Double Olympic champion Mo Farah showed no ill effects of his 10,000m world triumph as he returned to the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow for the 5,000m heats.
The 30-year-old, who is the defending world champion over the shorter distance, was never stretched as he came home fifth in his heat in a time of 13:23.93minutes.
Farah is bidding to become only the second man after Ethiopia’s Kenenisa Bekele to do the long-distance double at both an Olympics and a World Championships in Moscow.
And, after jogging over the line alongside training partner Galen Rupp of the USA, Farah insisted that all his attention was now focused on rest and recovery ahead of Friday’s final.
“That was alright, I just wanted to do as little work as possible,” he said. “Freshen my legs up and just get ready for the final and I did that.
“I feel alright, the team and the physio have been looking after me and other than that I have just been resting up.
“This is just prelims, which is always going to feel harder, you know you have got to get up early in the morning and I’m not a morning person.
“But you have to deal with it, get it out the way and Galen and I knew the top five qualified so we just saved as much energy as possible.
“I just wanted to run comfortably, it was about going through so that was a job well done and it’s on to the next step now.”
Elsewhere, Katarina Johnson-Thompson climbed one place to fifth after a superb morning that saw her set two new personal bests.
She kicked things off with a best leap of 6.56m in the long jump before launching the javelin 40.86m – more than two metres further than she ever has done before.
The 20-year-old is now on 5450 points with just the 800m left with an outside chance of a medal as she sits 42 points off Holland’s Dafne Schippers in third.
Meanwhile, Robbie Grabarz insists patience is indeed a virtue after he soared into the high jump final as the joint number one qualifier.
The Olympic bronze medallist has endured a frustrating season to date, his best heading to Moscow sitting at 2.31m – six centimetres off his personal best.
But Grabarz showed no signs of struggle on the world stage as he cleared his all of his four heights at the first time of asking – including 2.29m – to ease into the championships.
And the 25-year-old admits his safe passage was all down to remaining calm this year when things haven’t been going his way.
“It was really nice to come out and qualify strongly,” he said. “Early starts aren’t really a problem to me so that probably played into my advantage – I saw a couple of the other guys really struggle.
“It’s been a rubbish season really but I’ve had to be patient and we’ll see what happens on Thursday.”
© Sportsbeat 2013