LYNSEY Sharp pauses to compose a message of inspiration to Rangers on Old Firm day before agreeing that a variation of her handwritten 2014 Commonwealth Games motto 'Get out, Strong, Commit' would probably do the trick. Those were the words, scrawled across her knuckles in marker pen, which carried her from a hospital bed on a drip to an emotional silver medal at her home games two years ago but Sharp's preparations for her final run of the season, over a 500m stretch of track on the Gateshead Quayside for the Great North City Games, could be said to be equally draining. They will include trying to find a hotel TV in the city which is more preoccupied with derby day events in Glasgow than Manchester or alternatively ending her three-week long self-enforced Olympic ban from Twitter.

"The last time I did this race it started around noon, so I thought 'oh no, I am going to miss it [the Old Firm match]," Sharp told Herald Sport. "Then I checked last night and it was 3.45pm so I am going to have find somewhere in here where I can watch it on TV instead. It won't be easy, because there are so many big games on this weekend.

"Either way it is going to be draining," added the 26-year-old, who is expected at Ibrox for next week's match with Ross County. "I was going to just check Twitter but I have been off that for three weeks so I don't know what I am going to do. But I am sure I will hear one way or another. What is my message? I don't know, probably just belief. They are a great team. A lot of it is mental."

Sharp will have a fair few Tweets to catch up on if and when she does end that Twitter ban, not all of them connected to events surrounding her favourite football club. While she is no stranger to a social media storm, the days following the Rio Olympics have seen her at the epicentre of a worldwide sporting controversy.

Having finished a strong sixth, setting a Scottish record and running a personal best of 1:57.69secs, behind South Africa's Caster Semenya, Francine Niyonsaba of Burundi and Margaret Wambui of Kenya, in the 800m final, an emotional Sharp had railed about the difficulties of competing against hyperandrogenic athletes and the lack of action from the authorities on the subject. The Court of Arbitration for Sport overruled an IAAF ruling forcing Semenya, blessed with naturally high testosterone levels, to take hormone-suppressing medication, while rumours abound that Niyonsaba and Wambui also have unusually high levels of naturally-occurring testosterone in their bodies. "The public can see how difficult it is with the change of rule but all we can do is give it our best," she said, in her immediate post-match interview. While Sharp, who has written a thesis on the subject as part of her law studies, later released a statement clarifying her "tremendous amount of respect for Caster", that hasn't stopped her being branded anything from a 'sore loser' to a 'racist' on various forms of social media, as the target of a campaign called #HandsOffCaster.

While some would regard a ban from social media as a blessing, the point is that Sharp should be applauded, and not castigated, for speaking her mind on a subject which she knows rather more about than they do. If individuals like her don't speak up about these kinds of issues then nobody will.

"The problem is that the media, particularly in the UK, loves scandals and drama," said Sharp. "I don't speak out about things because I want to create that, I speak out about them because I am quite opinionated and if I don't speak out about them then nothing will ever change. Actually I have tried to speak out about doping and stuff less because it shouldn't be me who has to do that, there are people whose job it is to follow those problems, although obviously it affects me. But it is partly a distraction.

"Social media has become a place where people can say anything," she added. "Ten years ago you would never have been able to contact me unless you had my phone number or whatever - whereas nowadays anyone can say anything to anyone. It is brilliant in some respects, but in other respects it is horrendous. Most people who have been saying things like that are not fans of the sport, they just like to jump on people for certain things. But I have not missed it at all for the last three weeks."

While a medal from Rio was the ultimate goal, being pitted against such odds causes a different kind of rationalisation. "I personally was happy with how I did in Rio," said Sharp. "I know that I put in a good performance. I know I put in a good three rounds. I don't do the sport to get praise for it. I don't do it to get media attention. I do it because it is what I enjoy and it is fun. For me it was a success and what anyone else thinks about it doesn't matter.

"After the disappointment of Beijing last year [where she missed the final], I said that if I could learn from it then it would be worth the disappointment," she added. "I did learn from it: ultimately I wanted to get a medal in Rio but the minimum was making the final."

After today's last race of the season, Sharp is looking forward to a hard-earned "two, three or four weeks of nothing" and a holiday before starting to build herself back up for the 2017 indoor season. The clock is already ticking for next year's World Championships in London. The Lynsey Sharp story is set to run and run.