Christine Dailey heads into Sunday’s Tata Consultancy Services Toronto Waterfront Half-Marathon in Canada looking for improvement.

In her maiden appearance in the race a year ago, the Bermudian finished eighteenth in the women’s competition in a time of 1hr 23min 48sec, but the 37-year-old believes that the hard work put in with coach Alex Waldauer will reap rewards.

“This race is about seeing how close I can get to the 1:20 barrier,’’ Dailey told The Royal Gazette.

“My fitness right now leads me to believe that I’m capable of clocking 1:20. It now depends on what happens on the day. The course is good and the weather should be nice, which is good.

“My training has been fantastic, this is definitely the fastest I've felt. As long as the stars align, I should be able to rock and roll. Last year, I was happy with my results and I had just started training with my coach that summer, so that was our first race together.

“Since then, we've been working towards half-marathon goals with some races sprinkled in between.

“Even though I've done a lot of races between now and then, I’m looking forward to comparing where I've been in the year because that’s when I really started upping my training. I should be able to see some really big improvements.”

Dailey is also keeping an eye on Ashley Estwanik’s national half-marathon record of 1:18:19, which she achieved in 2016.

“It’s probably not for this weekend but if I keep chipping away, the national record is in sight,’’ she said.

“It’s one step at a time for me and the main goal is the 1:20 barrier for now, then I’ll go for the national record.”