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Britain’s most successful marathon runner has endured some dark moments in recent years but winning World Championship gold could signal a new beginning

Paula Radcliffe is learning how to run again. The woman capable of running 26.2 miles in little over two and a quarter hours – the world record-holder at the distance – has been running “improperly” for the past two years, so she says, thanks to a painful bunion that was protruding from the side of her big toe.

In that time she’s won the New York Marathon twice, set a new British record over 10 miles and popped out her first child, who is now a knee-high version of her mother; blonde, blue eyed and devilishly headstrong.

Now bunion-free after surgery in March, Radcliffe is looking ahead with optimism. While the past few years have included good times, the bad times have never been far away. She has missed the past four London Marathons, endured two disastrous Olympic Games and found herself hobbling alone around the foothills of Albuquerque with a broken foot and no mobile phone.

“That,” Radcliffe tells Sport, describing the moment she realised she’d be watching the London Marathon from her sofa for the fourth year in a row, “was the lowest of the low”.

Radcliffe has welcomed Sport to her altitude training base in Font-Romeu, a quiet village in the Pyrenees frequented by many of the world’s elite athletes. She arrived here as soon as her foot was deemed healthy enough, and has descended from the mountains just once in three months to visit her specialist foot doctor in Germany. Husband and coach Gary and daughter Isla are here too, but Font-Romeu is smallsville, and Radcliffe is starting to hanker for the buzz of competition.

She’s Britain’s sole representative for the women’s marathon in Berlin and has been using the World Championships as her training goal from the moment her foot fell apart in Albuquerque, meaning her routine has been particularly intense of late.

But today is a scheduled ‘rest day’, a day she would normally spend playing with Isla and erm, resting. Instead, she’s donated it to Sport. From 8am until 6pm she poses, talks, points out the best cake shop in the village, and offers directions to the cheapest petrol station en route to the airport. Are these the actions of an athlete whose chances of competing in Berlin are “no more than 50-50”, according to an unnamed source quoted in the newspapers recently?

Hardly; normal procedure is to close ranks around an athlete struggling for fitness, not open up their life to the press for a day. But opening up is what Radcliffe does, in good times and bad.

You went to the Olympics in Beijing feeling less than 100 per cent fit – would you consider doing the same for the World Championships?

“The World Championships is different to the Olympics, especially with my history – I’ve never done quite what I’ve wanted to at the Olympics and it’s only once every four years, so it’s very hard to say no. But I have won the World Championships so I don’t want to go unless I’m in the shape to win it. It’s still hit and miss because although I’m doing the mileage, the sessions are not quite good enough. I really want to go but sometimes you can try too hard.”

So, how is ‘the foot’?

“Well, it’s healthy now, but I am learning to run on it properly again. For the last two years I couldn’t use my big toe so I’d modified my running style to go around it and now it’s difficult to override that habit. I’m doing all the mileage but it’s just not quite… on the long runs it’ll be good for an hour and a half and then bad for 45 minutes. But that’s better than three weeks ago when it was good for an hour and then really bad.”

At last year’s Olympics you only had three weeks of running behind you. Was that a worry?

“I was full of doubts but I really wanted to give it a go. I was nervous because I was going into the unknown, and when my calf went at around the 10k mark I did have doubts whether I would finish. I lost feeling in the leg, but it got to the stage where I was pretty sure it wasn’t going to tear, it was just going to be really sore. And after everything I’d been through… after Athens, I really wanted to finish it. I got slated for dropping out of Athens – or not being able to finish – however you put it, so I knew I’d get crucified if I went to a second Olympics and dropped out.”

Your determination was owing to your fear of the press reaction?

“It was more than that. When I was diagnosed with a stress fracture [in her leg] in May 2008, the doctor said ‘you’re not going to be able to run in the Olympics’. I made up my mind right then that I was going to do it. During the race it was like, I’ve got this far, at least I can finish, even if it is crap and I probably could have walked quicker. It was a really shit time, I’m sure it was outside of 2:30 (it was 2:32:38) – I run faster on training runs. Also, if you stop in a marathon it’s not like there’s a bus you can get on to the finish, it takes forever for the sweep vehicle to pick you up, so sometimes it’s actually quicker to finish the race!”

Before this year’s London Marathon you seemed to be back on track. You won the New York Marathon in November…

“I know, and the injury that put me out was really sudden. I was on a run and went from having an awareness of the usual pain in my foot to not even being able to stand on it. I fractured the second toe straight through which was a total nightmare because I was in the middle of nowhere in the Albuquerque foothills. I had to go and find a hiker with a phone so I could ring Gary to come and get me. I was just limping along feeling sorry for myself because I had been so looking forward to doing London this year but as soon as it went I knew I’d have to miss it. That was the lowest of the low.”

Have you ever wondered why you continue to put yourself through so much pain?

“Loads of times! Loads of times I’ve just been in tears. But once you get past that point when you’re thinking ‘I can’t take this any more’ and you start crying, then it doesn’t seem so bad. You know you need to do it to get better and that motivates you to keep going. It’s like, I hate cross training… hate, hate it, but I’ll do it because it means that when I get back to running I’m in better shape. But if someone said you can cross train but you can’t ever race again, I wouldn’t do it. No way.”

You’ve been a serious athlete ever since you were a pre-teen but did you ever long for the carefree life some of your school friends must have had?

“The only times I felt like that were when I was injured. I know other athletes who can just switch off and let go when they’re injured. They’ll go out and have a drink, but I could never do that. I could pretend to do it but deep down I was just killing time until the injury got better. Those were the times when I was jealous. Why couldn’t I go out and just leave it all behind without thinking ‘I better not have that drink, because it might slow down the healing process?’ I always had that voice in my head.”

Your husband Gary was also a runner to a high level until injury ended his career. Didn’t that make your relationship difficult?

“No but that is quite surprising because if it had been the other way around I would have found it very hard. To not be able to do something you want to do because of injury, but to still be involved in that life through someone else... I honestly think I would have found that hard. But he says he didn’t and it wasn’t like there was a hidden animosity there.”

What motivates you more – to think about your successes or the disappointments?

“I’m always thinking about the races ahead rather than anything that’s gone in the past. If I do think back, the wins are much better at motivating me but I don’t totally forget the disappointments because you learn more from bad things. But then you have to put it behind you and not let it make you bitter. I could think I’ve had really bad luck, been really bad at the Olympics and put a downer on my whole career but, on the other hand, I’m lucky. I’ve had a long career and fitted in a family and done it well.”

Last year’s Olympic champion Constantina Dita has advised you to cut down your weekly mileage if you want to continue through to 2012…

(Interrupts) “Yeah but she’s won it so she doesn’t care – she’s running everywhere. And she’s not running as well as she was then either. She has a point in that you have to listen to your body, but you need to do a certain amount of running to be any good at the marathon, it’s not an event where you can baby your body. I have a healthy foot now and the rest of my body wasn’t breaking down, so I’m encouraged. I might need to take another easy day in between hard days as I get older but I’ll still do all the sessions, I’ll just spread them out a bit more.”

How do you imagine your life after professional athletics?

“Oh I’ve got a bunch of stuff lined up for when I’ve finished competing. They do hang gliding off one of the high peaks here – I really want to do that. You just jump off and end up landing in the sea. I’m also looking forward to just having the time because sometimes now I spend so much time training that Gary probably spends more time with Isla than me. So I’m not worried about it, I think you’ll always find something to fill life with.”

SARAH SHEPHARD

Paula Radcliffe has been training in the Nike LunarGlide+, a new lightweight running shoe with a mid-sole design architecture which adapts with each step, providing superior cushioning and stability