Australia's men's marathon record holder, Haftu Strintzos, thrives on hard work, but still finds it hard to believe where life has taken him.
Born in eastern Tigray in northern Ethiopia, he grew up standing barefoot in fields for hours, helping provide for his family from dawn to dusk.
"I feel as though I have lived a double life in a way," he said after celebrating his 27th birthday in Melbourne.
"I consider myself privileged to live this life.
In his remote community, 2,300 metres above sea level, the only source of information he had until age 10 was a mobile phone.
Haftu lost both biological parents by the time he was six, and was taken in by his maternal grandmother, living with his aunt and cousins.
A Greek-Australian aid worker by the name of Maria Strintzos came calling, meeting Haftu in 2007 at the age of eight.
After decades working across Ethiopia, she asked him if he'd like to be her son, adopted him and helped him migrate to Melbourne in 2011 — more than 12,000 kilometres from the mountains of Tigray.
Today, Haftu speaks five languages, Tigrinya, Amharic, Greek, Japanese and English, holds a Master of Electrical Engineering from Villanova University in the USA, and recently broke the national marathon record.
Maria always felt compelled to help others. Growing up in South Melbourne in the 1960s, she found strength in the local Greek community, even while migrant families faced racism.
"We had absolutely everybody there. As much as I loved growing up there, it built a strength in me," she said.
"I grew up knowing what social injustice and inequality looked like."
Her aid work took her through Indonesia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Sudan, supporting famine relief, water schemes, food security, women's empowerment, and communities affected by conflict, spending 35 years around wars and disease, but also hope, in the Horn of Africa.
But something different about young Haftu stood out.
He would walk barefoot through dry riverbeds, guiding his almost blind grandmother, Shifta, through the mountains to meet Maria.
"And he would sit there quietly … didn't muck around like the other kids.
"He always had this sort of sad and serious look about him. It's like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders.
"But the way he looked after his grandmother and the way the grandmother would talk about him was very moving at the time too."
With the pull of family ties in Australia, Maria found herself at a crossroads.
"I was challenged at that time because I didn't particularly want to leave Ethiopia," she said.
"I loved my life. I loved what I did … I felt like I was achieving something."
Excelling at school and winning education awards, Haftu embraced every opportunity.
When he migrated to Australia in 2011, he took nothing for granted in his new environment.
Growing up without electricity, he became fascinated by anything electrical.
Maria bought Haftu toy cars that he would unpack and dismantle anything he could get his hands on.
"He literally pulled them apart with the motors, everything, and reassembled them," she said.
Having never seen a TV, he would sit on the couch for hours waiting for people to appear outside the screen.
"I still can't believe it. It was quite incredible that given his background, that he had this innate gift, something about electricity."
Maria said she's most proud of how Haftu has risen above adversity in his life.
"Where he's come from it was a rock hut, and they would sleep on the floor and the animals were next to them," she said.
But the culture shock wasn't easy; different foods, subtle racism, and grappling with Western values were also some of Haftu's greatest tests.
"My biggest challenges in assimilating to Australian culture were learning the English language and motion sickness while riding in cars," he said.
"I remember a time in my early days where the only way I would not throw up while Mum drove the car was if I sat in the front passenger seat and kept my eyes on the road in front."
It wasn't until he moved to Australia that Haftu realised his potential in athletics, having grown up in Tigray not knowing it was even a sport or profession.
"My PE teacher at school encouraged me to pursue it when he saw me run a cross-country race at the school oval," he said.
In that school race, he just kept running and didn't stop after the finish line, such was his determination for long-distance.
"Running helped me connect with my local community, just getting out and about and meeting like-minded people."
His talent soon attracted attention, including from Cathy Freeman, who became like a mentor and even attended his birthday party during his teens.
Training up to 190 kilometres a week under coach Adam Didyk, Haftu broke the Australian men's marathon record in 2 hours 6 minutes and 20 seconds, at the Gold Coast Marathon in July.
He became the first Australian winner in 20 years, smashed the course record and set a new Oceania record — all on his fourth attempt at the distance.
Didyk, who also coaches Australian women's marathon record holder Jessica Stenson, has guided Haftu remotely from Adelaide for two years.
"He's a fairly no-fuss kind of individual. He'll just take the work and get it done," Didyk said.
"He's obviously very capable when it comes to longer distances and feels confident running at the pace he needs to for the marathon, quite extraordinarily, mind you."
Didyk said Haftu's college experience and early development give him a strong understanding of racing, matched by mental strength.
"He backs himself. He has a lot of confidence in his ability, and he believes in what he can do.
"He's one of those no-fear athletes who sets a goal that looks pretty daunting, but it excites him more and more the scarier he makes it."
Haftu's talent comes as a package. Didyk said the physical ability, mental strength and calmness on race day is all put together to make good decisions, which led to the record performance at the Gold Coast Marathon.
"He's just a sensible, quite an intelligent young guy, and that all comes together to match what he can physically do as well," he said.
Haftu's calmness and patience at the Gold Coast reinforced Didyk's belief that he has potential.
"There's so many positives about Haftu that he can go and achieve what no Australian has before in the marathon," Didyk said.
"He's determined to be successful in international level … it was a strong close.
"what's probably most important to us now with seeing that is if he's going to be competitive at an Olympic or World Championships level, he's going to need that ability to be able to close fast over those last 10 kilometres.
"He's shown he's got the foundations to do something like that."
"Off the back of that, it started to give us the knowledge of him to go, that's the game he can play when he goes to a championship, he can put himself in there and he can put himself in a competitive situation late in the race.
"And that's ideally what we're aiming to do with him over the coming years."
From his humble beginnings in Ethiopia, Haftu's dreams of standing on an Olympic podium remain his driving force for motivation for the 2027 World Championships in China, and Los Angeles Olympics in 2028.
Australia hasn't had an Olympic marathon medallist since Lisa Ondieki won silver in 1988.
"I am very fortunate to have the support systems I need to help me to achieve my goals — something that not every athlete gets to have," he said.
"I want to continue to break records. After all, records are there to be broken."