Catherina McKiernan was celebrating the biggest win of her career yesterday evening after a run of rich character had enabled her to put some 180 yards between herself and her closest pursuer, Liz McColgan, at the end of the London Marathon.

On a day when another firm favourite, Antonio Pinto of Portugal, came undone in the men's race, which was won by the tall Spaniard Anton Abel, McKiernan kept her rhythm and, just as importantly, her nerve to collect the biggest paycheque of her career.

It was another compelling performance of strength and courage by the Cavan athlete who was recording her 14th consecutive success since deciding to specialise in road running last June and among those moved to eulogise was Sonia O'Sullivan.

O'Sullivan, who watched the race with the international press corps said: "Catherina made marathon running look easy - it was a very impressive performance".

But did it have the ring of a future Olympic champion? "Anybody who can win a race of this importance with that kind of ease is capable of anything," O'Sullivan responded.

Watching McKiernan's last couple of miles, when her legs held up but her stomach gave out, it was clear that suffering was part of the equation, but overall, this was another fine illustration of the mental strength which puts McKiernan apart from so many others.

Her time of two hours 26 minutes 26 seconds, made up of halves of 1:13.55 and 1:12.30, was some two minutes 41 seconds slower than her debut marathon in Berlin last September. But it was still the seventh fastest time in the 26-year history of the event.

Given that four of those times were recorded by Ingrid Kristinsen and another two by Grete Waitz, that's telling testimony to the merit of her run on a morning when the runners, even the strongest of them, were buffeted by strong winds.

And yet had the main group of elite athletes not been guilty of misreading the pace set by Gitte Karzshoj of Denmark and Kenya's Helen Kimaiyo, they would surely have been significantly closer to the two hours 20 minutes mark which continues to attract - and tantalise - female marathon runners.

At one point well into the second half of the race, the group in which McKiernan found herself, which also included McColgan, Joyce Chepchumba of Kenya and mature Belgian athlete Marleen Renders, were a startling 90 seconds behind the leader, Adriana Fernandez of Mexico.

It is to McKiernan's credit that even though she was conceding all the advantages in experience to those around her, she was the one who chose to leave the bunch and go in search of those who were, by now, on different streets. Thanks to a series of superb miles, she eventually got them back in her sights before hitting the front at 21 miles, but it required a supreme effort to achieve it.

To get there, she had to run successive miles of five minutes 23 seconds, 5.34 and finally, one of 5.15. The wages of that were considerable. Remarkably, she was still on her toes being propelled on a long, rhythmic stride until well into the last two miles, but at that point she was suffering from acute stomach pains.

It took physical and mental strength to see her through the crisis, but survive she did and when the race was over and people chose different routes of escape from the legacies of it all, she could reflect that when she needed to be brave, her response was enormous.

It is true that over the last three miles, McColgan took some 19 seconds out of the Irish runner, which begs the question - why she didn't attempt to go with McKiernan when it became clear that something had to be done about closing the gap?

"The simple truth is that I was in trouble at that point with my stomach," McColgan said. "I had missed a watering station at 25 kilometres and I wasn't going particularly well at the time. There is no doubt that the gap was closing over the last few miles and, of course, I was hounded by the thought afterwards that I might have done better by chasing harder, earlier.

"But that's marathon running. Those are the kind of things that cross your mind when you lose, but I made the best decisions I could at the times when I had to make them."

Asked what she now thought of Catherina McKiernan as a marathon runner, she answered curtly: "Well, she won, didn't she?".

Joe Doonan, who confessed that any thought of records - and they were never realistic at any point - went out the door when they saw the conditions yesterday morning, paid tribute to McKiernan's courage in going after the leaders.

"She did it alone and she did it into the wind - that was a very gutsy run," he said. "There was just a hint of panic at one point when I thought she had let them get too far away, but once she had made up her mind to chase them, I knew that for all the pressure, all the expectations building around her, she would win."

The joy of winning the men's race was diminished marginally for Spain's Anton Abel by the fact that he missed the course record by just three seconds when beating El Muaziz Abdelkhadr in two hours seven minutes and 57 seconds. The world champion had only himself to blame for had he decided to chase the Moroccan with more conviction with a mile to go, he would surely have got the record.

The big surprise was the eclipse of in-form Portuguese runner Antonio Pinto in the closing stages, but England's Jon Brown was not disgraced in finishing eighth.

Two other members of Joe Doonan's entourage, Noel Berklely and Tom McGrath, together with Padraic McKinney of Civil Service Harriers, finished in the top 50 out of 30,000 starters.