Britain's greatest distance runner yet has provided a major boost for a team not exactly blessed with a host of medal chances by announcing that she plans to run the New York City Half-Marathon on Sunday.
If her first race of the year after her latest rehabilitation from injury goes according to plan, Radcliffe says she will then fly to Germany for the World Championships to try to win back the gold medal she last annexed in 2005 in Helsinki.
British team officials will be encouraged by the positive messages now emanating from the Radcliffe camp after another troubled year for the 35 year-old, who has not competed since surgery in March to remove a bunion from her right foot.
"Recently, my training has started to go very well," she said on Wednesday. "I'm definitely ready to run a half-marathon and New York will give me important feedback. After the race in New York, I'll consult my coaching and medical teams and we'll make the final determination as to whether I'm ready to run the marathon in Berlin."
Radcliffe had not been expected to be fit for Berlin. She had insisted she would not rush any return to the road. When she hurried back to action following a stress fracture in her thigh last year, she was so far from peak fitness that she could only finish 23rd in Beijing.
This time, having kept her name on the GB teamsheet for Berlin while training at her Pyrenean base at Font Romeu, she sounds more confident. She has been adaping to a new running style after being hampered for a couple of years by the painful bunion protruding from the side of her big toe.
Even if the transatlantic trip may not sound ideal preparation for a marathon attempt seven days later, Radcliffe loves competing in New York, having been unbeaten in six races there since a loss in the Fifth Avenue Mile in1995. Her last race of any sort was in November, when she won a third NYC marathon title.
Radcliffe, twice world champion over the half-marathon distance, will face a quality field on Sunday to test her readiness over the 13.1-mile course from Central Park through Times Square to Battery Park in south Manhattan.
Her opponents include Kenya's defending champion and two-time Olympic medallist, Catherine Ndereba, and America's 2004 Olympic bronze medallist Deena Kastor.
"Paula's late entry adds more suspense, glamour and intrigue," race organiser Mary Wittenberg said. It also adds some potential glamour to a faded-looking British World Championships medal challenge which, despite head coach Charles van Commenee's pronounced target of five medals, offers only heptathlete Jessica Ennis as a realistic gold medal favourite.
With Germany's Irina Mikitenko, the two-time London Marathon winner and the world's fastest this year, having been forced to pull out following the death of her father, Radcliffe would also start favourite on the World Championships' final day in Berlin should she impress on Sunday.
mzungo.org says: A half marathon two weeks before a full?
We think that Paula is in NYC to talk $$ with Mary for running the NYC Marathon on November 1 against Mikki.
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