WHAT better way to sign off from a career in athletics than with gold for Scotland in the Gold Coast? Eilidh Doyle has an inkling that her time to get out of athletics and start a family will come when the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Australia are out the way. Having said that, the 400m hurdler still loves her day job so much that the statement is riddled with some serious get out clauses of its own.

The 29-year-old's long-term coach Malcolm Arnold retires at the end of this season, but has been persuaded to continue with his coaching duties a while longer. Doyle, who married her husband Brian in October, hankers to return to Scotland from her training base at the University of Bath as soon as her athletic career is over but she has plenty to do in the meantime - not least of which is chasing an Olympic medal in Rio. Over the past few weeks she has been consistently finishing around two seconds inside the Olympic 'A' qualifying standard, and now requires just a top two finish in the British trials to rubber stamp her place. Only four athletes in the world have run quicker over the hurdles this season so it should be a formality. If anything in the hurdles ever is.

"As soon as I'm finished I'm back up the road to Scotland," said Doyle. "My coach is going to retire at the end of the season although he is going to stay on and coach me. He will probably help me out until 2018 so I am thinking probably Commonwealth Games in the Gold Coast, I am going to try to hold on for that. It is a great place and it is a great chance to run for Scotland.

"But I wouldn't want to say that for definite just now, because as soon as you say that it all becomes a huge thing," she added. "I do feel very fortunate, I love doing this for job, and the way I feel right now, I don't want to stop. The only reason I would stop is to start a family, so I think at some point I will have to consciously say right, that's enough."

While a ten-year career for a Barclays Premier League footballer can make you a multi-millionaire these days, Doyle already has one real world career behind her and quite fancies utilising those skills again. Having graduated with a degree in Physical Education from Edinburgh University, she was formerly a full-time PE teacher at Perth Grammar School before she gave athletics her full focus. She still feels an affinity with put-upon public sector workers and can see herself returning to education soon enough.

"I will definitely go back to it in some form," said Doyle. "I loved my job when I did it but I always saw it as a stepping stone to my athletics and knew I would become a full time athlete at some point. But I would definitely would like to do go back to doing something within schools and education. It sounds really cheesy and cliched but it is nice to give something back. I always did quite a lot of school visits, going back to the school I worked at and the school I went to. I have done talks for the Scottish PE conference too.

"The good thing just now is that there are different role models coming through," she added. "It is brilliant that people want to be Jessica Ennis now rather than just Katie Price or something like that."

Being a role model in athletics right now includes attempting to rise above the doping concerns which bedevil the sport at every turn. Bulgarian athlete Vania Stambolova returned from a drugs ban only to crash out of the Scot's heat at London 2012, and eventual gold was won by a Russian athlete, Natalia Antyukh, but Doyle reckons the technical components of the hurdles mitigate against the efficiency of performance-enhancing drugs.

"There are always athletes that you are suspicious about but none you know doped," said Doyle. "I don't think I have ever been directly affected - I don't think I have ever lost out on a medal because of a drugs cheat although that is maybe me being very naive. With the hurdles you need to have a level of technique to get away with it. I don't think it is as bad in my event.

"I don't think you can obsess about things like that," she added. "I think if you did you would lose the love. I love athletics and loved it before I even did it. I love watching people perform well and would hate to think 'he or she is cheating'. You would end up suspecting everybody. When all the IAAF stuff came out, that was the really upsetting stuff, because they are meant to be the good guys. But come the Olympics I am just going to switch off to it. Although obviously if someone comes out from nowhere and smashes my event it could be a bit disheartening ..."