DORCHESTER’S Paul Blake is set to continue his preparations for this summer’s World Championships by competing in the XII International Grand Prix in Barcelona next week.

The event, which takes place on May 14, will see the Paralympian taking part in the 400m event, as part of his training programme, something which Blake is particularly looking forward to.

He said: ““Training is going really well.

“I went out to the middle-east to do a bit of warm weather training there, and then I came back to Bath to do some track work in preparation for Barcelona next week.

“I haven’t changed much training-wise, it’s just a case of finding competitions because there aren’t a lot of competitions in the UK at the moment, because they’re all happening towards the end of the month.

“Dubai is the only competition I’ve competed in so far this year, but I have three competitions at the end of May, one of which is the Loughborough international (May 27) which everybody does, and then an open meet in Exeter on May 29.

“But it’s going well and I’m hitting all of the times I need to.”

Speaking of the event in Barcelona, Blake said it was mutually beneficial to take part in the event, as he looks to ramp up his preparations for the summer while also supporting the competition.

He said: “It’s a relatively new event, it’s been going for four years, I think.

I’ve been supporting it for a couple of years now, because it doesn’t get much from other athletes so I wanted take part because they invited me and it’s a great competition.

“They normally do a Grand Prix circuit as part of the IPC, but this one isn’t. It’s an individual Paralympic meet. They have a selected number of events for the athletes and they invite the athletes based on what they want to do.

“I don’t know who is going to be there yet, I tend not to know until the night before I compete but it’s always a really good competition and I always enjoy it. I’m really looking forward to it.

“I’ll just be doing the 400m. I thought about doing the 200m as well because they’ve got rid of the 800m for the Tokyo so there’s no point me training for that anymore. So now I’m stepping down towards the sports.

“I’m pretty hopeful of a top-three position, but it just depends on who’s competing. But I’m quite confident.”