The 19-year-old is one of 14 Otago athletes who will line up at the national road race championships in Christchurch.
He will race in the men’s under-20 grade in which he will look to back up his win at the cross-country championships a month ago.
Having not raced since then — and only raced three times this winter — he is looking forward to the event.
"I think coming off the back of winning cross-country nationals I’m in better form than I was at national cross-country, and I’m pretty confident of getting the win.
"Obviously, it’s going to be a tough run, but winning’s definitely the aim."
He is in a field he called a little stronger than normal.
The biggest challenges look to be from Canterbury’s Mitchell Small and Chris Dryden, Auckland’s Theo Quax and James Uhlenberg, and Tasman’s Jared Lautenslager.
He is not focused so much on his time, expecting it to be a tactical race around the 8km course.
"With nationals, especially on the road, it can end up being very tactical and it can be quite a slow race until it really picks up with 3km to go, which is sort of what happened at cross-country nationals, as well."
Chignell, a second-year physical education student, has cut back to part-time study, alongside part-time work, this year.He said that had made training easier and he was happy with how he was progressing.
With new coach Chris Pilone, he had been concentrating on getting through as many kilometres as he could to build up his strength over the winter.
That usually involved running 120-130km a week, before looking to fine-tune and add some speed during the summer.
The summer track season was his priority, although he said it was good to do a few races over winter and try to win some national titles in the process.
He was hoping to bring his times down this summer as he continued to look to push on to bigger things.
While still racing the 1500m, 3000m and 5000m, he thought his long-term future lay in the 5000m and 10,000m.
He would concentrate on the shorter distances for now though, as he looked to continue to build his strength and looked ahead to moving into the senior ranks.
"So the plan, hopefully, is to have this next summer and winter season just tracking the times down.
"Then in the 2018-19 season maybe potentially look at starting to head over to Europe, starting to get some endorsements and give it a good crack.
"Ultimately, the goal would be sort of 2022 Commonwealth Games and 2024 Olympics, but you’re obviously looking at 2026 [Commonwealth Games] as well."
Chignell is one of several contenders from Otago in today’s championships.
Caden Shields, Kirk Madgwick and Jake Jackson-Grammer are all in the senior men’s race.
In the men’s under-18 race, Benjamin Lund, William Scharpf, Drew Cairney and Nathan Harrison are all among the field.
In the masters races, Michael Walker competes in the 35-49 grade, while Robbie Johnston, Brent Halley, Richard Fogarty and Russell Lund are all in the 50-plus grade.
Alexander Brown will compete in the under-18 race walk.
