Lady luck has not been smiling on Glasgow’s Lee McConnell this season, but the 400m sprinter is hoping one last throw of the dice will pay off at the World Championships next week.

Injury brought McConnell’s excellent start to the season to a grinding halt in June and cost her a potential 400m individual place in the World Championships team bound for Berlin.

The 30-year-old clocked a season’s best 51.52 seconds – two hundredths of a second short of the qualifying ‘A’ standard for Berlin – at the start of June, but suffered a hamstring injury just days later and is yet to fully recover.

In a desperate bid to seize the second 400m spot on the British team behind defending champion and Olympic gold medallist Christine Ohuruogu, McConnell returned to action at the Aviva London Grand Prix at the end of last month.

McConnell caught the eye of the selectors at Crystal Palace, but for all the wrong reasons – labouring home in a pedestrian 52.54 secs – a full second slower than 2007 silver medallist Nicola Sanders, who subsequently got the nod for the second individual spot.

And while McConnell admitted her injury is still yet to fully heal, the two-time World Championship relay bronze medallist is determined to ensure she doesn’t leave the German capital empty-handed.

“It was a real struggle and I was really disappointed not to get the individual spot,” said McConnell, who is currently at an Aviva-funded warm-weather training camp in Monte Gordo. “And I’m still pretty disappointed about it to be honest.

“You work so hard all year in training and then you pick up an injury and it can ruin the season. But I’ve still got the relay and I’m determined to salvage something.

“I‘m just having to accept the decision of the selectors at the moment but it’s tough and it would make it that much harder to go into winter training if we don’t get anything in the relay.

“But having arrived in Portugal the injury has been less of a problem. Yesterday was the best day I’ve had in terms of how it felt and while I definitely wouldn’t say it’s behind me it’s certainly getting better.”