INVERCLYDE Athletic Club’s Jonny Glen has been selected to run for Great Britain and Northern Ireland in the European cross country championships in Bulgaria.

It follows a tremendous performance at the UK cross country trial in Liverpool at the weekend.

Jonny, 18, will run in the under-20 race on 14 December.

The apprentice electrician said today: “‘I feel as if I was a bit of late developer, and there were times a few years back when I wasn’t even competitive in terms of Scottish titles.

“I remember 2011 in particular, and I wasn’t happy that I couldn’t finish higher up or get better times.

“But I made a big breakthrough the following year both in cross country and on the track, and hard work in training began to pay-off. Maybe it proves you don’t necessarily need to win everything going at under-13 and under-15 level to do well at a later stage.

“I’ve had fantastic support from my parents, Karen and Morris, over the years, a great training group at Inverclyde AC and my coaches, Ian Cameron and Mark Pollard.” Jonny added: “My main aim will be to try and justify my selection — and that means trying to beat at least one of the other GB athletes out there. I’ve looked at past races and the Brits usually do pretty well so, if I could do that, it would probably be a decent performance.

“It does feel like winning the vest is the result of years of hard work, but I also hope it is the start of something. I want to win one as a senior athlete in a few years.”