Paula hits the road 12 days after giving birth

 

Last updated at 23:46pm on 13th February 2007 Comments

Paula Radcliffe: On top form in 2005

 

 

 

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She didn't become a marathon world record holder by shirking her training.

So less than a fortnight after giving birth, Paula Radcliffe was on the run again.

Her daughter Isla was born on January 17 after a 27-hour labour. But amid all the upheaval a new arrival brings, Miss Radcliffe is keeping her mind firmly on the athletics World Championships in Japan at the end of August.

Revealing her post-pregnancy exercise regime in Hello! magazine, she said: 'After five days I was doing lots of walking and pushing the pram, but I wasn't doing much else.

'I did my first little jog after 12 days and since then I've been running alternate days.'

Miss Radcliffe, 33, will move to a training camp in Colorado at the end of this month, with her mother, Pat, joining the family for babysitting duty.

She and her husband and manager Gary Lough planned her pregnancy to fit around her running timetable, which in the long term includes the Beijing Olympics next year and London in 2012.

In the short term, it means getting back up to speed on the running track.

'I wanted to take at least a month before I got back into my routine,' Miss Radcliffe said.

'I wouldn't think anything of taking up to a month off after a marathon and, in a way, this is similar. What will be different is getting used to training on less sleep.'

She certainly stayed on her toes throughout her pregnancy, even completing a 10km race in Hyde Park at six months.

She was 11 days overdue and had to be induced before giving birth to Isla at the Princess Grace Hospital in Monaco.

She and Lough, a former distance runner, recently moved to the principality. Lough said his wife's extreme fitness delayed the birth.

'Her general muscle tone was just way too strong,' he said. 'She was having all the early signs of labour for about a month and we kept thinking it could be any day. Even when she was induced, it was a very long, drawn-out process, but it was very, very worth it.'

Miss Radcliffe is unsure how long it will take to return to peak form. On the positive side, many distance runners find themselves much stronger after pregnancy.

She has been running professionally since 1991, and won the nation's sympathy when she crashed out of the marathon and the 10km race at the Athens Olympics in 2004.

A year later she was on her way back, winning the London Marathon in two hours, 17 minutes and 42 seconds - a world best for a wom

Holy crap. :stunned: