• London Olympics 2012

Injury will not restrict Ennis' Olympic build-up

Jessica Ennis missed the 2008 Beijing Olympics © Getty Images

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Jessica Ennis insists her London 2012 preparations have not been too badly affected by the injury layoff that forced her to miss the European Indoor Championships.

Ennis admits she would have loved to have competed in the Euros last month, but an ankle problem prevented her from running for seven weeks. Now she is targeting a return to action, starting with the Powerade ION4 Great City Games in Manchester on May 15.

The ultimate goal for this year is to be fully prepared for the World Championships, which start on August 27 in Daegu. There she will attempt to defend her world heptathlon title, and the Sheffield athlete is convinced the injury layoff will not have an adverse effect.

"I've had to change and back off a lot of training in the past few weeks," Ennis told Press Association Sport. "I wasn't able to run for about seven weeks, so I've had to miss a lot of high impact work and hurdling and jumping. Then I had to start building back into full training. Obviously it's not ideal preparation.

"I planned to go to the European indoors and was really looking forward to that. [But] looking back now I'm really glad I made that choice to not go because I think it would have made it a lot worse.

"I would loved to have not missed that amount of training, but I'm just starting back into running sessions now. I'm not actually that far behind. I was in such good shape for the indoors and you don't lose that that quickly. Although I lost a little bit, I think it'll come back quite quickly."

Ennis also confessed she now trains with the expectation of getting injured, following the problem that kept her out of the Beijing Olympics. Fear of a repeat ahead of London 2012 always exists, but Great Britain's leading athlete is ready to deal with the pressures.

"Before the 2008 injury I viewed myself as such a lucky person, never really getting injured, and now I know it's kind of inevitable. I'm getting that little bit older and you do pick up injuries and the event I do is very stressful on the body.

"I know that between now and the Olympics there are going to be injuries, there are going to be setbacks. It's not ever going to be easy to make an Olympics or to try and contend for a gold medal at an Olympics, so I'm expecting a tough time. It's going to be difficult but I think having an injury before the last Olympics has got me ready for that."

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