Athens Diary: The marathon originated in Greece many moons ago, but over the past 36 hours, I've endured my own marathon, travelling from Dublin to Athens in my search for a golden Olympic story.

My journey got off to a bad start when British Airways decided to cancel their 8.15 flight to Heathrow on Wednesday evening, which had dovetailed nicely with the 10.30 to Athens. They told my Indo colleague -- early for once in her life - she would have to go on the seven o'clocker, but that was already being pushed back off the stand when I arrived at the check-in desk at four minutes to seven.

I had managed to get a flight with four minutes to spare when the Olympic Council of Ireland took a bunch of hacks to Athens back in May. But on Wednesday, Aer Lingus - in a co-share with BA - were having none of it. The check-in girl did at least phone down to the gate, but - poetically - it was too late.

Having drawn a blank with Aer Lingus, I sprinted from the blocks to cover the 100 metres to the BA desk in a new Olympic record - and without artificial or illegal stimulants. Adrenaline was enough. But before I'd even attempted to get on to the high horse that I, as equestrian correspondent, am perfectly entitled to mount, the wonderful Dermot Linnane from BA had everything sorted and I was switched on to a British Midland flight that dropped me into Heathrow with time to spare.

Apart from an abortive attempt to board the Hellas Air flight for Athens, we jetted into the Greek capital unhindered, but at the horrendous hour of 4.10 a.m. Arriving in the middle of the night had one major bonus as we were whisked through the accreditation formalities in another personal best - but things went somewhat awry after that.

There was no bus to take us to the Agios Andreas media village and, when it did arrive, we got sucked on to the Imittos ring road - a monstrous fusion of the Parisian peripherique and the Bermuda triangle. Eventually, Georg our driver admitted he was lost and it was close to 6 a.m. before we finally arrived at our destination.

The security check stopped just short of a body search and, to settle our ruffled feathers, we opted for breakfast before bed. Magically, we were rewarded with the most sensational transformation from night-time to day-time as a blood-red sun eased itself up over the hills and illuminated a perfect rosy path across the sea to our feet.

A couple of hours sleep and then a seriously bad decision. The Irish team has come to Athens in search of medals, but unfortunately, there was nothing golden about my legs. Never normally one to fake it, I had to do something about the luminous greenish glow of my lower limbs and opted for the St Tropez tan.

As I - and most of Athens - have now discovered, fake tan and P20 do not mix. My legs are now sporting stripes of canary yellow and white, a sort of negative version of the Kilkenny black and amber. But it was apparently the mating plumage of Olympic mascot, Fivos, a 10ft squashy biped clad in an ancient Greek frock, who swooped down on me as I sat on the floor in the main press centre examining the contents of my media kit bag.

Fivos smothered me with kisses and, next thing, we were surrounded by press photographers. "Could you just do that one more time," they said, as they snapped away. So we indulged them. More kisses, high fives, the works. Now I know how the stars feel about being hounded by the paparazzi - and I so nearly convinced one of the volunteers that Bruce Willis was my brother, so I am almost a star in my own right.

Enough of that excitement and on to another bus headed for the equestrian centre at Markopoulo, where I spent two hours trying to connect to the outside world and then had to rush for the only bus returning to Agios Andreas. Only it wasn't the only bus. In the nature of buses, which believe in safety in numbers, there were two of them - and just two of us.

With a personal chauffeur at the wheel, I sat back and relaxed, enjoying the surrounding countryside as I completed the Athenian triangle between the media village, the MPC, Markopoulo and back to Agios Andreas.

I studied Greek and Roman drama at college, but architecture wasn't part of my remit, so I couldn't remember whether columns with curlicues atop are Corinthian or Doric. But there they were, basking in the evening sunshine, in a garden furniture outlet.

Not much further on, D. Fragoulopolous had his name emblazoned on the top of a building. Maybe it was where they made the columns. Fragoulopolous Rock?