Eurostar to Paris, relax, walk around, carry liquids… what more could you ask for? Door to door in well under 4 hours makes for an easy journey, and arriving to find that the hotel is less than 200m from the Eiffel Tower, and similarly close to the Seine is a massive bonus.

I travelled to Paris for the Diamond League meeting at the spectacular Stade de France, which had sold 50,000 tickets to watch me (and Usain Bolt) run. It also gave me an opportunity to practice my French, which led to an interesting chat with a taxi driver. My French turned out to be better than his driving, but I’m still in one piece…

The atmosphere at the race itself was spectacular and it was great to get out there and compete in the noise ad excitement. There were a lot of guys in the race (19), and so it was chaos in the first 100m, but everyone miraculously stayed upright. The pace wasn’t consistent, and I was still in touch coming into the third lap, but as the field hit 500m to go, I felt a bit lacking in 1500m racing and didn’t quite manage to hang on. I came home in a solid season’s best 3.36.48, but short of the World Championship A standard of 3.35.00. This left me motivated to get out and do some more races, afterall it is my job!