British number one Andy Baddeley continued his excellent recent form with a personal best run at the Reebok Boston Indoor Games.
Baddeley followed up a sub-four minute indoor mile in New York last weekend with a seven minutes 45.10 seconds run over 3,000 metres that was good enough to earn him third place behind Australian race winner Craig Mottram and Ethiopia's Markos Geneti.
Mottram clocked 7:34.50 to break Haile Gebrselassie's US all-comers record, and his own Australian national record but Baddeley was just as pleased with his run, the leading European mark so far this year, and the athletes he left in his wake, including New Zealand's Commonwealth 1500m champion Nick Willis and Canadian record holder Kevin Sullivan.
The only Britons to have run the indoor 3000m faster are UK record holder John Mayock (7:41.09 in 2002) and Rob Denmark (7:43.90 in 1991) and Baddeley said: "I'm really pleased with the time and really pleased with the scalps I've taken and it's a big PB as well and not that far off the British record."
Baddeley had run on the shoulders of pace-setter Moise Joseph, Mottram and Willis as they ran quickfire 400m splits of 61 seconds.
When Joseph dropped out, Mottram kicked on and the field became strung out but Baddeley stayed in third with Willis in between him and the leader.
When Willis began to fade, Baddeley was joined by Geneti who then attempted to chase down the Australian, eventually finishing second in 7:41.81 with Baddeley third less than four second later.
"I think I ran it the hard way," Baddeley said.
"If I had just gone 62s then I think I could have gone faster at the end and closed a little bit quicker but because we went pretty much with 61s, I was 4:04 for the mile and I was paying for it in the later stages.
"I could see Nick Willis fading and that kept me going a little bit but I was definitely suffering for the last 800 metres.
"I didn't mind it being strung out, it was just the surging pace for the first mile. One second (quicker) for every 400 metres makes a big difference when you're running close to your limit.
"So I'm pleased to have run that fast doing it that way."
Now Baddeley flies to Melbourne, Australia, for an altitude training camp at Falls Creek with Mottram, who will join him next weekend after competing in the Wanamaker Mile against Bernard Lagat in Madison Square Garden, New York.
"Craig will join me next weekend," Baddeley said.
"I'll be eight weeks there, and I'll race an outdoor 1500 in Melbourne while on February 21 before coming back to the UK on March 22.
"So it's just a lot of hard training with one race to see how I'm going."
Baddeley said he was determined to keep all thoughts of the Beijing Olympics in August at the back of his mind.
"I've been asked a lot about it but to me it's a long way off and I've got a lot of preparation to do first.
"The preparation I'm doing at the moment is going really well so if I keep my head down, stay in one piece and keep going like this then hopefully I'll be all right."
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