Steve Cram column

What now for Paula Radcliffe after her incredible win in the New York marathon?

What races should she run, and can we now believe that she could win that elusive Olympic gold in Beijing?

Right now, there will be only one thing on her mind - rest. She'll take a couple of weeks off and then start planning.

There's the World Cross Country championships in Edinburgh in March, and the option of doing either the London or Boston marathons - but if I were her, there would be only two things on my mind.

The first would be this: to win Olympic gold in Beijing, you have to get there in the best physical condition possible.

Don't worry too much at this stage about acclimatisation, or what the local conditions might be like there - because your ability to cope with all of those factors ultimately comes down to what shape you are in.

I've talked to Liz McColgan about her preparations for the world championships in Tokyo in 1991, and she made the same point - the fitter you are, the easier you'll find it coping with heat, humidity and pollution.

The second point follows the first - how can Paula get into the best shape possible?

All her decisions about which races to enter flow from this.

If running the World Cross is the best thing to get her in ideal shape for Beijing, she should do them. The same goes for London.

But if peaking for those races, or the efforts she puts into them, in any way impedes her Olympic preparations, she should leave them alone - or run them in a way that helps her, rather than simply trying to win.

You can rest assured that the Chinese and Japanese rivals she'll come up against in Beijing won't be trying to win the World Cross, or break their national records on the track in the build-up.

The person who wins in Beijing will be a combination of the best runner and the athlete in the best shape on the day.

We know that Paula is the best marathon runner in the world. Now it comes down to the other part - being in the best possible condition on race-day.

As for New York itself - well, it was one of the great marathons I have witnessed.

With two miles to go, Paula was probably one of the very few people in the world who thought she could out-kick Gete Wami.

I walked the final mile with Paula and her husband Gary last year, when Paula was still heavily pregnant with Isla, and it came back to me on Sunday as I watched her battle with Wami reach its climax.

There's a little uphill section with about 1000m to go, and I thought on Sunday that if she couldn't break away there then her chance would have gone.

But somehow she managed to lift her pace just when it mattered most, and at a stage when most athletes would find it impossible.

You just can't sprint-finish in a marathon. There's nothing left in your legs and arms, nothing left in your lungs.

What you can do is change the rhythm of your running, to lift your cadence, and that's exactly what Paula managed to do.

Usually during a race she counts numbers in her head. It's her way of keeping her pace up, of ignoring the distance she has left to go or the discomfort she is feeling.

This time she switched to repeating the phrase "I love you Isla" over and over - and the short, staccato rhythm of those words enabled her to pick up her pace when her body had nothing more to give.

It was an extraordinary race. But then Paula is an extraordinary athlete.

Source: BBC Sport