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Raise Your Game: We're at the European Team Championships in Portugal (2009) and that was a real race out there. That was down to some real hard guts. Can you talk us through it?

Nick McCormick: I was watching it on TV yesterday and it was a bit different to what we're used to because we had to sprint in the first kilometre of the race and sprint the last 200 metres. A lot of athletes suffered early on because it's so hot and we were sprinting when normally we're not used to it. From that point of view it was very difficult.

For a 3000m or 5000m runner, like me, being involved in a race like that in the early season helps because it gets you used to the bumping, barging and using the arms a bit. It's something that I think a lot of European or world athletes aren't used to these days. We're so used to having pace makers and a very strung out race, where it's just a case of running as hard as you can, but getting bumped around was exactly what I needed.

RYG: How important is mental attitude and how do you strengthen it?

NM: I ask myself the same question all the time. You can do all the physical work, but it's getting to the point now where athletics is more than 50% mental, it's more like 70-80% mental.

I see myself as an equally good athlete to the guy that won the race, the Spaniard Jesús España. He's a nice guy, but he's used to winning. I've got to learn be a winner. He won the European 5000m in 2006 and he really hasn't looked back. He's finished in medal positions in the last few championships and that's something that I aspire to do.

He's one person that I look up to because he's such a consistent runner. He's been a sub 13:15 5000m runner for the last 10 years and I need to be able to do that. He's a great person to follow.

RYG: It's also great fun isn't it? You've got great team camaraderie.

NM: I love it. This championship has been the best I've been to because I've got on so well with so many of the athletes. I missed the Olympics and the World Championships so I started to miss hanging around with some of these athletes.

You meet great athletes, like Helen Clitheroe at one end of the range, who's the world record holder at 35 for the steeplechase, and at the other end we've got Steph Twell who's an amazing young athlete. There's obviously Mo Farah and people like us coming through and we've got to work really hard together as a team. We've got to think of it as teamwork, bond together and hopefully we can start to win some medals for Great Britain in the next few years.

RYG: For young people who want to follow in your footsteps, what the best advice you could give them?

NM: I think it's about having the right attitude. It's not doing something for two weeks and thinking that you could be a very good runner. You have to dedicate your life to it. With all the ups and downs you have to be very focused and be able to have the confidence to know that after eight to ten years you're going to succeed and you might get a medal at a championship.

That's what we're all aspiring to on the British endurance team now. We're trying to win medals for Great Britain. I think that's the main thing. You've got to look at a long term plan, like eight to ten years. In this day and age we're used to watching Pop Idol and X Factor, but the world's not like that. It's a ten year plan!