Mark Carroll has chosen today's Thanksgiving Road Race in Manchester, Connecticut, as his first outing since his successful summer on the track which brought him a European bronze medal and two new Irish records.

"I've run this race before and it's a good test for how things are going at this time of the year," said Carroll from his Rhode Island base. "The timing is good also since I leave for Florida straight afterwards and will be based down there through to the end of January as it gets a bit cold in New England from here on in."

The five-mile race will include a number of top Kenyans based in America but Carroll has been very satisfied with his training in the last two months. "I didn't take much of a break after the summer because I missed some time in April and basically took a week or two of easy running and got straight back into it," he said. "I've just come off about six weeks of over 110 miles and last week was my biggest ever with 115 miles. The goal is to get as strong as I can this year and be in a position when I can run faster earlier in the race and pick off a few seconds at the end."

Carroll has every reason to be confident about improving his times even if he made huge improvements to take chunks off both the 3,000 and 5,000 metres national records. His seven mins 33.84 seconds for 3,000 metres was ranked fifth in Europe and his 5,000 metres mark of 13 mins 3.93 seconds ranked him third, although 12 Africans have run faster on the world list.

"It's no disrespect to Eamonn Coghlan or Frank O'Meara but their records were far outdated and even still my times need to get lower. The standard now for 5,000 metres is somewhere between 12:50 and 13 minutes and that's exactly what I'm gearing towards. At the end of the day there's only two or three guys getting under 13 minutes and in a championship race there is probably none."

After the winter training in Florida, Carroll has his sights on a number of indoor meetings. "The first major race will be the Millrose Games in February as I've won there for the past few years," he says. "Then I'll probably head to Europe for maybe two or three races and decide on the World Indoors in Japan depending on how it's going then. I mean if I go to Europe and run under 7:40 for the 3,000 metres then I definitely consider the World Indoors."

Meanwhile, Carroll and his coach Jimmy Harvey are experimenting with increased volume in the winter months, training more for a marathon than the shorter distances on the track. "You need an enormous base these days to survive the demands of the track," he admits. "I probably will move up to the marathon by 2001 because I have track season next year and the Olympics the year afterwards and I think I'll have done everything on the track by then."

It is, Carroll admits, becoming increasing difficult to make a living out of the sport, one reason why the temptation of the marathon and the big money that goes with it is more attractive. "To be honest, before this summer I had thoughts about what else I could be doing. My shoe contract expires at the end of the year so what happened this summer will obviously be a great help for the future.

"In hindsight, the way I trained last year, those times and results were not so surprising. It was a bit of a scramble before the Europeans and I think that if I'd run the 13:03 earlier in the season maybe we could have gone under 13 minutes because I really was under-raced."

The injury problems that have hampered Carroll's progression so severely in recent years remain a concern yet under control. "The body is holding up well but if I feel any sort of a niggle then I back off for a few days and so far there's been nothing major to worry about. I'm getting older now as well and can't afford to miss six weeks. Right now it's long and controlled stuff but I'll be dropping those times in the new year as I get closer to the track season.

"Besides, it's important not to get too far ahead of yourself. The bottom line is the world championships outdoors next summer and everything else is secondary to that. I have to be happy with the year but I do feel that if I was a little touch faster then maybe it could have been a different coloured medal. Still, the summer of '98 was definitely a step in the right direction and as I said it was a big relief. You hit those few good races and suddenly it's all worthwhile."