Sonia warms-up in Loughrea ahead of NY marathon tilt

SONIA O’SULLIVAN will be back in action in Loughrea on Sunday when the spotlight will be on the Great Ireland Run - an event which she won in 1998 when she was a double world cross-country and European track champion.

She said yesterday she was looking forward to the Loughrea race which will be her last competitive appearance before she lines up for the New York marathon but how competitive she will be she was reluctant to predict.

“I am not sure what I am doing there but I am going there,” she said. “I don’t know exactly how I am going to run it. I don’t know who is in it or anything like that. But I would hope that it will be more of a training run.”

Peter Elliott will be putting the field for the Great Ireland Run together over the coming days.

It will be no surprise if Australian Susie Power, runner-up in the Great North Run is in the line-up and the Commonwealth 10,000m bronze medallist could prove more competitive over the shorter five mile run.

But from there on in she will be totally focused on the New York marathon and she will return to Villanova to put the finishing touches to her preparations.

“We are going to go there for a week beforehand, she said. I think it is important when you are going to America to get used to the time difference and to get a normal week behind you and then ease into the race rather than to be in a hotel,” said O’Sullivan.

She will be winding down her preparations from here on in, reducing the mileage and peaking at what she hopes will be precisely the right time - November 3.

Reflecting on Sunday’s run she said she was not really surprised when she discovered she was on her own over the last two or three miles.

“The way I ran I was always going to make it like that,” she said. “It is a little bit of a risk you take when you push hard from the start because you are concentrating the whole way. It is 13 miles of racing and I was concentrating on looking at my own splits all the time.”

She said she did not have to endure any bad spells or difficult stretches until the last mile when she turned to face a deceptive headwind that swept along the promenade all the way to the finish.

“The headwind was not that strong but it was enough to cause a slight problem at the very end of the race.

“I think the splits I was hitting along the way were definitely a lot better than in the Great South Run. Going up hills were the only slow miles but I felt really good.”

She said there was nothing there to say that she would be abandoning the track for the road over the coming years.

“Don’t be surprised if I come back and run a 1,500m next April,” she said. “People will be asking me what event I am going to do for the world championships - maybe the 800m. I think I can run fast over 1,500m, 3,000m and 5,000m again next year.”

She said she had no thoughts about another marathon after New York.

“New York was an idea back in June when I ran the mini-marathon and now I am getting closer to going through with it,” she said.