Catherina McKiernan's growing reputation as one of the outstanding road runners in international athletics is to bring her on course for a meeting with Ethiopia's Fatuma Roba and Kenya's Tegla Loroupe next month.

The race, featuring three of the best marathon runners in the world just now, will take place over 11 km in Oporto on June 21st, when esteem, as much as escudos, will be a powerful motivating force.

McKiernan yesterday signed a new shoe deal with Adidas which could earn her £360,000 over the next three years, but an equally big topic at the function was the prospect of her impending clash with the two African runners.

Roba is the reigning Olympic marathon champion after upstaging all the big names, including the Russian, Valentina Yegorova, to finish alone in the intense heat and humidity of Atlanta almost two years ago.

Loroupe, now a mature marathon runner after dominating road racing at shorter distances, won the Lisbon half-marathon three times before missing out through injury this year.

In her absence, McKiernan stepped into the breach to win the race in March, and it is largely on the strength of that performance rather than her win in the London marathon, which earned her of a place in the lucrative Oporto race. Although the distance is considerably shorter than any of the trio would prefer, it still represents a significant test, and McKiernan, seldom given to the extravagant statement, confesses to being excited at the prospect.

"It's a good race to run in and I'm delighted to be involved in it," she said. "Compared to the other two, I don't have a lot of experience in road running, but we'll do the best we can."

The only other definite entry in her diary is the Dublin mini marathon on June 7th. This is the race in which she embarked on her splendid sequence of 14 wins and, no less than Oporto, it now attracts her powerfully.

"There was a fantastic atmosphere on the streets when I ran last year," she sad. "Since then, I have mainly competed abroad, but it will be a good feeling to run in front of a home crowd again."

Neither McKiernan nor her astute coach, Joe Doonan, would speculate on the remainder of her programme this summer, but almost certainly it will not include the European marathon championship at Budapest in August.

Instead, her next marathon is likely to be September at the earliest. At the moment, there are four international marathons from which to choose - New York, Tokyo, Amsterdam and Berlin - and the final decision is likely to be influenced by the money on offer.

Although she hasn't categorically ruled it out, track running will also be low down her list of priorities. And that will disappoint BLE officials who were looking to McKiernan and Sonia O'Sullivan to market the national championships.

Present at yesterday's Adidas reception was another of the company's big name athletes, Grete Waitz, who made McKiernan a presentation to mark her marathon successes in Berlin and London.

"I think I can say truly that I was one of the people who predicted a long time ago that Catherina McKiernan would become a great road runner," she said. "She can still be very competitive on the track if she chooses, but her future is now as an endurance runner."

The Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) will decide at its meeting in Malaysia this week whether to include marijuana on its list of banned drugs.

Geoffrey Haigh, the CGF medical advisor, said the CGF executive board would address "whether we consider cannabis or marijuana to be prohibited drugs" at a meeting tomorrow.

"I think that we have to have a policy as to whether we go with the rules and regulations as they are now, in which case none of the sports in the Commonwealth Games have any rules about marijuana," he said.

Haigh said the matter had been raised publicly after the confusion at the recent Nagano Winter Olympic Games which allowed Canadian snowboarder Ross Rebagliati to keep his gold medal after he tested positive for marijuana.