"Haile Gebrselassie told me that if I went to Berlin, I could run 2.13. In the immediate aftermath, Radcliffe saw no reason why she could not go faster still. Now imagine running almost 26 miles before that.
8: Aselefech Mergia (Eth), 2:19:31, 2012įew will manage it most of those who do will feel sick. Should you never have run a marathon, or be struggling to comprehend the magnitude of the overall performance, try running two laps of your local track in that time. Roared on by her home crowd, blocking out the pain by counting to 100 again and again, Radcliffe maintained her unrelenting pace, running the 24th mile in 5.03 and the 25th in 5.08. I was already going as hard as I could - it wasn't like I could pick it up - but equally I knew I wouldn't let it slip." Peter Elliot was on board and told me I was on course for the record. "I knew I was up on my Chicago time but didn't know it could be 2.15 or 2.16 until I came along the Embankment and saw the BBC camera-bike. As I came past the Tower of London, I was thinking, 'This is just a half-hour run now, I can do this'. At 18 miles, passing the entrance to the Blackwall Tunnel, Radcliffe too began to fear - beset by stomach cramps, struggling to focus. No woman had ever got to halfway in an average of five minutes 13 seconds per mile and maintained it. Why put limits on it? What do you do if you're running faster than you planned?"įor those watching, including most commentators, the answer was worry. But I had no idea what splits I was on because I hadn't worked any out. From the training I had learned how hard I could push my body. 
"I had learned about the importance of negative splits - that it was much easier getting to halfway comfortable and then pushing on. "I was conscious that training had been going really well, and that I was in great shape, and that conditions were good. "The only target I had in my mind was that I wanted to run faster than I had in Chicago," she says. On that spring morning on the start line in Greenwich, not even Radcliffe herself had dared dream of such a return. Two hours 15 minutes for the marathon? It was more than three minutes faster than any other woman had ever run, almost two minutes quicker than the world record Radcliffe herself had set in Chicago the previous autumn - a mark considered impossible at the time, and a decade further on, still to be even approached by anyone else. So it was, 10 years ago this weekend, when Paula Radcliffe staggered under the finishing banner on the Mall, the clock above her head showing 2:15.25.
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