Today, however, will be different for Kerr. There will, he is certain, be a bucketload of tension surging through his body.

This afternoon, the 29-year-old from Edinburgh will deliver the match ball at Murrayfield Stadium ahead of Scotland taking on the All Blacks. With a rugby international differing significantly from a running track, where he feels most at home, he anticipates his emotions will be overflowing.

And with one of Kerr’s earliest dreams being to play rugby for Scotland, it comes as little surprise that he will feel somewhat overwhelmed during his walk onto the pitch.

“As a kid, I was at in the stands at Murrayfield a lot and I want to be running out there myself to play for Scotland one day. But I was nowhere near good enough to do it,” says Kerr, who has made the trip over from his home in New Mexico to accept the invite to appear today.

“This is one of those bucket list moments that I'm going to remember for the rest of my life.

“People ask me ‘do you get nervous walking into a stadium?’ And I’m alway like if I'm going to have 67,000 people watch me do something, I better be running. So I will be nervous for this.

“I’m very honoured to be asked and it'll be a very special day.”

Kerr is more at home on a running track than a rugby pitch (Image: Getty Images)

And as well as enjoying the experience this afternoon, Kerr, who also spent time with the Scotland squad and coaching team yesterday, will be on the lookout for any tips and tricks he can transfer from rugby into his own training.

“I'm forever stealing stuff from other sports,” he admits.

“I'm too analytical to not look at the mental approach in different sports, the physical approach, nutritionally what they do, sleep - all of it. Obviously, there's a huge difference between running and rugby but there's so much that transfers from sport to sport and so I'm here to learn from these guys.”

This invite to Murrayfield is one of many opportunities that have come Kerr’s way at the end of a quite spectacular season for the Scot.

Having begun 2026 by becoming world indoor champion over 3000m, he went on to set a new world mile record, win gold at the Commonwealth Games and then, finally, become World Ultimate Champion in his final race of the year. His success has seen a wealth of opportunities, both within and outwith athletics, come his way but most, he stresses, are met with a forceful no. However, the fact he felt this invite to Murrayfield was worth travelling from the US to fulfil illustrates just how much Kerr values this chance.

"There's a lot of random stuff that comes my way but you always have to keep the main thing - my running - the main thing," he says.

“It’s about making sure that I’m doing things for the right reasons, but also enjoying it all the way through.

“I’ve not been asked to do Strictly, not that I know of anyway, and if I was, it’d be a no from me right now.

“But this invite to Murrayfield only needed a very short conversation before I said yes.”

With Kerr’s season having ended eight weeks ago, he’s had the opportunity to reflect upon his remarkable season, the highlight of which was, he says, running 3 minutes 42.66 seconds at the London Diamond League to set a new world mile record, breaking the previous record which had stood since 1999. And within two weeks of that world record run, he’d added his first Commonwealth Games title to his collection by winning the Commonwealth mile on home soil at Glasgow 2026.

(Image: Adam Davy/PA Wire)

It was, he says now he’s had time to recover from his summer, a frantic spell but one that couldn’t have worked out any better.

“I think I dealt with adversity really well this year, and the outcomes were all exactly how they needed to be,” he says.

“London was the high point, for sure.

And then to go and run a tactical mile at Glasgow 2026 and win, it worked out really well.

“It didn't feel special in the two weeks between the world record and Commonwealth Games - it felt like ‘f*** me this is a lot’. After London, I wanted to enjoy it with everyone that helped me but I was like, okay, I’m still in this grind so I can't relax yet.

“The thing with the Commonwealth Games was how many times am I going to be able to compete in Scotland in front of a home crowd? Possibly never again. And arriving in Glasgow after London, you can't lose your first mile after setting the world record so there was the added pressure of that. But it all worked out very well.”

While Kerr’s racing is over for the year, the remaining two months of 2026 will be filled with awards ceremonies, with nominations rightly flowing-in for Kerr.

Later this month, he will find out if he will be crowned World Athletics’ Male Athlete of the Year and win World Athletics’ Moment of the Year for his world record run. And, perhaps most notably for British sports fans, Kerr is one of the front-runners to triumph at BBC Sports Personality of the Year.

(Image: Adam Davy)

While the Scot is far from fixated on garnering plaudits for his exploits, he admits he does place considerable importance upon these awards, however fickle the decision-making process of, particularly SPOTY, can be.

“Yeah, I do actually value winning awards, he says.

“I think it's an indication of how well I've done to represent and show-off my sport. I feel like if I’m not up for these awards, or if I'm not winning them, then I've got more to do on my side.

“I mean, SPOTY is not mine to have and from a sporting standpoint, I couldn’t have done any more but it's not just who's the best sportsperson in the UK who wins - it comes with nuances.

“At SPOTY, I'm surrounded by some really big sports and some really big sporting stars and so I have to give respect to that. But I'm doing everything I can to be a good role model in my own sport.”