Garland broke his personal best by quarter of a second

Guernsey athlete Dale Garland says he can go quicker still in his favoured track event, the 400 metre hurdles.

The Olympic runner set a new personal best of 49.54 seconds as he won the event at the UK Challenge Final in Cardiff on Saturday.

He broke his two-year-old record by exactly a quarter of a second.

"I had a good race in terms of stride patterns etc. but it was a fairly windy day... there's definitely room for improvement," Garland said.

I knew my pure speed was the best it's ever been Dale Garland

"I knew there was a good performance there it was just trying to bring it out and luckily I managed to do that in the final," he said.

"I went out the Island Games and ran a really good relay split time for the 4x4... in training I've been doing some good 100m times so I knew my pure speed was the best it's ever been."

"Unfortunately this season for some reason I haven't really been able to put that speed into the hurdles race and carry off the whole race well," he said.

"Luckily at the weekend it all came good and I managed to put that speed to good use and actually perform well."

The Challenge Final is open to the top eight UK athletes from the last year based on at least four performances in a single discipline across the period.

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