Monmouth sprinter Ryan Lee has had his busiest week in his athletics career so far.

On Sunday 28th July, Ryan competed for his club Cardiff, who are in the youth development league which consists of some of the best athletes from Birchfield Harriers, Rugby and Northampton, Team Avon, Swansea Harriers and Chelteneham Harriers.

Ryan was selected to run in the A race in the 200m and finished first in a time of 22.31 seconds into a 1m/s head wind.

This was Ryan's second quickest time ever in the 200m.

Next was the 4x100m, in which Ryan ran a great third leg, helping his team to a second place finish.

Lastly came the 4x400m relay and as Ryan was the fastest on paper, he ran the last leg. Cardiff won the relay and Ryan finished about 30 metres ahead of the second-placed athlete.

On the Wednesday evening Ryan was invited to take part in the 2013 Welsh International meeting at Cardiff Athletics Stadium, where teams from England South, England North, Scotland and South Africa were to compete.

Ryan was entered for his favoured event, the 400m A race, which due to its high standard of athletes put Ryan as second slowest on paper out of the eight runners.

Ryan actually ran very well and finished fifth with a time of 48.60 seconds.

In the 4x400m, which was the last event of a brilliant evening of high class competition, Ryan was placed on the first leg and absolutely flew the first 200 metres only to be caught in the last five metres by Alex Boyce from Liverpool Harriers, who is an immensly strong U20 runner and has a PB of 47.03 seconds.

Ryan was over the moon with his run and for the first time this season felt he now has an idea how to execute his own 400m races.

This was to be tested on Sunday 3rd August at the 2013 Celtic Games, where the Welsh Squad travelled up to Colwyn Bay on Friday morning.

The event was held at the very impressive Eirias Park, which is a stunning facility up in North Wales.

This year Wales were the host nation so extra pressure was on all our athletes to do well for their country.

Ryan was in the 400m and out of the seven athletes entered, he had the best PB so the pressure on him to do well was huge.

After his busy week, Ryan felt very tired on the morning of his race which was at 1pm. The race was really competetive and Ryan had a great start and led up until 100m when the Irish athlete passed Ryan.

The split time for the 200m mark was around 22 seconds which is very fast for the U18 age group. Ryan really pushed hard around the bend but the Irish lad was still in front, the Scottish athlete was also making a charge, then with around 40m to go to the line Ryan dug really deep and just pulled clear of the Irish runner and crossed the line in first place in a great time of 48.36, about one metre ahead of second place.

Ryan's time was only 2/10th of a second off the Celtic Games Championship record which was set back in 2004 by a Scottish athelete.

In the 4x400m relay, Ryan was on the last leg but was almost 50m off the second placed team runner of Scotland so had too much left to do.

Ryan crossed the line in third, around 10m behind the Scottish lad, so clawed back a substantial distance over his leg.

The whole day had been a wonderful experience for the three nations and an honour to take part in, so for Ryan to be crowned the '2013 Celtic Games 400m champion' ended what had been a glorious week.

Ryan is now waiting to hear if he has been selected to represent Wales in Belgium at the end of August.