THE pains in the chest were certainly abnormal, Jo Moultrie immediately sensed, well above the inconvenience of an occasional stitch. Tears bubbled as she limped off the track at last February’s UK Indoor Championships in Sheffield but it was the subsequent fears that debilitated most.

“I raced again a few weeks later but it got worse,” she recounts. “My heart rate was really high and it wouldn’t come down. They thought it might be my asthma and they tweaked the medication. But then they found an irregular heartbeat.”

At times like these, long-term health assumes greater importance than short-term fitness. For the Glaswegian however, an abundance of tests never quite detected the root cause of her problem. A virus perhaps. Recuperation proved the most effective medicine. Yet, almost 12 months on, and with the clearance to accelerate once more, the 25-year-old will attempt to make up for lost time when she takes her place in the British team at next Saturday’s Great Edinburgh XC.

Seven winters have passed since her first, and hitherto only, international outing at the 2009 European Junior Championships in Serbia when she finished a creditable seventh in the 1500 metres. The timing is immaculate, the boost welcome. Performing well on the cross-country circuit in recent weeks, Moultrie will take her place alongside Mo Farah in a home squad that will duel with Team Europe and the USA in Holyrood Park in the annual showpiece in the mud.

The Scot, who had a lengthy stint on scholarship at the University of New Mexico, felt she was approaching prime shape when the season commenced. “But I haven’t done XC in the UK for about five years now and it’s even been a few years since I did it in the States,” she confirms. “I hadn’t also run over 8k so I wasn’t expecting things to go so well at the Euro trials in Liverpool. I had a poor second lap and lost the group but then I started picking them up which was surprising. I just came through which was great.”

As an Olympic year begins, it has afforded her the luxury of pondering whether Rio might be a realistic goal. Slotting in training amid her job as a co-ordinator for Glasgow Athletics Association, Moultrie and her coach Bill Parker will swiftly move from heavy terrain to indoors and a potential assault on March’s world championships in Portland over 3000m.

From there, few boundaries will be set in stone. “I’d like to start pushing towards 5000m and moving up,” she revealed. “It will be new. I won’t put targets on it yet. But I think it can go well. I’ve been thinking about it for the last few years and when I did longer training in the USA, it helped my shorter distances.

“I was stuck in 2014 because I had one 1500m standard for the Commonwealth Games so I had to go for that. And then last summer, I wasn’t able to compete. So now this year, it feels like the time to put it into practice.”