Not for the first time, Paula Radcliffe will seek redemption on the streets of New York when she races the ING Marathon a month from today.
She confirmed her participation yesterday. The race will match her with Scotland's Hayley Haining, to whom many believe the injured Radcliffe should have deferred for Beijing. It also pits her against perennial adversary and World Marathon Majors winner Gete Wami and Boston Marathon winner Dire Tune.
Radcliffe ended the Olympic race a physical and emotional wreck, after preparations had been destroyed by a stress fracture, plus a bite from a poisonous spider. It will be her first race since.
She admits that she knew the Olympics were: "a long shot . . . What I didn't have was running'specific fitness and enough time on my legs, which I guess is what caused the calf to cramp up . . . There is no substitute for running."
Redemption may seem a strong word to employ around a woman who holds four of the five fastest times ever, especially when nobody has approached within three minutes of her world best of 2:15.25. Radcliffe is also world championship record-holder, and has lost only twice in her nine marathon starts, but these were high-profile: a dnf in the Athens Olympics, and 23rd in Beijing.
Both posed the question as to whether she could ever return as a major force. And when she arrived in New York last year there were similar doubts. She was coming out of the wilderness. It was her first marathon in 26 months, and her first race since birth of her daughter 10 months earlier.
On the first two occasions Radcliffe silenced every doubt. She beat Susan Chepkemei by three seconds in 2004, and last year overtook Ethiopian rival Wami with half a mile left. Can she win a third, and become the second most prolific winner in the Big Apple behind Grete Waitz?
"Definitely," she said. "That's why I'd be going there. . . . That's certainly the aim . . .
I don't associate New York with being a place where I have to go to get over something bad, but at the same time, I do kind of have good feelings about the place . . . something special can happen there.
"I think I can go a couple of minutes faster than I have done in New York . . . I'd like to make sure I'm in shape to run faster than I have done in the past. In terms of 2:15, with a good strong build-up, and things going right for a good time, then on a fast course, yes, I think it's possible. But you'd need everything to go right."
Any thought of redemption in Radcliffe's mind is over her Olympic experiences. Athens hurt more than Beijing. She understands the reasons for the latter, "and I'm not going to crucify myself".
She insists her Olympic career isn't over. "I know that probably the best years for achieving it medal success might have gone, but you never know. Constantina Tomescu-Dita was 38, and she got the luck and ran really well. She went out there and seized it and deserved it fully in Beijing.
So there's still a chance.
"But you have to also come to terms with the fact that my career might finish, and it might be that I haven't achieved what I think I'm capable of in an Olympics.
"At the end of the day I think I have to also look at my life and say that in other areas I've been very lucky: with family, with other things that I've achieved, with the world records. I still have a huge enjoyment and desire to go out and run each day. I came back from a run last night and said to Gary her husband, Look, I'm just loving it at the moment. This time of year here in the Pyrenees, the only person I saw on the run was me and a couple of deer'.
"That does mean a lot to me, probably more than all the fame associated with doing well at the Olympics.
"The Olympics is special, because it's what I've wanted to achieve since I started running.
But I don't think by any means that I need it to define my career, or to define me"
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