Olympic hopeful Leslie Sexton leads Canadian team into cross-country athletics worlds

Leslie Sexton feels good physically and appears poised to make a final attempt on April 28 in Hamburg, Germany at qualifying for her first Olympic marathon.

First, she will be part of Canada's 28-member team — 14 women and men — at the World Athletics Cross-Country Championships on Saturday in Belgrade, Serbia. Sexton will run on grass and pedestrian paths covered with dirt and sand for the $30,000 US top prize in the senior women's 10-kilometre event.

"Recovery has gone well since the Houston Marathon [on Jan. 14] and I'm looking forward to testing myself over different distances and surfaces. It's a little bit of everything, but marathon fitness is fitness," Sexton wrote in an Instagram post earlier this month.

The 36-year-old ran a personal-best time of two hours 28 minutes 14 seconds in Houston for her third consecutive sub-2:29 performance and fell one minute 14 seconds shy of the automatic entry standard for the Aug. 11 women's Olympic marathon in Paris.

The native of Markham, Ont., returned home to Vancouver, where she raced a half marathon, 5K road race and 5,000 metres on the track the past six weeks.

Sexton, who is co-coach of the post-secondary cross-country, track and road running programs at the University of British Columbia, clocked 16:07 in the St. Patrick's Day 5K at Stanley Park on March 16. Vancouver's Glynis Sim posted the second-fastest time in event history, winning in 15:37. She will join Sexton in Saturday's race in the Park of Friendship, one of the largest parks in Belgrade that overlooks the Sava and Danube rivers.

Watch Saturday's action from Serbia on CBCSports.ca, the CBC Sports app and CBC Gem. Coverage begins at 5:30 a.m. ET, with the women's U20 race at 6 a.m. The U20 men (6:35 a.m.),