Derek Hawkins knows he has a mountain to climb if he wants a marathon medal at the Commonwealth Games.
Or two. Or maybe three. "I'm going to train at altitude over in Colorado before doing the same thing in France," he said of his planned preparation. "That's going to be a big thing in making sure I'm ready for Glasgow."
The 23-year-old begins his campaign in earnest on Sunday at a race in Groet, the Netherlands, after appearing yesterday at the launch of this year's Bupa Great Edinburgh Run - now a 10-mile event rather than a 10k, which takes place on April 27.
His focus will remain on the roads rather than a diversion to the track, he says, and ambitions should not be downplayed. "It all depends how training goes and the conditions on the day," Hawkins said. "It could be a scorching hot day in July or raining hard. I definitely hope it's the second option. I said when I was selected that my target is a top-eight finish. If everything goes well, I think that's achievable. But it also depends who comes from Africa to compete."
The top-ranked Scotsman in the field so far added: "I had incredible support in the London Marathon in 2012. It was amazing to hear that around the whole 26 miles. But I expect Glasgow to be 10 times louder than everything I've experienced."
Meanwhile, Gillian Cooke says she is ready to make it a three-way rivalry for Scottish long jump supremacy at this weekend's world indoor championship trials in Sheffield.
The ex-bobsleigh world champion earned a berth in the field by leaping 6.08m in Glasgow last weekend on her return to the sport. Now, she will do battle with Sarah Warnock and Jade Nimmo, with all three closely matched. But the oldest of the trio believes it can spark all of them on.
"Before I came along, there was Ruth Irvine going over six metres," Cooke said. "Then I came in, going further, and then when I went to bobsleigh, Jade and Sarah started to come through. It's really nice to have that domestic rivalry."
Laura Muir has signalled her intention to look for an 800m berth at the World Indoor Championships in Sopot, Poland, next month after withdrawing from the 1500m in the trials in favour of the shorter event.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article