Catherina McKiernan is to prepare in Portugal for her attempt to win the London Marathon for a second consecutive year on April 18th.

McKiernan, who will have her first race in four months next Sunday in a Paris half marathon, was originally scheduled to go to Albuquerque for altitude training.

Instead she will now travel with her coach, Joe Doonan, for warm weather training in the Algarve where she believes the benefits can be just as rewarding.

She will have just one other race before London, over 10 kilometres at a venue yet to be decided, but Doonan believes that she has now made up most of the time lost through a knee injury sustained in Amsterdam.

To date she has met all her targets in training but she acknowledges that she still needs the evidence of a hard, competitive run on Sunday to ascertain her current level of racing fitness.

While McKiernan prepares to face her moment of truth in France, three other Irish athletes, David Matthews, James Nolan and Peter Coghlan, will be in action in the World Indoor Championships in Japan, thanks to the intervention of the IAAf in funding the travel costs.

Matthews and Nolan compete in the 800m while Coghlan, who improved still further on his national record at the weekend, goes for the 60m hurdles event.

Mark Carroll, who had earlier intimated that he might challenge for the 3,000m title, has now decided to withdraw and concentrate on the World Short Course Cross Country Championship in Belfast on March 28th.

The short course teams for both the men's and women's championships will be selected after trials on March 14th but Carroll, currently preparing in America, has requested pre-selection.

Niall Bruton, another of our American-based athletes, has requested similar treatment and while pre-selections detract from the value of trials, he may still be facilitated.

One place in the women's short course team has already been filled with the selection of Brid Dennehy, on the strength of her imposing run in the recent National Championship at Stranorlar.

The selectors are also likely to look kindly at a request for pre-selection by Sinead Delahunty who is looking for a good run in Belfast as a prelude to a successful outdoor track campaign.