Turnbull is hoping to win a place in the World Championships

Gareth Turnbull is hopeful that his personal best performance over the weekend could earn him some Grand Prix starts in the coming weeks.

Turnbull clocked a personal best time of three minutes 36.60 seconds to win the 1500 metres at a permit meeting in Cuxhaven, northern Germany.

The time was one and a half seconds better than his previous best and inside the 'B' qualifying time for the Championships to be held in Paris in August.

Turnbull is scheduled to run over 800m at the North Down Games on 1 August.

However he will have to revise his plan to run on home soil if he earns an invite to the Grand Prix meeting in Heusden-Zolder in Belgium a day later.

There is also a possibility that he could get an invite into the DN Galan Grand Prix in Stockholm on 5 August - a meeting which takes place only four days before the start of the Irish Championships.

"Hopefully my personal best will open a few doors for me although I'm not getting too excited," said Turnbull.

We won't have a lot of time to get Olympic qualifying marks next season Gareth Turnbull

"It was nice to get the World Championship 'B' standard in the bag which was the plan in Germany.

"It was only my fourth race of the season so I'm still feeling relatively fresh".

Turnbull went through his opening 800m in Cuxhaven in 1.55 and feels that there is the possibility of running around two seconds faster before the end of the season.

Turnbull needs to find 1.70 seconds to equal the 'A' standard which would guarantee selection for the Paris championships.

"I think it would be possible to go through 800m in 1.54 and then run a bit faster between 800m and 1200m than we did in Germany when things slowed a bit".

Turnbull hopes to do plenty of racing before the end of the season as he points out that the cut-off point for Olympic selection next year will be at the end of June.