This Sunday's half marathon in Paris will give an important indication of Catherina McKiernan's fitness as she prepares to defend her London marathon title next month. McKiernan outlined her plans for the coming weeks in Dublin yesterday as Flora announced the second year of a sponsorship deal which will support her training expenses in the build up to the April 18th race.

"It's only in the last few weeks that I've have got back to the sort of training I need for London," said McKiernan. "I'm really looking forward to Sunday's race because it's my first since Amsterdam four months ago and you reach a point where you can get tired of just training all the time."

McKiernan missed four weeks training over the Christmas period through a knee injury but micro-scopic surgery and an adjustment to her shoes sorted the problem. It did, however, necessitate a number of alterations to her training. "To be honest I really don't know if I've done enough consistent mileage for this stage of my preparations. There's still seven weeks to London and if the next few weeks go well then I should be alright. It's just a matter of getting into this race on Sunday to see how everything is going and taking it from there."

"I like everything to be perfect and I suppose I've been a bit spoilt in that way in the last year or so. Still, all the training now is geared towards London although I haven't thought too much about how I'm going to run it. The main thing is obviously to win and even though it's a good field I don't think it will be especially fast. I'm certainly not in world record shape anyway."

The additional problem in recovering from her injury concerned the adjustment to new shoe inserts which are necessary to improve McKiernan's running style. "The old inserts had got worn down and that caused some inflammation in the knee," she explained. "The surgery cleaned up the problem but it took a while to adjust to the new shoes, particularly when it came to increasing the mileage. It was a bit like learning all over again and I found myself having to train on the sand out on Bull Island to get used to them.

"The plan originally was to run those couple of cross-country races in Durham and Dunleer but I only really started back on the first of January and in many ways you expect to be where you finished off. Then the mind starts playing some games because it's as much mental as anything else. If everything is going well and you're winning races then it puts you on a high but otherwise it's very easy to forget the good days and start worrying about the bad days. It's part of the game to have these set backs and thankfully things are looking up now."

Following Sunday's race, McKieran heads for the Algarve in Portugal for three weeks of intensive training with her coach Joe Doonan. Originally they had planned a period of altitude training, similar to her preparations last year, but that was abandoned due to the timing of her injury.

"You really have to be in flying form just to start training at altitude so I wouldn't be ready at this stage to do that. If the weather is good enough in Portugal that should be fine and a bit of sun on my back will be nice as well. I wouldn't be in the same sort of condition now compared to the other three marathons and I don't think experience counts for much either. It's all about the training and preparation, but hopefully all that will go well from here on in."

McKiernan will have her final race over 10 km in Portugal before returning home three weeks before the start in London. She plans to run one other marathon later this year in what will be her final outing over the distance prior to the Sydney Olympics.