McWilliam will try and try again

• Feet first: Kirsty McWilliam will reignite her London 2012 dream by returning to action in Lanarkshire today. Photograph: Iain MacIntosh

It has been a long battle back to fitness for the young Scot, who will compete for the first time in almost 18 months today at the GE European Cup in Strathclyde Country Park. How she will perform, she admits, is unclear. No surprise that. McWilliam, an animal biology student at Stirling University, has learned that there are few, if any, certainties.

The visit to the doctor, she recalls, was expected to be merely routine. Betraying the toughness in her DNA, a routine test discovered a lack of bone density, a condition not dissimilar to osteoporosis. It is not uncommon in endurance athletes, who are often susceptible to stress fractures. To avoid long-term damage, there was only one, excruciating, course treatment: relaxation. For someone used to constant training, rest was an awkward prescription.

"I didn't want to risk anything because I might have ended up broken," she explains. "I just had to massively reduce everything and since then, it's been hard to come back because your body gets used to being chilled. It's almost like being de-trained and that's maybe why there has been a few mishaps. I had to put on some weight and do only light training. It was all a natural process, waiting for the bones to get stronger as you get older."

With support from the Scottish Institute of Sport, the diagnostics offered some hope, even when the X-rays suggested otherwise. "It was very frustrating," McWilliam confirms, having watched many of the rivals she dominated at junior level push their way to the fore.

Even with a scaled-down regime which consisted mainly of swimming and bike work, there were moments when it seemed a lost cause. "I still get times like that where I have horrible days," she reflects. "I just have to push on. It was a bad time. I didn't enjoy it at all. But it has made me a stronger person. Plus a lot of the work I did in the meantime was, by necessity, very functional. Like things to make your muscles have the right movements. Long term, it will have benefits. I've come back tougher and stronger."

Having toiled all winter since being given the all-clear to accelerate her training, there was one further cruel glitch to come. And this time it was wholly self-inflicted. A month ago, she was in the gym working out when she dropped a weight on her toe. "It was only two and a half kilos so it could have been worse," she laughs ruefully. "People seem a bit disappointed when I tell them it wasn't a big heavy one. But it was enough to break it.

"It also happened to be my 20th birthday so I spent the evening in A&E. I was supposed to race that weekend. That was my big comeback and I was really excited so that made it even worse. I wasn't quite back to square one but it was a setback."

Patched up, and only partially healed, McWilliam concedes she is short of what was once her best heading into this morning's race in Lanarkshire. She will face a largely domestic field, that also includes leading Britons Jill Parker and Sophie Coleman, in an ITU event that also takes in a strong elite men's race as well as a sprint triathlon.

There are a few nerves, she confirms, despite the relatively low-key return. However with 2012 on the horizon, there is no time to be wasted. "It's the Olympics in my own country," she underlines. "There's no way I'm going to say 'let's give it a miss'. I'll see if I can get in the team and take it from there."

GE European Cup: Sprint Race (8.50), Elite Women (11.15), Elite Men (2.15). Spectator entry is free.