Paula Radcliffe: 70 miles a week and a 42-minute 10k while pregnant, the Brit now targets Olympic gold

I'm not a huge fan of Runner's World, but I will buy any running magazine that has marathon superstar Paula Radcliffe on the cover. Well, I'm a Bit, and she's our best runner, male or female.

So the March RW cover story reveals that the 2:15 world record-holder Paula was "down to" 70 miles a week by month 7 of her pregnancy. Her earlier concession had been to slow from 5:30 to 6:30 per mile. And there's a picture of her in full stride, smile on her face, running that 42-minute 10k race in London's Hyde Park 14 weeks before giving birth.

She is already back to great form, wining New York. Well, why wouldn't she be? "I had a baby, not a personality transplant" she says in the RW interview, and is focused on Beijing.

My pal Ross Tucker of The Science of Sport has kind of written off Radcliffe's chances of Olympic marathon glory in Beijing, as it's going to be hot and, he says, the reason Paula had to drop out of her last Olynpic maratrhonn -- in Athens -- was because of the heat.

Me, I've always bought into the "official" version of events, which was that what forced her out in Athens was the gastro-intestinal effects of the anti-inflammatory drugs she was taking for an acute muscle strain. Not the heat. So my best take-away line from RW is that Paula's camp are still adamant: "It wasn't the heat, she and Lough explained repeatedly, afterwards....she was sick, zapped by physical reactions to medications for a painful internal [inner?] thigh swelling that had cropped up during her pre-Athens trainig weeks".