After her distress in the Olympic marathon, Paula Radcliffe would have been forgiven for wanting a long break from athletics. That was what many people encouraged. The advice was well-intentioned and it was considered, but ultimately she couldn’t leave 2004 with the pain of Athens still throbbing inside her head.
Next Sunday she will be on the start line in New York, a further 26.2 miles and much uncertainty ahead of her. Less than 2Å months have passed since she sat on that kerb on the outskirts of Athens and felt nothing but devastation.
How can her body have recovered so soon from the torture to which it was subjected on that Athenian journey? And what of the psychological battering? There is no ultra-sound machine capable of breaking down the scar tissue inside her head. One simple conclusion would be that this is a desire for atonement taken too far.
But simplicity doesn’t work when trying to fathom a woman as passionate and as fiercely determined as Radcliffe. She knows the risks of taking on New York so soon after Athens, and they are not small. New York is a tough course, the opposition is formidable, and unless the world record-holder is close to her best, she will struggle. She knows this and still accepts the challenge.
To understand Radcliffe’s decision, one must see life through her eyes. Athens was the greatest and most crushing disappointment of her career. In the immediate aftermath she spent many hours — both in daytime and in the middle of the night — trying to figure out where it went wrong. Was it the muscle injury in her right leg, or the anti-inflammatory tablets taken to cure it, or the stress caused by the injury? Questions that have lurked liked snipers; breaking cover, then hiding, always ready to take a pot shot.
Many people told her to take a holiday. For what purpose: to find a sunny refuge for her misery? Doctors advised her not to run for a while. They might as well have told her to stop breathing. The irony lies in the contrasting opinions on how best to achieve recovery. The conventional view is that unless she gives her body a rest, it will continue to betray her. Her belief is that unless she runs, she cannot get better.
Of course, it is the burden of unrealised expectation that she now carries, but it is not only that. When injury or illness or whatever other factors deny her the opportunity to race to her potential, there is the considerable question of so much preparation going down the drain. That frustrates her more than people can imagine.
Her two pre-Olympic races — the European Cup 5000m at Bydgoszcz in Poland and the 10,000m at Gateshead — were two of the finest runs of her career, and both showed she was running better than she had ever done. That fitness and form came from weeks and months spent in high-altitude training at Albuquerque in New Mexico and Font Romeu in the French Pyrenees. As she left Athens on that Saturday morning, her failures in the marathon and 10,000m still in her legs, one of the cruellest questions would have been: “Is that it?”
All the runs around the Lac de Matemale near Font Romeu for two deeply dissatisfying performances at the Olympics? All the track sessions, the massage, the rest, the diet, the sleep, for nothing except the tears that came with the hurt and anger. Maybe others could have accepted that and done what sensible people advised. Not Radcliffe.
We may worry about what she now asks of herself, but it is better to trust her. The heart has reason, which reason does not know, and she knows how to get out of this. After the cruel disappointment of finishing fourth at the Sydney Olympics, did she fold her tent and creep away for the season? No chance. Instead, she found a programme of races that culminated in victory at the world half-marathon championships in Vera Cruz, Mexico.
Her response was the same after another hard-to-stomach fourth place at the world championships in Edmonton a year later. That disappointment was dissipated by another good end-of-season campaign and a second victory at the world half-marathon championships. It has ever been thus. For she was the young girl who could find the answer to an algebra problem on a fast run by the river near her parents’ home outside Bedford.
So when post-Olympic blood tests showed no underlying problems, when the scans proved her injury had healed, what was she to do? She did what she has always done. She ran. At first to see if her body could cope, and then to see if she could be truly competitive. The mere act of running gave her hope; light at the end of the tunnel, if you wish. She has trained at Flagstaff in Arizona, again using the thin air at high altitude to stretch her limbs and clear her mind.
Once she realised the stomach problem and leg injury that undid her in Athens had cleared, Radcliffe considered again the possibility of racing this season. She had intended making next month’s Nike 10km in London, but the greater challenge and the greater prize was New York. She would still run in London, but only after first dealing with some marathon business on the other side of the Atlantic.
Training has gone well. Radcliffe has discovered that the high-quality preparation for Athens meant it did not take that much to get back a high level of fitness. Her time in Flagstaff convinced her that the New York Marathon could be taken on, and although she has been paid a sizeable fee to race in the Big Apple, this is not just about money. She trains to race; competition is, in effect, reward for months of dedication. This year there has been a lot of sacrifice for very little reward. To close the book now would be to admit defeat, to accept that nothing good can come from the Olympic year. Radcliffe could not do that.
For this is a woman who needs to remind herself and the rest of us of what she is about. She is the world’s greatest marathon runner and one of the world’s greatest distance athletes.
Athens was a bad experience, but although it was devastating and will have shaken her confidence, it did not suddenly make her a bad runner. Typically, she is in a hurry to remind us of that.
New York will be extremely tough. Marathon experts rate the course about three minutes slower than London. Among a formidable list of opponents, the American Deena Kastor may be the most dangerous. She raced impressively through the second half of the Olympic marathon to claim the bronze medal, and she knows the New York course.
In the circumstances Radcliffe will be thinking of victory, not a world record. She will try to rediscover her old self rather than show us a new and greater Paula. For this is a voyage back from the abyss, not a search for new frontiers. We may be concerned that she is taking on too much, too soon. What we cannot do is deny her the right to try.
