Pressing problems are crowding Susan Smith's mind as she approaches her toughest assignment of the season in the final of the European 400 metres hurdles championship this evening.
Publicly, Smith is pronouncing herself fully recovered from her ordeal on Wednesday, when she suffered badly in winning the third of three semi-finals.
Privately, she can only be troubled as she reflects on the pain and discomfort of those final, agonising 75 metres when she had to reach into the last of her reserves of strength to hold off the challenge of the Russian, Anna Knoroz.
However, to suggest that Smith, who required a long time to recover, was the only casualty in the oppressive heat in the Nepstadion, would be to overlook the dilemma of the German woman, Silvia Rieger.
Driven to the outer limits of endurance in beating one of the championship favourites, Tatyana Tereshchuk, she was so distressed that she was unable to leave the track for several minutes.
Of those believed to be equipped to win the title, only Ionela Tirlea emerged relatively unscathed, and it suggests that the Romanian is now better placed than ever to succeed.
Tereshchuk was generally regarded as the biggest threat to Tirlea but the 29-year-old Ukrainian appeared to be on full throttle when being edged out by Rieger in the semi-finals.
No less than Smith, Rieger will now be troubled by the events of Wednesday but in the case of the Irish woman, there is a general belief that she has the mental strength to cope. If she succeeds in that challenge, there is, indeed, reason for hope that she will take a medal. Elsewhere on today's programme, Irish interest will focus on the heats of the men's 800m in which the two UCD runners, David Matthews and James Nolan will be joined by 21year-old James McIlroy.
McIlroy, an athlete who struggled to break two minutes for the event last season, has since reduced his career best figures to 1:45.32 and with the Italian, Giuseppe D'Urso, the only runner to have bested McIlroy's time this season, the Larne man should progress.
Matthews, the most experienced member of the trio, has seen his season fragmented by injury problems and it remains to be seen how that affects his chances of survival in a heat in which Andre Bucher (Switzerland) and Nathan Kahan (Belgium) will be expected to fill the first two places.
Nolan, the national champion - after outpacing Matthews in a thrilling struggle at Santry - is fourth fastest of eight in the last heat and must now produce significant improvement to survive.
With Sonia O'Sullivan currently concentrating on the longer distance events, Sinead Delahunty will be Ireland's only representative in the semi-finals of the women's 1,500m championship.
Her form in recent months has not been impressive and with just four to qualify from a field of nine, she has some hard running to do to stay with such as Romaina's Violeta Szekely, Olga Nelyubova of Russia and Andrea Suldesova of the Czech Republic in a race sure to be dominated by the Olympic champion, Svetlana Masterkova of Russia.
In the javelin, Terry McHugh will be hoping to rediscover the form he showed when these championships were last held in Helsinki in 1994. On that occasion he finished seventh and a similar placing now, would be regarded as highly satisfactory.
Peter Coghlan's seasonal best of 13.87 secs makes him the slowest of eight starters in his heat of the 110m hurdles today and in the women's hammer, Olivia Kelleher and Nicola Coffey have also to make significant improvement if they are to be fully competitive.
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