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ING NEW YORK CITY MARATHON

November 2, 2008

Paula Radcliffe

NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK

RICHARD FINN: Our defending champion returns again and wins. Third time here in New York, third time for Paula. She moves into second place behind Grete Waitz who had nine and who presented Paula something special today on our all-time list. We'll have a comment from Paula about today's race and then we'll open it up for questions.
PAULA RADCLIFFE: I guess just I'm really pleased. It was my goal to come here and to win it for a third time, and just go a tiny little way to the way of achieving what Grete achieved, so I'm happy to do that. Thank you very much to all the people of New York for all of the sports we got out there.

Q. Mile 21 or so, you ran a 5:12 mile and you put Ludmila away. Did you purposely put the hammer down there and try to finish off it?
PAULA RADCLIFFE: Not really. I think it was always my goal. I kind of talked about it with my husband before and said, I have to run negative splits this time. So really feel comfortable halfway, comfortable at 1st Avenue, and then the last six miles start to pick it up a little bit. So that just coincided with the fact that there were two of us when I decided to pick it up. Whereas, once we turned to come back along Central Park, it was a lot more sheltered and there was a lot less wind exposure, so I think it also just came together.

Q. Is it mentally comfortable knowing that the people with you late in the race, one was a 40-year-old woman who had never run a marathon?
PAULA RADCLIFFE: The marathon is a well-known event so you have to respect everybody and look to the unknown all the time. There was a stage when I looked around and I was comfortable with it either coming down to a close finish or being able to up the tempo a little bit. But it was more about how I was feeling myself, and I did feel comfortable. I knew that what I -- I kind of worked out in my head the way the wind had been blowing that it wouldn't be too troublesome down the last six miles.

Q. We talked on Thursday and you said you like the hard training, and the best part of running is running hard. You ran into the wind the whole way today, you ran increasingly tougher splits, negative splits each mile. Was it basically just a contest of wills, let's see who's the toughest, hardest person in the field?
PAULA RADCLIFFE: Not really. I think it was just almost by chance I kind of ended up at the front. Nobody else wants to lead across the bridge, so it was really windy across that bridge. I looked back, and it was just like everybody was in single file behind me. It was like, come on, we've got the whole road. It was coming from the side, anyway.
Every time I dropped back, nobody else wanted to lead. At drink stations sometimes people would go in front, but it didn't seem like anybody else wanted to lead, and I kind of didn't feel comfortable going too slow. I wanted to just keep a controlled tempo while not taking too much out of me, making sure that I was very comfortable at the half. Like I say, I was able to pick it up the last six miles.

Q. (Inaudible).
PAULA RADCLIFFE: Into the wind, yes, but I really was trying to keep some back.

Q. There's a lot of people who have given you advice on what you should do and you probably don't need this advice because you're doing well on your own, but a lot of people have said if you really want to win in 2012 maybe at a certain point you should start backing off and not racing as hard. As you look to 2009 and 2010, what do you think you will do? Do you think you will start to back off or continue to try to run two marathons a year?
PAULA RADCLIFFE: Well, the way I look back, the last three years has been really backed off, not by wanting to but imposed by injury. So I kind of feel like I really want to get out and race more but shorter distances, so yeah, I wouldn't go -- certainly wouldn't go above racing two, three marathons a year.

Q. Are we going to see you in Boston any time soon?
PAULA RADCLIFFE: I would really love to race in Boston. I guess my problem is that it's always so close to London, and London has such a special place in my heart. But yeah, I really want to go to Boston, I really want to go to Berlin. I would like to sort of go to all the big five.

Q. (Inaudible).
PAULA RADCLIFFE: Well, yeah. I mean, I think any competition that I do, it's important to go there and to do my best. I guess the problem is with the marathons, you can't run them all the time. You have to pick and choose, otherwise my body isn't going to get to 2012. We have to pick the ones that fit in with the schedule the best.

Q. When you won last year, you picked up your young daughter and your picture was all over, and it kind of became a poster for a mom. Were you inspired by that?
PAULA RADCLIFFE: Yeah, I mean, it's very flattering and it's a big honor. I guess the key thing is that I feel the running has brought me a lot as a person, and I feel very fortunate for that, and also the health benefits, the awareness of my body, and if I can share that with other people -- most important to me is kids, just to be able to get kids out there and see what support I can give them as a person.

