galvan said took a massive toll on her psyche, something she didn't understand fully until after the Olympics.
In the immediate aftermath of the marathon, where she finished a creditable 35th in 2h 34m 51s, she let her feelings be known on the controversy, telling the Herald she had been taken to "hell and back" and questioning whether she had the desire to run for New Zealand again.
Hunter-Galvan, 39, is considering applying for American citizenship but told the Herald on Sunday her intention was never to run for the US against New Zealanders.
"I'm a proud New Zealander," she said. "There are a number of personal reasons for me to get my US citizenship but revenge against New Zealand athletics is not one of them. I'm not that sort of person."
Hunter-Galvan said a few years ago, when she was mapping out her programme, she envisaged running at Beijing and the world championships before retiring after the 2010 Delhi Commonwealth Games.
By then, she would be 41, the same age Lorraine Moller was when she ran at the Atlanta Olympics.
Given that Hunter-Galvan took up the 42km distance seriously only in 1999 in a belated and unsuccessful attempt to qualify for the 2000 Sydney Olympics, it is not as if she has burnt herself out physically.
That schedule is still not out of the question, though Hunter-Galvan, who left Papatoetoe 20 years ago to take up an athletics scholarship at the University of Texas, said she had a "lot of thinking" to do before then.
Hunter-Galvan was also a controversial selection for the 2004 Athens Olympics, where she placed 51st.
Her 2008 Olympic time was well under the 2h 42m qualifying time for Berlin but, as she learned the hard way, that doesn't guarantee anything.
In an ironic twist, Hunter-Galvan, labelled a poor communicator by Athletics New Zealand during the selection wrangle, said nobody from that body had talked to her during the Olympics, aside from a few pleasantries, or had given her any feedback since.
That absence of dialogue is another reason she is reluctant to commit to a world championship campaign just yet. It might be time to cue up the Rocky theme tune for round three in the LH-G vs Athletics New Zealand selection battle.
