Eilish McColgan executed her game plan with precision to capture the Butterfield Front Street Mile Elite Women’s title at the first attempt last night.

The two-times Olympian and European Championships silver medal-winner ran a smart, tactical race in wet and frigid conditions, which she won comfortably in a time of 4min 45.70sec.

McColgan remained tucked in with the main bunch before making the decisive break just past the halfway mark and widened the gap between herself and the chasing pack heading back to the finish line. “I was aware that some of the other girls in the race are 800 metres runners, so for me being a 5K/10k runner I have to make an early break,” the Scot said.

“I can’t let those girls be around the last 400 and they sprint past me. So my plan was to always have a really strong sort of last half of the race, try and break away and really happy it paid off today.”

McColgan added: “I’ve never been to Bermuda before. I’ve heard lovely things about the weather and then I get here and it was so stormy.

“It’s raining now, so very much like Scotland, my home country, so I really enjoyed today. It’s such a tough course, I’m not going to lie. The wind obviously makes it ten-times harder. There’s sort of rolling hills. As always on a mile, it really burns the lactic in your legs, but really happy to come away with the win.”

The only downside to McColgan’s dominant display was that it fell short of her bid to break Jamaican Kenia Sinclair’s nine-year-old course record, which stands at 4:33.61.

“It was obviously slower than I would like,” she added. “It was nowhere near the sort of 4:25 that obviously the big bonus was offered today.

“I had my eye on the course record and I was just a little outside that ,so ever so slightly disappointed. But hopefully I will be back next year with better weather than this.”

Crossing the finish line more than five seconds behind McColgan was Therese Haiss, of the United States, in a time of 4:50.66.

Nuhamin Bogale Ashame, of Ethiopia, secured the third and final spot on the podium in a time of 4:53.90.

Gayle Lindsay won the local adult women’s race in a time of 5:39.73.

Lindsay finished well ahead of nearest rival Deon Breary, who pipped Nicole Cook in a sprint finish for second place. Breary crossed the finish line a second ahead of Cook in 5:46.