Big weekend last weekend. A 10 km road race in Milan might not look like much when I get to the end of the summer but right now winning last Sunday morning and looking at a few of the girls I beat, means a lot. The time and the place were just right. It was the first time I had been back to Milan for a few years. It was the Grand Prix final late in the summer of 1996, when I was trying to salvage something from that Olympic year. I think it was in Milan that I realised there was nothing that could be salvaged. By the time I arrived I was just going through the motions. I'm not sure exactly what I thought I could get out of running there.

How things have changed. My memory from four years ago is only that we stayed out in the middle of nowhere. This time around on my first morning up I went out for a run and realised I was right next to the track we'd been at in 1996. I couldn't believe I'd stayed so near the town in 1996. Then again, when I was there in 1996 I didn't really care where I was.

I knew what I was doing in Milan this time, I knew why I was there. The winning time was a surprise. I'd seen a video of the course beforehand and a lot of it was on cobblestones, so I assumed it couldn't be too fast. As it happened I ducked under 31 minutes, the fastest I've ever run for 10 km. Training had been going quite well in the period before going to Milan. I ran in the Netherlands in a race that was supposed to be 5 k but it wasn't - it turned out to be longer. Immediately afterwards I had an hour run. Then as usual I trained on Tuesday and took it easy the rest of the week. All in all, with a decent warm-down run after the race the clock was running at over 100 miles for the week which will be of long-term benefit. One of the bonuses of last Sunday was beating Tegla Loroupe and Derartu Tulu, two world-class runners. You know going into a road race that if you don't win it's not the end of the world, but afterwards it makes you feel good to look back at who you beat.

For me it gives me that much more confidence about being back to where I was a few years ago. There was a point last Sunday where I caught back up to Tegla and I knew from looking at her that I was feeling so much stronger than her. That was a good feeling. It was an odd race for me in lots of ways. We started and finished in the stadium. On leaving the stadium I went straight to the front. We were going at a decent pace and I felt at that time I had a lot of the old racing edge back. I was about 50 metres, maybe less, behind at one stage and Derartu was in between us. Derartu had come past me and she'd said "C'mon Sonia, let's go" as she passed me and chased down Tegla. I wanted to go but I couldn't. My legs wouldn't do it. I think it was the cobblestones we were running on. Normally when I run well I can stick like glue to whoever is at the front. But Tegla was clearly more comfortable on the surface and before you know it there is a gap.

When we got back onto regular road I was fine again and I could tell that the game was up when I went past Derartu and caught Tegla. She just wasn't racing me or responding in any way so I stayed with her for a while and decided that after 8 k I would go hard again.

And that's how it went. There were 300 metres of track inside the stadium to be covered at the finish and I went flat out like in a track race. I'd been watching the clock and was determined to get my time under 31 minutes. I finished in 30:59. Phew. A lot of people speak to me about the African runners. When people visualise distance runners they see African runners at the head of the field every time.

I don't know why, but I never feel intimidated by that thought. Africans have dominated the men's events and their women are catching up, but you don't go into a race and say "Uh-oh, there are two Kenyans and an Ethiopian here today we're all competing for fourth". They are all individual athletes and when I'd look at the competitors' list before a race I'd just look at Tegla or Derartu as being tough athletes who can be beaten if you run fast enough.

The night before the race in Milan we had dinner with Derartu Tulu. She's a really nice woman and she has a daughter who is 21 months old, so we swapped stories. As it happened Ciara had come to Milan with us. Nick was away. I was originally just going to Italy for the day and intended to leave Ciara in London but the race organisers needed me in Milan early for a press conference, so my mother came over with us.

She's a pretty frequent flyer by now and she's getting more adventurous on the plane too, climbing over the seats in front and pulling the hair of the people in front of her. Ciara that is. Not my mother.

I met Derartu again in the lift just when I was leaving for Milan Airport and she was going out for a run. I have to admit I was curious to put some figures and facts to the myths about African runners. I know, say, from the Kenyan guys who train in London that a lot of the work they do when they are at home is often done in fairly remote places and they say they're not entirely sure of the precise distances they run each day.

The culture is so different and very few people have gone to the bother of finding out about it. So I asked Derartu Tulu about coaching and what she was going to do that day. The answers were kind of disappointing and kind of reassuring. She has a coach who sets out her schedule for the time she's away. On the day I was leaving Milan she was just going out for a short run in the park. No big mystery there. Tegla Loroupe is a different sort. She would consider herself top of the heap when it comes to road racing and she's probably right. She wins a lot more than she loses. People in athletics watch her and can't quite work out what her gameplan is. She does things her own way. She'll run a marathon and race again within a week. She'll mix up her distances and she'll travel all around the world for road races. She just seems to be out there enjoying herself. It was good to beat both women but I doubt if it will cause either of them to lose much sleep. They aren't the sort of athletes who once you have beaten them once, you know you can beat them forever. Anyway road races never leave the same sort of scars that defeats on the track do. I get the feeling that beating them meant more to me in the end then it did to them. I'm really happy with how I've decided to do things this year. I can stay at home every second weekend and get some training between the races.

I'll sit down with Alan Storey soon to be debriefed on the whole Milan thing. I think Alan is beginning to feel reassured about my form. He hadn't seen me for a few months before the World Cross Country Championships and had been training me by remote control from London while I was in Australia. Back a while ago when I was thinking about running the Milan race Alan thought it would help me learn a little more about the 10,000 metres distance. It's quite a long way and I don't know enough about the race yet to mentally break it down into segments. I know how to break things down in a 5,000 or 1,500 metres race.

The 10,000 is a different experience. It's a long way to go in terms of not letting your concentration go during the race. I know on Sunday there were times when I wasn't concentrating. Alan had said before I left that if I don't win it wouldn't be big a deal.

When I fell behind I remember thinking that if I don't catch up on these two I'll have to train harder. I knew then that I was more distracted than I should be.

That prolonged level of concentration is something I don't know enough about yet. The European Championship is the only 10,000 I have run in bigtime race conditions and that was different because when it's a big championship race it's easier to concentrate. For now the plan is to keep going forward getting races at distances from 1,500 to 5,000 metres under my belt. I feel at this stage that I should be able to run as well as I have before at most distances. The 5,000 metres is the obvious one that I should be able to improve on. Sometime during the summer there may be a race that will give me the opportunity to find out just how fast I can run, but I won't be losing sight of the target which is to get ready for the Olympics, and that is what my racing programme will be based on.

I want to see how I do in the various events and see how I match up against the contenders for the races I am qualified for the Olympics in. When it comes to Sydney I'll run the race in which I have the best chance of getting a medal. You can run equally well in all distances, but what all athletes want is to bring back a medal from the Olympics so I'll need to decide where my best chance lies.

All summer people will be proving things while other people will be hiding. I have to weigh it up carefully and at this stage I don't think I'll make a decision until September. I don't need to know until I go to Sydney what race I'm running in. The next big outing for me is the start of my track season in Helsinki in a few weeks. And of course I have the Women's Mini Marathon in Dublin in two weeks' time. That will fulfil another little ambition for me. I'm going over to appear in a shop for Nike who are part-sponsoring the race so it fits in nicely. Forty thousand women running around Dublin. I've always said I'd like to be part of that.

So I'll be there, not going for any world records, just out to enjoy the event, run around and meet some of Ireland's women runners before the stakes start getting higher on the road to Sydney.

In conversation with Tom Humphries