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Newcastle Herald
Newcastle Herald
National
Josh Callinan

Newcastle athlete prepared for back-to-back championships

DOUBLE UP: Merewether's Rose Davies at last year's Olympics in Tokyo. She now has the World Championships and Commonwealth Games in quick succession. Picture: AAP
Rose Davies

Rose Davies arrives at back-to-back athletics majors "in a good place" according to her Newcastle-based coach and former Olympian Scott Westcott.

The Merewether 22-year-old is poised to run three races in the space of three weeks, starting at the World Championships and followed by the Commonwealth Games.

Davies will contest the women's 5000-metre heats in the US state of Oregon on Thursday (9:25am, AEST) before tackling a distance double, both straight-out finals, in the English city of Birmingham with the 10,000m on August 3 and 5000m on August 7.

It comes 12 months after she made her Olympic debut in Tokyo.

Westcott, who ran the men's marathon for Australia at the Games in Rio in 2016, says Davies' aerobic fitness levels play a significant role in being able to handle the busy program.

"It just means when you get, in this case, three championship races in the space of three weeks, she's got the engine to do it," he said.

"We're asking Rose to do it over two [separate championships rather than one], with two 5ks and one 10k. Yes it's a big load but because she's aerobically fit, it still hurts in the events but she'll recover faster.

"The test will be how she psychologically bounces back each time, that's probably the larger unknown."

Westcott says Davies "responds well to altitude training" and has recently "spent the best part of two weeks at Mount Laguna" in the US.

During the last three months Davies, predominately based overseas, has recorded personal best times in three disciplines.

She stopped the clock at eight minutes, 49.86 seconds (8:49.86) for the 3000m in Morocco on June 5.

Her 10,000m mark of 31:18.54 was set in California on May 6.

Davies' 15:07.49 for the 5000m was produced at the national titles in Sydney on April 2.

"She's running really well at the moment, probably as good as when she ran a 10k PB at the beginning of May," Westcott said.

"She has the potential to run a 5k PB, but whether or not she gets the race to do that is a different matter. There's not much else she can do than turn up at the start line in really good shape."

Westcott says Davies, on debut at the World Championships, "is still very much serving her apprenticeship".

"It will be the same quality field from the Olympics so she's a long way off the pace in terms of being a medallist and probably not quite there in terms of being a solid contender for the final," he said.

"It's just helping her progress from that initial experience [Tokyo] last year."

Westcott also mentors Bendigo's Andy Buchanan, who will represent Australia in the men's marathon at the Commonwealth Games.

Buchanan, 31, recorded a time of 2:12:23 in his maiden marathon in Germany in April.

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