At the time of the year when new year resolutions send many an enthusiastic mother to the running track it may be comforting to know that Sonia O'Sullivan is "only" running about 30 minutes a day. And running very, very easy.
For O'Sullivan, though, this fitness regime comes just two weeks after giving birth to her second child. Bit by bit she intends to increase the load, and to be back competing on the world stage by the end of March. Just in time for the World Cross Country Championships in Dublin.
O'Sullivan celebrated Christmas Day in Melbourne with new baby daughter Sophie - born two days earlier. For the athlete and her Australian partner Nick Bideau, the timing couldn't have been much better. Take it easy until the New Year and then start thinking about training again.
Yesterday she outlined her plan to return to competitive running: it will start in Leopardstown when the IAAF world championships come to Dublin - albeit a year later than originally intended - on March 23rd-24th. O'Sullivan remains the only runner to have won both long- and short-course races at the same championships (1998 in Morocco).
"Well I'm definitely thinking about it and I would love to run it," she says. "But I also have to think of it as something in the distance at the moment, and something to look forward to. And I know I will look forward to it even more if I get myself really fit and more ready for it as we get closer to it."
O'Sullivan underwent a similar transformation from new mother to world-class runner in the past. After daughter Ciara was born in July 1999, O'Sullivan was back racing just over 12 weeks later - almost an identical amount of time between the birth of Sophie and the championships at Leopardstown.
On the first occasion she returned for the Great North Run half-marathon in mid-October and clocked an impressive 70 minutes, six seconds - good enough for fourth place. A week later she recorded a world best for five miles when winning the Loughrea Road Race in 24:27.
"Well it is easy to know what to do now, in that you do have to take it very easy. It's very easy to get injured by coming back too soon and so I have been doing a lot of strengthening exercises and stretching and things like that, just to make sure everything is working properly.
"After Ciara was born I didn't really know when I would be able to get back racing, and I hadn't put any date or time on how quickly I could get fit. Now I do have something to compare it to, but at the same time you just can't say how things will go."
Within eight hours of giving birth she was walking around the Masada Hospital in Melbourne, and by Christmas Day she was out for a brisk walk in Melbourne's Botanical Gardens.
"I have done a few runs now, but they were more just to break back in, and they haven't really been training runs yet. But I'm still doing stuff in the gym and on the exercise bike, so I'm going all right. I've run like 20 minutes two days and 30 minutes two days. So I'm on the right track, but just taking it very easy.
"It does take a while just to feel normal again, and to get into some good running. But I think you turn a corner all of a sudden and you feel great. And after a couple of weeks then you can start to think about running fast."
For the Olympic 5,000-metre silver medallist, who turned 32 last November, the higher targets lie on the track this summer. And specifically the European Championships in Munich in August, where O'Sullivan intends to defend one or both of her 5,000- and 10,000-metre titles.
"Definitely, I'm looking towards Munich. I've always run really well at the European Championships, and it's turned out that European Championship year has always been a good year for me. Hopefully, everything will go as smoothly as it did before and by the summer I can be back running really well."
The positive effects of childbirth on female distance runners have been well documented, and O'Sullivan's hunger for running remains undiluted. She intends to leave her winter base in Australia in late February: "But that depends on whether I decide to run a cross country back in Europe in early March or else run a track race down here. That will probably decide how soon I come back home."
She has already made it clear that she intends to continue to run competitively at least until the 2004 Olympics in Athens. This time last year she was probably in as good shape as ever, only for ill-health to get in the way, firstly at the World Indoor Championships in Lisbon and then at the World Cross Country, which was eventually staged in Ostend in Belgium.
Getting another chance to compete in Dublin is something O'Sullivan genuinely appreciates.
