Dandenongs. I've got four Kenyans in the car with me and another five in the car behind. It's Sunday morning and we're headed for Dandenongs.

I saw an emu there once and a couple of kangaroos but Nick, who grew up on visits to Melbourne's national park, swears he's never seen any of those things.

This is our normal Sunday run. To picture the place think rain forests. It's ferns and vines and it's wet and moist. Usually it's warm and steamy but today it's unusually cold and at the end of the run the skies open and it pours with rain.

I'm on my own now. I've skipped off on a different route to the Kenyans. Today I've decided to run further but to dodge some of the more strenuous hills that the lads are pounding. I know I'm going to finish after them, cold and soaking wet. When I get back to the car park my Kenyan friends are all there before me. It feels odd.

I can see them as I come running towards them, they are all packed into the two cars and the windows are all steamed up with the lads sweating away inside waiting for me to arrive.

I open the car door and, sure enough, it is the scent of Kenya inside. Strange to have them all waiting for me like that. Sunday morning runs in Dandenongs. Some things stay the same and some things are a little different.

I've been back in Australia since early January and the phone line is humming with so many questions, rumours and mysteries. Things are a little different alright. It's a strange world . . .

As long as you are on the treadmill doing your business as usual people leave you alone. But drop out of sight for a minute and the world has to have an explanation. And a note saying when exactly you'll be coming back.

It's old news now that I have decided to ease down on competition for a while. I didn't think that decision would cause much fuss but it seems I need to explain.

1999 was always going to be a strange year for me, full of `been there, done that' experiences. Obviously the World Cross Country loomed early on but I've won it before and it comes around every year and in the year before an Olympics I felt I didn't need the pressure again. Many of the same things could be said about the Grand Prix circuit races and the World Championships. So decisions had to be taken.

I wanted a quiet year with space for other things. I look back on 1995, the year before Atlanta, and I know that I overdid things, so I wanted to get it right this year.

There are other factors too. When you are an athlete people see you one-dimensionally, like a cardboard cut-out. They only see me running and they only hear me talking about running, but life doesn't entirely revolve around running. There are other things in my life and always have been. I have other objectives and goals and one of them has been to have a family and it so happens that 1999 is a good time to do that.

I'm inclined to just skip on from there really. I've just come from the swimming pool, I'm fine and I'm happy and I have the feeling that I don't really need to say anything about being pregnant. No explanations or details or dates.

I'm not going to be doing interviews about it or go giving blow-by-blow accounts. I don't think there's any explaining or talking to do really. Anything there is to know is either obvious or private but people keep wanting to interview me about why I've decided to take time off but there are some things that don't need to be in the papers or on the radio.

The way I see it is if I was going to do something else other than run for the year - get a job, say - I wouldn't feel it necessary to explain to everybody what it was that I was doing. I give one piece of info, that I'm taking it easy, and everyone wants more. There is no cut-off line and sometimes I find it hard to understand why that is.

People have called me up asking me about the decision to wind down competition but nobody has asked me the question directly so it's been quite easy for me to be ducking and diving. I'd be happy to keep everything quiet but other people have been getting pestered.

My father at home gets people asking him about me all the time because there are scraps of rumours going about and the people in my agent's office in London have had to hum and haw a bit too. Then my coach Alan Storey is involved with so many runners and runners definitely like to talk and gossip and Alan has had to be so evasive.

So instead of keeping track of who has been told and who hasn't been told it's easier to get it out of the way and hope it gets to be old news quickly. I usually talk about races and training and I'm happy enough to get back to that.

So far, I'm enjoying the experience. When Nick and I first found out, I wasn't quite so relaxed and confident but now having talked to a lot of people I have the happy feeling I get when I've decided what races and training I'm going to do in a normal year when I have my plans and schedule settled in my head. It's a different challenge to most years, a life challenge I suppose.

Early on I wasn't feeling my usual self and I took a while to get used to the whole idea. I spoke to a few other girls who had run during pregnancy though and they encouraged me with their experiences. They'd run as well if not better after training. In Australia just now there are a number of girls who have come back from pregnancy and they have been setting personal bests and doing very well.

That eased some worries and now I'm looking forward to things greatly. I've been thinking about a family for a while, I'm 29 years old now and when you are a runner there is no perfect time. You always want to do your best and you always feel that you will do better next year.

