Sam Clifford is in good form one week out from the biggest moment of his career.
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Having won 1500 and 5000 metre state titles last weekend, the Legana 16-year-old will represent his country for the first time on Saturday after qualifying for the world cross-country championships at under-20 level.
A former national champion in under-16 cross-country and under-17 3000m, Clifford was unequivocal on where pulling on the green and gold in Aarhus, Denmark, will sit among his many achievements.
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"It's definitely the biggest - national titles are still pretty big but representing your country is another level up and I'm happy to take the challenge to represent Australia well," he said.
"With the training I did leading up to [trials] all the dots connected and it was really good to tick off a very big box of mine which was to represent Australia.
"It was kind of a shock - I was thinking to only just scrape in and when I ran the trials I got third so I couldn't really fit with it at the time, it was quite a surreal moment."
Denmark marks the beginning of a long-term plan which stretches out to July 2020.
All while studying at Launceston College, Clifford will enjoy a brief off-season next month before setting his sights on Africa.
"I've done enough running as it is so after Denmark it'll be two or three weeks of easing it off and then I'm looking forward to running in the Launceston 10, state cross-country and nationals in Wollongong.
"After Wollongong it'll be mostly track for the next 12 months because of world junior championships in Nairobi, Kenya, that's what I'm looking to qualify for."
Set to fly out on Monday, Clifford will be joined on the plane by a fellow Tasmanian gun in Stewart McSweyn, who qualified second in the national open men's trials.
"I'm the youngest in the team and I don't know if I'll be the youngest out of the whole thing," Clifford said.
"The guys that I ran against, we're also really close together in friendship as well as the way we placed at trials.
"I think the top six of us guys were within 20 to 30 seconds so that's good for team points as well so I'm hoping we can do really well over there."
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