Britain's athletes began their quest for medals at the European Indoor Championships on Friday with a bunch of cliches ringing in their ears.
Team captain Jenny Meadows gave the traditional eve-of-competition speech on Thursday night and freely admitted she would be relying on some well-worn phrases to inspire her team-mates.
"My speech is about cliches," said Meadows, who defends her 800 metres title after achieving the qualifying time earlier this month in her first race since September 2011 due to a career-threatening injury.
"Trevor (Painter, her coach and husband) says 'you never know when you've run your last race'. My dad always said 'you're only as good as your last race'.
"There's lots of cliches in sport and you never appreciate something until it's gone; all those things have been true to me over the last 12 months.
"I am really trying to urge the team to run and jump like it's the last chance they've got. Walk out of the stadium knowing you've not left any energy, you can walk away knowing you've given it your best."
With Andy Pozzi ruled out of the 60m hurdles through injury, Britain cannot win a medal on the opening day of competition, but will look to long jumper Shara Proctor and the men's and women's 400m runners to impress in qualifying.
Hurdles specialists Perri Shakes-Drayton and Eilidh Child are ranked first and second respectively in Europe this year on the flat, and the former will be looking to erase memories of missing out on the Olympic final in London by one place.
"That's in the past," said Shakes-Drayton, who had run a personal best at Crystal Palace just weeks before the Games.
"I just need to look forward to the future and learn from the experience. People still talk about it but I'm looking at what I can achieve now.
"At the time it was devastating but I went on holiday to Jamaica and when I returned I was back into training. There was nothing I could do to change what happened so I said to myself, 'there's no point dwelling on it Perri'.
"The way I look at it, I'm still a good athlete and there's more to come. That just wasn't my time."
As for winning gold in Gothenburg, the 24-year-old Londoner added: "Just a medal would be nice.
"I think a lot of the athletes may have run a bit more than me but I've got to put that behind me. I feel I'm ready for it, even though I maybe haven't raced as much."
