AN AUSTRALIAN record, it seems, doesn't even earn you a sleep in.

At 5.45am yesterday, less than 10 hours after smashing her national record in the 100 metres hurdles in Lucerne, Sally McLellan was on a bus heading for Zurich and the airport.

McLellan's 12.58 seconds took a hefty 0.13-second chunk off the national record she set at the Osaka Grand Prix meeting some 15 months ago. She finished almost a metre clear of the 2004 Olympic champion Johanna Hayes of the US, who surprisingly missed the American team.

"I can't explain how fast and how good it felt. It was an amazing feeling," an elated McLellan said soon after the race.

"It was a bit of disbelief when I saw the time. I was shocked it was that fast."

McLellan may have been at Zurich airport when she spoke to The Age, but her feet were back on the ground. She had felt she was going to run fast.

"I knew that I was going to run fast. I didn't know that I was going to win, but I never had any doubt in my mind or body, and when I feel like that I know that I am going to run fast.

"It was nice to have beaten the Olympic champ, but in a way it doesn't mean anything till the Olympics, and she hasn't even made the US team. So I have to focus on the bigger picture and that is running my own race and concentrating on what I have to do to get to the final."

McLellan's time would have placed high in any Olympic final since 1992. More importantly, it would have got her into the final in Athens. It is in the semi-finals that the cut-throat action occurs, and Lucerne was the first time on which the 21-year-old Gold Coast hurdler has run a time that would have got her into the Athens Olympic final. It took 12.69, or faster, then, and is likely to be as quick again in Beijing.

McLellan and her coach, Sharon Hannan, will now return to her London base before races in Stockholm next Tuesday and London on July 25-26. Despite her breakthrough on Wednesday night, McLellan's public goal remains the same, to reach the Olympic final.

The other big Australian result in Lucerne came from national champion Joel Milburn, who became the seventh Australian to break 45 seconds for 400 metres when he won in 44.99 seconds.

"It was a tough race and I felt like I'd run 44-something when I finished," Milburn said, "but I still think I have some more to come. I'm still learning how to run the race."

Victoria Mitchell won the 3000 metres steeplechase in nine minutes 49.24 seconds, Alana Boyd was second in the pole vault with 4.50 metres, Tamsyn Lewis was fourth in the 400 in 52.41 and Georgie Clarke eighth in the 1500 in 4:09.84.