LAURA Muir will officially open her outdoor athletics season at the IAAF World Challenge-Hengelo in the Netherlands today.
The 21-year-old will compete over 1500m as she continues her preparations for the 2014 Commonwealth Games.
Muir is yet to decide whether her key focus will be the 800m or 1500m, having excelled at both distances during the indoor season.
"They are pretty even at the moment," she said. "I'm racing 1500m this weekend and hoping to do an 800m a week or so afterwards. I will only race five times before the Commonwealth Games. There's the British Trials at the end of June, then I'll be doing the 800m at the Diamond League at Hampden in July then one more 1500m after that."
Muir, who hails from Milnathort in Kinross-shire, was among the first athletes to be named for Team Scotland when she was selected for the 1500m last September. Fresh from warm-weather training camps in California and Spain, she said she was feeling in good shape.
"I've been really lucky and not had any problems at all," she says. "I get great support from sportscotland institute of sport and Scottish Athletics which means I can get a massage every week. If there has been even the tiniest niggle, I can phone up the physio and be in there the next day. I've been on full training for three or four months now without any disruptions."
Having passed her third-year veterinary exams at the University of Glasgow with flying colours - "I got all As so I'm chuffed," Muir said - she can now turn her full attention to preparing for the Games. That said, those first real pre-Glasgow 2014 butterflies are yet to flutter.
"I've not had too much chance to think about it all," she says. "It's strange because it's one of those things which has been coming up for so long but you never think it's going to arrive. I'm excited but I try not to dwell on it too much. I'm looking forward to getting racing first."
However, the reminders, she concedes, are becoming ever more frequent and high profile. "Around Glasgow on pretty much every lamp-post there is a poster for the Games," laughs Muir. "I saw the Big G installation in George Square when I was doing a bit of shopping the other day so I got a photo of that."
Susan Swarbrick
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