Carrying on regardless

You're not missed really. I was looking at Athletics Weekly today and it was the World Cross Country preview issue and on the front they had all the winners from Marrakech in 1998. I looked twice, and sure enough I was missing. I wonder what they did with me! The world sure keeps turning.

It's like being written out of history. This is the first big event of the year and in a sense I do miss it, but I notice lately that my mind is on other things more and more. Nick tells me results and times from races and a mile up the road on a training run they are lost somewhere in the park. They just slip out of my mind. When I was racing I would remember everyone's times like a computer because I would be measuring myself against them.

It will be a little strange going to Belfast this weekend. There are plenty of other people who they think are going to win the race (I don't think you can look far beyond the big names - Weyermann, Wami, Ouaziz, Radcliffe) and they will be focused ready to race, while just now I'm in another world.

We'll be in Belfast, doing the Kelly Live programme on TV, just seeing people that we know. Quite different from last year. I look forward to the atmosphere though. Cross country has a much more relaxed atmosphere than track and for me the cross country scene always provokes good memories.

Last year was great, but there are other moments. We won the team bronze medal in Turin in 1997 and winning that medal was great although I don't think I realised until afterwards how special it was. I hear the Australian girls' team talking now and they have a fair chance of getting that bronze. When you hear them speaking about it, you realise it's not the easiest thing to do. Before that race in Turin we never really talked about getting a medal. It just happened.

Later I realised how much it all meant to me, but immediately afterwards I was confused. I couldn't work out why I hadn't run better. Going to Turin I didn't really have a plan. I had no real coaching relationship and I was lacking direction. Beforehand, I don't think that I knew that I was in trouble. I can make myself think I am doing the right thing, that I'm on top of it all. It was a few months later that I realised I didn't know what I was doing at all and had nobody to talk it through with. If I see pictures now I still can't understand why I was out in the lead after 400 metres. I wonder what was I thinking. Ninth wasn't bad but back then I couldn't accept it. It helped me in the following year though. I remember saying to myself that if I can finish ninth when I have no idea what I am doing, well there's a chance of improving considerably. By then I was working with Alan Storey who has had such a positive influence on me in the last two years. That all really came about as a result of the disappointment at finishing ninth in 1997.

Cross country has always been there as a thread running through my career. Lots of good memories. In school I ran the cross country every year. I remember I won the Munster schools' race in my first year at Cobh Vocational School. They didn't have All-Irelands for that age which was really disappointing. I was sure there was going to be another race, another step up the ladder the following week. Later, I remember finals in Roscommon, Dublin, Belfast lots of places. Drives with Mr Hennessy, Jim Hennessy wasn't even the PE teacher, but he was involved in organising the sports, the logistics bit of getting teams to where they were supposed to be, which was grand if there was a hurling team or football team going somewhere, with running it was usually just me.

A number of times he drove me down to Dungarvan for the Munsters. I would walk to the top of the hill halfway between his house and my house on the way out of Cobh. Strange. I couldn't talk to him about school or anything, but he was unbelievably nice. He was involved in woodwork or metalwork, something in that area where girls didn't have a place, so I never knew what to say to him. My first memory of him was one day in school when I was running down from one end of the school to the other and he stepped out from behind a door with the stern face and the wagging finger.

"Miss O'Sullivan. Stop your running. You'll walk back down to the bottom of the hall and you'll walk back up."

Other journeys were even more epic. I went from Cobh to Belfast one day. I remember I had to get myself to Fermoy for a start. I'm not sure, but I think my Dad brought me and then there was a bus from Fermoy to Belfast. What a journey. We stayed overnight, I ran the next day and came back all the way the next night. Back then in the schools, the senior race used to be shorter than the intermediate race, which I could never figure out. They used to say it was harder to get older girls to run - which I couldn't figure out either.

It was just part of school life. What I did on Saturdays. I'd do all my homework on Friday and come Saturday I'd be off. I remember Saturday evenings getting home and I would have a pain in my head from going all day long. Up early, driven somewhere, running around in the mud. Come back and you'd need a bath. You'd be hot from being in a car or a bus all day long and you'd be caked all over with mud. First thing was to wash your shoes. My mother was strict about me getting my spikes cleaned straight away. She lived in fear of me just throwing them in the washing machine.

Great days and wet days. When I was 13 we went up to Monaghan and there was this massive hill up there. It rained forever and there was just mud all over the place. Literally up to your knees. I travelled up with another girl, Johanna McCall, who was a sprinter and a long jumper. She still managed to get a bronze medal for Cork in the cross country. All that happened to me in Monaghan was that I lost my shoe in the mud. Another time we were in Navan for a junior cross country. Geraldine Hendricken won that race. I was second. I lost my shoe there as well. I was trying to look cool in those days and I had bright red socks on, not your small little ankle socks, these were grand and very long. Of course the shoe came off in the mud, the sock got muddy so it was flapping all over the place with every step. Not cool. Just silly. I had to stop to pull it off.

Then I was running with one bare leg. The other had a long bright red sock on it. This was years before Flo Jo. A bright red sock and a shoe on one leg. I was so annoyed. Eventually I had to stop and take the other shoe and sock off. I finished in bare feet through the snow. Frozen. Couldn't move. All covered in mud with no dressing-room to go to, waiting for the feeling to come back into my toes. Happy days! Villanova was very different. Half the time they didn't even wear spikes because we were racing on some very fine golf courses. It took me two years to get the hang of it. The first year I was injured, but we won the NCAA title three of the four years I was there. (Marcus O'Sullivan's team won this year and Marcus was made coach of the year).

The first time we won was in 1989 in Annapolis, Maryland. I was 25th, but Annapolis is quite near Villanova so lots of people came out to support us which made it exciting. The following year was great. I won all the races through the season and won the NCAA individual championship in Tennessee. I came back in 1991 in Arizona and won again but only just. It was one of those races where you assume you're going to win then you nearly don't make it. There was a team-mate from Villanova, this little slip of a runner, Carol Zajak, who wouldn't give up. Towards the end of the race, I was coming up to pass her right where her mother was standing behind the ropes shouting "Aw c'mon let Carol win this one." Bit of a panic for a second before I got away. Sorry Mrs Zajak.

That all seems so long ago. The other night I did my first gym workout since I got back from Australia. I'd taken a week off, but Brenda, a friend I'd been doing gym sessions with in Australia, had also arrived back in London so we went down to the Lensbury club in Teddington. Afterwards I walked home with the stopwatch on it. That provided a shock. It's the first time I've walked that journey instead of running it and I reckon it's easier running. I spoke to Alison Wyeth, who I used to train with when she lived down in London. Alison is now a mother and we chatted about the business of training during pregnancy. She told me about the things she did, how she felt when running. She told me about heart rates, wearing a monitor and keeping it below 160 beats all the time.

Recently I sent a fax to Liz McColgan who told me that she stopped running about six weeks before the birth of her daughter because she got to a point where she just felt she'd done enough and it was just going to sit back and enjoy the rest.

Liz got back into training 11 days after having the baby and ran in the world cross country less than four months later. She finished second. She even ran a road race within a month of the birth. It shows what is possible. People keep stressing that everyone is different though, you can't compare one person's experience to the others. So I'm just keeping fit and enjoying it immensely so far. Although watching the racing this weekend could be a severe test!

(Sonia O'Sullivan was talking to Tom Humphries)