Catherina McKiernan is planning to return to cross country competition, as part of her preparation for the Sydney Olympic marathon.

McKiernan, the top ranked woman in cross country for four years, gradually phased herself out of this event to concentrate exclusively on road running in the last 18 months

Now she aims to go back to her first love at the start of a long, thorough build-up which she hopes, will enable her to arrive in Australia in peak condition next September.

"In a sense, it's reverting to the system we used for my early marathons," she said. "A lot of strength work is done during the winter months and cross country running is an important part of that."

In consultation with her coach, Joe Doonan, she will decide on her racing programme within the next couple of months and as yet, it is too early to speculate if she will compete in the World Championships in March.

Meanwhile, her thoughts are focused on her next marathon in Chicago in five weeks time when she will be attempting to vindicate her rating as world number one, with a fourth consecutive success.

On the evidence of her latest run when she finished seventh in a half marathon in Amsterdam last Sunday, she still has a lot of work to ensure that she is ready for all contingencies when she gets there.

Returning to competition after a long break, she was almost five minutes behind the winner, Tegla Loroupe of Kenya in returning a time of one hour 14 minutes one second, considerably slower than when winning races at this distance in Lisbon and Paris.

In extenuation of that disappointing performance, however, she can point to the fact that she missed three weeks training with a calf muscle injury at a vital stage of her preparations.

That fitted a disturbing pattern, beginning with a foot injury sustained in the Amsterdam marathon last November. Since then, she has struggled with fitness problems. She no longer runs with the footwear insets which were specially designed for her last year and she believes that indirectly, this has helped her regain some of her old confidence.

"I think I am now striding better and generally, I am happier with my training," she said. "Compared with the way my preparations went for the first three marathons, this one has been a lot more difficult.

"If I was to wait until everything was perfect before running my next marathon, I could be hanging around for a long time. So I've just got to go with the situation as it is and hope, that it will not effect my performance too much in Chicago".

The preliminary evidence is that McKiernan may need to be at the top of her form to preserve her unbeaten record for in addition to the Kenyan, Joyce Chepchumba, the field will include the talented South African Elana Meyer.