This year just seemed like a better bet than the year after the Olympics. I'm younger and I've already won everything that I could win this year and the season ahead would just be practising for next year in one sense. I went over the top in 1995 getting ready for Atlanta. For Sydney I'm hoping that everything will fall into place.

One of the first jobs was the phone calls. It's always hard to tell people when you've changed your plans. I thought it was important to let people who expected me to run races that I wouldn't be competing. Thankfully BLE didn't express much disappointment or fuss when I rang to tell them that I wouldn't be going to Belfast for the cross country race. I thought they were very supportive.

Generally everyone has made me feel good about it. There was no offence taken that I wouldn't be at their big event. I know that they know I've gone out and run for the team plenty of times in the past and there are just times when you have to just say that you are going to sit this one out.

Incidentally I haven't quite taken the year off. We are in the second month now for instance and I'm doing basically what I've always have done. I've run two races so far this year, one in the Phoenix Park on New Year's Day and a fun run here in Melbourne on Australia day. I have a 100 per cent record of beating Nick in 1999.

I don't know when I'll compete again but I intend it to be this year and I have a few races I'm eyeing later in the year.

At this stage though my day is still fairly routine around running, the big difference is there is no urgency to it. I run and sometimes I feel terrible or I get frustrated because I can't run fast. There is something inside me which doesn't allow me to run flat out like I normally would. It's one of those natural developments. You get just a little bit more cautious and aware.

Take last night. The Niketown shop here in Melbourne had the first of a series of these events where they get athletes together to run, and they stir it up a bit telling them that as this was our first run whoever won it would be setting the course record and with that we started taking off. Yet as soon as people got real competitive I kind of backed off a bit and said `okay, okay, I'll just be the fastest woman'.

I feel removed from racing right now. When I go to the internet looking for results from races I feel a bit detached from it all. It doesn't affect me to see what times other people are running. I'm in a different zone.

When I run, if I feel good in the middle or end of the session I really get going. I wear a heart rate monitor all the time to make sure I'm not doing anything too mad and the other important factor is not to be out there when it is very hot. The doctors reckon that so long as I'm not doing anything extra strenuous and not feeling aches and pains I can go along as normal. If I feel anything odd I can walk home or whatever.

Most athletics people here have no idea about me being pregnant. I was at the track today with one of the girls and every time I see her she is asking when I'm going to do a proper track session. So today I told her and she had that look on her face, you know, `wow, you're doing something besides running'.

There are other reactions. My mother is in Australia at the moment seeing my sister Gillian in Brisbane and my brother Tony who lives in Sydney and having a fit because she doesn't think I've gained enough weight. She's not too worried about the next track session We're all getting away somewhere quiet this weekend heading to Couran Cove which is a training resort built by Ron Clarke, who was a world record holder many moons ago. He's organising the trip for me to see a few sights and check out the place with a view to the Olympics. I can do things like that this year because there is no pressure or intensity for me just now.

The excitement about the Olympics is building steadily here. People are a little in shock about the IOC bribes scandal being so close to home - they see the whole issue as revolving around Sydney.

We athletes never really know about that kind of thing: it just happens somewhere above us. Of more importance I suppose was the IOC doping conference, I didn't read too much about it last week. I don't really go looking for drugs stories in the papers. It seems to me that the authorities just make it easier all the time for people to cheat. The bans get smaller and smaller so it seems more worth while to people to take the risk.

People who take drugs are a mystery to me. Having it on your conscience or in your head all the time must be hard work. I'd hate to be lining up at the start line and worrying about getting tested.

I never think about tests till the person walks up to me with the test form. Then it's just a bit of a hassle having to wait around. You get a little concerned handing it all over because you're not sure where it goes. I put the documents in my shoe bag usually and usually I find them a month or so later and stuff them back in. When they are about six months old I throw them in a corner somewhere.

I was tested recently. It's a regular thing to get tested out of competition down here. I wasn't sure when they called if I should fill in my extra details on the form. I'd just found out myself, so I decided to say nothing and just hold on to the documents. Internally nothing was going to change too quickly if they called me up about it.

Anyway they never came back with a query or anything so I don't know if they just don't test for pregnancy or if they are off confirming the news to the tabloid journalist who has been chasing poor Christy Wall of the BLE in the street looking for my number in Australia.

That's one race won for this year anyway. Telling the news in my own time and my own way.