All the latest news from World champion Jana Rawlinson who has been training in California and is now deciding where her first race should be...
"I’d never been to Disneyland.
"I’ve been to America several times, but I hadn’t been to Disneyland until this time. We took Cor, and he was just all over Winnie the Pooh. He wouldn’t let him go.
Training has been going well, but I’m not quite as advanced as I’d like to be. So we’re still undecided about my first race. There’s still a good chance it will be in New York; if not, it will be in Turin on June 6.
My toe has been a bit up and down. It’s fine now and I haven’t missed a training session. In terms of where I am, it is similar to this time last year, and last year worked out pretty well.
New York or Turin, if I ran 55.5 first-up, I'd be quite pleased. If I run faster, then I'm in better shape than the same time last year; and if I'm in better shape than last year . . . well last year went pretty well, I guess.
We’ve been training at the University of California track in Irvine. A lot of British athletes have been here. Christine Ohuruogu is one. It’s been inspiring having them around. In Australia, usually it’s pretty much just me and the track.
Christine's coach, Lloyd Cowan, has been great. One day at the track, when my body was hurting and I was struggling, he just said: ‘Don’t worry. There's three and a half months to go. Last year you did it with three months’ training. So stop worrying about it. When you get to the line you're strong mentally.’
With him and Chris, it’s just great having some very positive people around you.
The Brits come out here when it’s too cold in Europe and head back as soon as the weather starts to pick up there. So they’ve just packed up, while we’ve got about two more weeks.
I saw Barack Obama turned up at the Oregon twilight meeting last week. That would have been awesome. We haven’t got that caught up in the election here (note: the California primaries were earlier in the primary schedule). Chris is pretty keen, he follows the campaign on telly.
There’s not much athletics on television, though the Penn Relays were all over the place. And you see advertisements for the 8th of the 8th ’08 (the day of the Olympic opening ceremony) all the time.
It’s getting to the end of our time here. We train on the local university track at Irvine. Now that the British have gone back there’s no-one there but locals.
They’re tearing the track up to re-surface it. They’re doing another six or seven around here at the same time. We’ll be training on a tiny little track out the back of nowhere. Low-key, working hard.
Then it’s into racing. My toe’s fine now, but my feet are pretty itchy."
Jana