You can be strong and true to yourself without being rude or loud.

Doing the long endurance stuff seems to have given me the strength to sustain the speed. I think my body is just a lot stronger (thanks to the marathon)... By increasing the long runs, I found that does not take anything away from the speed but increases the strength on the track.

I'm confident of what I have to achieve in the buildup to London 2012.

I set myself some specific goals, but the key one is just getting myself into as good a shape as possible for one day this year: the Olympic marathon.

I was glad I did a year abroad, because it helped me as an athlete and as a person. That took me out of my comfort zone. Watching the French athletes train in the Pyrenees made me realise what I had to do to become a top athlete.

I am not driven by any bitterness by what happened in Athens. I learnt a lot of lessons from it and probably came through it a stronger person in the end. There have been a lot of near misses, and that's taught me to keep persevering and that there is a chance it can come right.

There's always going to be somebody who takes a dislike to you and you can't waste time worrying about it.