Hannah England celebrated her World Championship silver medal in Daegu, South Korea, by going for a run with room-mate Barbara Parker, writes Stuart Weir.

“I wasn’t supposed to be training, but I didn’t want to make Barbara go on her own, so I went out for a trot,” she said yesterday. “Since then I have just been vegetating on the sofa!”

The 24-year-old Oxford City AC runner admitted to being very tired.

“I feel that I have put my body through a lot in the last five days,” she added. Hannah has certainly come a long way from her first race for Frideswide School in the Oxford Middle Schools’ Cross Country Championship to a World Championship medal.

There were no celebrations on Thursday night either.

By the time Hannah had attended the press conference and fulfilled her other obligations, it was very late when she reached her apartment at the athletes’ village.

“Everyone was asleep as they were racing next day, so I tip-toed around the flat, had a quiet shower and lay in bed wide awake. They had written me a nice message on the whiteboard in the apartment. ‘Well done Hannah. World Championship silver medallist’.”

She continued: “Our motto in the flat was ‘go and get yourself a fairy-tale ending’ and they had written, ‘You got your fairy-tale ending’.”

She awoke to find herself a girl in demand.

Her interview for the Oxford Mail was immediately followed by other media.

I wondered if not receiving her medal straight after the final was an anticlimax, but Hannah liked stringing it out, “so that I can milk it all day.”

None of Hannah’s family is in Korea, but she had spoken to them by telephone.

There had also been messages from friends, including Kelly Holmes.

Coming from an academic family, Hannah was considering continuing her studies to a PhD, but opted to become a full-time athlete.

“I was quite lucky to make a lot of progress in the year I finished my degree, so it wasn’t a hard choice to make,” she said.

Next week Hannah is off to Canada to be bridesmaid for a friend from University.

She will then run in a Diamond League meeting in Brussels, the Great North Mile in Newcastle and New York’s Fifth Avenue Mile.

No holidays are planned as fiancé Luke Gunn is working until November when he will become a full-time athlete.

Hannah dedicated her victory “to my coach, Bud Baldaro, who has coached me since I was 14 and has done a really good job bringing me through – initially slowly, but now pushing me to my limits as a senior; also my parents, friends and all my training partners as well.”

And she attributed her new-found confidence to the “cumulative effect of good performances. When I came back from five weeks’ injury earlier this year, I promised myself I wouldn’t waste any time messing around.

“When I was fit enough to race I would come out, all guns blazing with a ‘no time to lose’ attitude.”

With London 2012 less than a year away, her timing is perfect.

Further reaction & background in today's Oxford Mail.