Sonia O'Sullivan is now likely to launch her Australian racing programme in February following a recent setback in training.

O'Sullivan arrived in Australia three weeks ago determined to achieve the Olympic 10,000 metres qualifying standard before the Christmas break.

To achieve this goal, she persuaded Irish Athletics Association officials to bring forward the start of the time frame for qualifying by a month, to December 1st, only to discover within days of her arrival that her training schedule had to be revised.

O'Sullivan, who gave birth to her daughter Ciara in July, was told to rest for a fortnight after going for a medical check-up, preparatory to stepping up her training programme.

"I was told it would be advisable to rest and then build up my back and pelvic muscles," she said. "That is where I'm now at and hopefully I'll soon be ready for more work.

"It's not an injury as such and to that extent it's not worrying. What it has done, however, is to force me to postpone races I would rather have run sooner than later."

Tentative plans are for O'Sullivan to start her programme in Melbourne and then travel on to Sydney's new Olympic Stadium on February 24th to compete in the 10,000 metres at the Australian national championships.

This would serve a two-fold purpose: it would enable her to familiarise herself with the Olympic stadium and give her valuable experience in running the 10,000 metres.

O'Sullivan's only previous track race at the distance brought her the European Championship at Budapest two years ago, but she acknowledges the need to continue learning the event.

"Like every other track race you have to learn how to run the 10,000 metres," she said. "I was so focused on tracking the leader in Budapest that I didn't really know what was happening around me.

"I still need to know more about the event and how best to run it. That will be part of the exercise when I race in the Australian championships for I am unlikely to have many chances of running at the distance later in the year."

In the meantime, O'Sullivan is off to Falls Creek in northern Australia next week for altitude training. After Christmas in Victoria, she plans to return to Falls Creek for the bulk of January.

"This is the kind of programme which got me into the best condition of my career before the World Cross Country Championships in Morocco in 1997 and hopefully it's going to work just as well for me now," she said.