CHARLOTTE DALE will aim to enhance her growing reputation as Europe’s best young long distance runner at the European Junior Championships in Tampere, Finland, next week.

The 19-year-old European Junior Cross Country Champion, from Whitstable, recently returned from three weeks warm-weather training in France and is now putting the finishing touches to her 5,000m preparations.

“It went really well and I got some good training in. I was working mainly on my speed, but still kept up my miles as well,” said the Invicta East Kent athlete.

“The speed work is important because it is only a 5k race rather than 10k, which I would have liked.”

Dale returned to England to run as a pacemaker at the senior 10,000m world trials and AAA championships two weeks ago and clocked 16:29.2 for the first 5000m, which was inside the European under-23 championships B-standard and her fastest time of the year.

“It wasn’t as quick as my pb and I would have liked to have run quicker, but it was the night after I got back from France and I just went there to pacemake really,” she said.

Dale was due to compete again in a low-key 3,000m race in Richmond yesterday (Wednesday) and flies out to Finland on Monday.

She has already set a UK Junior record of 32:56.60 for 10,000m this season at the European Challenge in April.

And a repeat of her 5,000m personal best of 15:58.8 at Crystal Palace last year, which put her fourth on the UK junior all-time list, would push her into gold medal contention.

The fastest junior time in Europe this year was set by Ukrainian Yuliya Stashkiv with 16:13.04 in Kiev earlier this month.

Dale said: “ I feel in good shape, my training has been going well and am just ticking over now.

“I am not sure who is going to be in the race, although I think it will be similar to those in the European cross-country and I don’t think anyone is running under 16 minutes.

“I am not bothered about what time I run, but it would be nice to get a medal.”

The championships run from Thursday to Sunday next week (July 24-27), with Dale running Friday evening.