Q. Since you are free of injury at the moment (Inaudible).
PAULA RADCLIFFE: It does, yeah, it does. It comes round once every four years, and you have to get it right. Constantina got it right, and unfortunately I wasn't able to. So yes, it does make it frustrating because you think why can I get it right all the time in New York and I can't get it right there. But sometimes you have to take what life deals you, I guess, and just do the best that you can.

Q. (Inaudible).
PAULA RADCLIFFE: No, I took a gel pack and I got it stuck to my face, so I was trying to get it off, and then I threw it and it hit Kara, so sorry, Kara. It wasn't my inhaler. I took my inhaler at the start and it was well under control. I didn't need to take it after that.

Q. Do you think you're still getting better at the marathon?
PAULA RADCLIFFE: I definitely think that I'm sort of getting to know the New York course better, and I do definitely believe that it's a course that running negative splits on is a little bit easier than running it the hard way, by going out -- I felt like year like I should have been able to run negative splits and close faster, but in the end I couldn't. So I definitely feel it was easier running the way I did today, and it was windier out there, so it was probably faster than last year.

Q. You came around in Columbus Circle really pouring on the speed and really charging that last hill toward the finish. What were you thinking?
PAULA RADCLIFFE: The crowd was so loud, but nobody was telling me any distances, so I had no idea how far I had. Gary said to me, why didn't you pull the nose strip off. I would have looked like an idiot doing that if someone was right behind me and I was slowing down to do that. At that stage whether you run hard the last 400 meters or whether you back off isn't going to make a lot of difference to recovery. I needed to keep my head down and close it strongly. I was pretty sure that I was away, but I didn't know that I had two minutes.

Q. The last two years you were pressed right to the line, and I was going to ask if it was nice this year being able to safe or the win.
PAULA RADCLIFFE: Yeah, I kind of felt like I was away. I certainly knew there wasn't someone right on my heels, so it was nice, it was safe or that because I didn't really have to dig everything out, but at the same time I didn't want to back off in case there was someone closing. But it was nice, and I was thinking about two miles to go, at least it's a little bit calmer for Gary this year than it was the last two times.

Q. Can you gauge what sort of shape you're in?
PAULA RADCLIFFE: You know, it's hard. We definitely threw a minute away for a start on the fist mile because that was like 6:30-something. Yeah, I definitely think I could have run a course record in calm conditions, but the conditions are what the conditions are on a day, and you can't go guessing what times might have been. Like I said earlier in the week, the most important thing for me was to come here and win the race. But I do believe that women should be able to run under 2:20 on this course.

Q. You don't do anything haphazardly. What was the point of not looking back and not knowing what's going on around you?
PAULA RADCLIFFE: If you look back and you put your foot in a pothole, it's pretty stupid. I guess that's something that's been drummed into me since I was a little bit when I was running races. My dad used to say, never look behind you, it's a sign of weakness. I think all the time that you're feeling strong, I knew that I was slowing down and I wasn't really sort of letting the time go. So for someone to catch me, they would have had to really up the pace. So there wasn't really a whole lot of point in looking, apart from the little sneak look ahead at Columbus Circle.

Q. Given that there seems to be a finite number of great marathons in anybody's body, do you think that it was a definitive moment that if you could not run well here following Beijing that this might have been a sign that you were in a downturn, and does this victory tell you that you're not?
PAULA RADCLIFFE: For me or for everyone else? I think if I hadn't performed, I think a lot of people would have said that. But I don't think I would have believed that. Certainly I felt very strong in this training period leading into this. So I kind of just -- I guess you're right, there is a finite number of good marathons in anyone, but I do believe that that number varies person to person, and you never know until you kind of are on the down side that you're on the down side. So I'm grateful for each one and hope hoping it's going to hold.
RICHARD FINN: Three of them here, Paula, can you rank them, look back at first, second and third and say anything about how they're different, how they're the same?
PAULA RADCLIFFE: Well, they're all different and they're all very special in their own right. I think in 2004 it was very key there for me to come here and to really -- I think what I most care about is that I really enjoyed the race and I came away from here really happy, and I'm back enjoying my running and not in the real low down that I experienced after Athens.
I think last year it was kind of -- just showed me that I kind of appreciated winning and just running a whole lot more because we had Isla in our lives, as well, so that was kind of special to me to get back to racing after such a long break through the pregnancy and then with the injury afterwards.
I think this year for it to be the third one, and like I say, Grete was a huge inspiration to me, so even be one third of the way to what she did, I'll have to keep going to try to get to nine.

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