![]() ![]() But for an athlete whose average pace per mile when she broke the marathon world record in 2003 was five minutes and 13 seconds, some days - perhaps inevitably - feel like "crap". She is trying to appreciate teeny-weeny improvements, trying to keep perspective. ![]() Radcliffe, a woman with gravel in her guts, a runner accustomed to kicking through the pain barrier like a mule, is learning to be patient. Jan 2014 - hitting the road for a 10-minute jog But it doesn't matter because this is progress. The woman whose iron-willed work ethic meant she ran 140 to 150 miles a week during her pomp has been reduced to gingerly trotting in the park at an octogenarian's pace. ![]() It's then I started to appreciate what a gift it is just to be able to run." "If I walked for an hour I could do a couple of minutes jogging. "My first run back was literally a five-minute jog and it's been a gradual process governed by how my foot was recovering," Radcliffe tells BBC Sport. Shortly after she withdrew from the London Olympics, forced to tearfully watch the women's marathon from a hotel room, Radcliffe underwent a bone graft on an 18-year-old stress fracture.Įight months on and the pioneer of women's marathon running can now put one foot in front of another, a minor triumph, and is ready to up the ante, increase the tempo. Those worst of days are over but so too, she fears, is her ability to do what was once as natural to her as flying is for birds: run. She doesn't have to psyche herself up to walk 200m to collect her daughter, Isla, from school anymore. Now the miserable months spent getting around on a mobility scooter is just a memory. Radcliffe tweeted a picture of her foot after undergoing an operation in California One of the greatest female distance runners in history is no longer shuffling on crutches or wobbling in a surgical boot. ![]()
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