EMMA Davies heads off to the land of fjords today intent on getting last weekend's "rubbish" run out of her system.

Andover AC's 20-year-old Commonwealth Games semi-finalist has an 800 metres race lined up in Norway tomorrow and can only hope to improve on her poor showing in the Loughborough International where she faded away to fifth place in a below-par 2.09.11.

Davies, girlfriend of European and Commonwealth 400m king Iwan Thomas, broke off from her exams at Southampton Institute to compete at Loughborough and believes that tiredness took its toll.

"I felt rubbish from the start of the race," she said. "Even when I was warming up it felt more like warming down. I couldn't wake myself up." Davies' personal best of 2.02.3 clocked in Kuala Lumpur last September serves as a qualifying time for the World Student Games to be staged in Palma, Majorca from July 9-13.

However, she will need to pull another decent run out of the bag to achieve this year's ultimate ambition of making the European Under-23 Championships in Gothenburg, Sweden, for which the qualifying standard is 2.05.50.

Southampton-based Tim O'Dell is also Scandinavia-bound this weekend with 400m dates in Sweden and Norway.

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