Last Sunday she ran 15:23

Last Sunday she ran 15:23.28 at the World Championship trials in Birmingham. “I could not believe it,” she said, recalling her reaction as she crossed the line and glanced at the trackside clock. “I thought, ‘Oh no! I’ve done it again’.” The qualifying time for Edmonton has been raised to 15min 22sec. In 12 months Yelling has improved by 13 seconds, yet still the 27-year-old maths teacher remains fractionally short of the global championship standard “Short by 1.28 seconds,” she said. “So close and yet so far.”Not that Edmonton is completely beyond her reach.

The 5,000m tonight is her last chance to make up for lost time. The selection deadline is 23 July: tomorrow.Those in the sold-out 17,000 Crystal Palace crowd who saw her spirited chase against the clock in Birmingham will be yelling for Yelling to beat it tonight. It was, by some distance, the most gutsy performance of the AAA Championships.Yelling – a native of Yeovil but a resident of Marlow, where she works at Sir William Borlase School – finished second in the race, seven seconds behind Jo Pavey. But it was Yelling who made the race, going all out from the front with nine laps to go. She might not have beaten Pavey, a finalist in Sydney, but she did take the scalp of Kathy Butler. The European Cup 3,000m winner finished 10 seconds behind her.The question is how much such a sterling effort has taken out of Yelling. “My legs feel all right at the moment,” she reported after a Friday- morning training run “It depends how they feel on the day.

If they are all right I am sure that I can get that second and a bit. I am a bit scared of going off too quick, because it’s a really good race and everyone will just be so much quicker than I am I am just scared, to be honest. It’s such a world-class field.”Indeed it is, even without Deratu Tulu. The Ethiopian who won the Olympic 10,000m title in Sydney and who emerged victorious from the ?te women’s field at the London Marathon in April has been barred from competing by her government. She has been ordered to attend a training camp in Addis Ababa before heading to Edmon- ton, instead of carrying through her declared intention to attack Jiang Bo’s world- record time of 14min 28.09sec.There is still likely to be a record attempt, though.