Runner Victoria Fiddick has taken bronze for a second consecutive year in the 3,000 metres race at the USA Masters' national indoor championships.

She repeated her podium finish of a year ago and smashed her lifetime best for the distance in the process.

Fiddick, the current May 24 Derby women's champion, blasted around a tight 200 metres track at the event in Boston and clocked 10 minutes 31 seconds – a time that would have won the 2009 final and was 14 seconds faster than she'd ever run before.

However, she had to be content with another bronze as the overall winner, Lisa Valle, who trains in the high altitude of New Mexico, crossed the finish line in 10.07 in the women-45 age division race.

Fiddick said afterwards that she found keeping her focus during the race's 15 laps, and the need to chop her stride and move out around some of the backmarkers in the field of 22 athletes, added to the challenge.

Fiddick has been switching her training around as she prepared for the indoor track race and an upcoming half-marathon in New York's Central Park in two weeks' time.

She will race alongside 40,000 other women in the More Magazine's Half Marathon on April 25.