In the run-up to the defence of her Olympic title, Jessica Ennis-Hill has been taking it cautiously as she fully recovers from an Achilles injury.
Last month she missed the Hypo Meeting in Götzis and she had competed only once this year outdoors, throwing 41.69m for the javelin in Loughborough.
But this weekend she moved up through the gears to show the countdown to Rio is growing in pace as the Great Britain star took part in four events at the Northern Championships in Manchester.
Ennis-Hill threw a superb 45.02m on Sunday - her best in 2015 was 43.88m - and it added to a 200m time of 23.42 on the same day, having run 13.10 for the 100m hurdles along with a shot put of 14.02m on Saturday.
She has earmarked the heptathlon in Ratingen at the end of this month for her full return to the multi-events and after this weekend, she looks on her way there in good form.
Türkiye’s Jak Ali Harvey has really put himself in contention for a medal at next month’s European Athletics Championships in Amsterdam after breaking his national 100m record with some performance at the Sprint Cup meeting in Erzurum on Sunday.
At altitude, Harvey ran 9.92, smashing 10-seconds for the first time and lowering the national mark from his 10.03 from last year.
[FACEBOOK ID='https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10154221758602436&set=a.10151149019552436.470327.650857435&type=3&theater']
It is the second best by a European this summer behind France’s Jimmy Vicaut, who last week equalled the European record of 9.86, and it is the fourth best in the world.
And that was not the only part of his record-breaking because for the second weekend in a row, the Turkish men of Emre Barnes, Harvey, Izzet Safer and Ramil Guliyev ran a 4x100m national best, with 38.31 after their 38.69 in Samorin eight days earlier.
In Geneva on Saturday, Lea Sprunger’s progress as a 400m hurdler took a giant stride in front of her own supporters.
She started the day with a personal best of 55.60 and ended it with 54.92, after a brilliant run that moves this former 200m sprinter to second on the European Athletics’ rankings, just behind Britain’s Eilidh Doyle (54.53), the European champion.
[FACEBOOK ID='https://www.facebook.com/210617815637035/photos/a.232934930071990.63249.210617815637035/1186125898086217/?type=3&theater']
In the men’s 400m hurdles, Doyle’s British teammate Jack Green ran his quickest time since 2012 to win in 49.05 from Brazil’s Marcio Teles (49.09) and France's Mamadou Kasse Hann (49.15).
It was a weekend, too, of good performances for European champions Christina Schwanitz and Antti Ruuskanen on their season debuts.
German shot-putter Schwanitz competed twice - throwing 19.05m on Saturday at the regional championships in Gotha before, 24 hours later, she improved to 19.41m in Schapbach, where her teammate David Storl, the double European champion who has a 2016 best of 21.01m, won the men’s competition with 20.84m.
In Raasepori, Finland’s European javelin champion Ruuskanen marked his first event of the year with victory (82.31m).
It was a packed weekend of track and field in Poland.
In Zary, Pawel Wojciechowski cleared 5.60m to win the 13th Pole Vault meet on countback from Piotr Lisek and Robert Sobera; in Lodz, at the at 24th Szumlewski Memorial, Anna Jagaciak-Michalska was among the winners as she took the triple jump with 14.17m; and at the 10th Krakow Cup, Robert Brylinski ran a 400m hurdles personal best (49.88).
Italy’s Valeria Straneo, who was second in the European marathon in Zurich, triumphed in 2:39:50 over the 26.2 miles in Wurzburg to achieve the Olympic standard.
There are 73 events across Europe this week. For full information, go to http://www.european-athletics.org/calendar