Marathon mission gets better by halves

Photo: John Selkirk

Plenty to smile about: ``It felt easy, so the plan now is to run London and see how the marathon goes,'' says Kim Smith.

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Kim Smith will run next April's London Marathon with confidence and an ambitious target time of 2hrs 25min after breaking the New Zealand half-marathon record in her first genuine attempt at the 21.1km distance.

Smith, New Zealand's best female track athlete, will begin a permanent shift to the road next year, and told the Sunday Star-Times she's now certain to target the marathon at the 2012 Olympic Games.

Having earned a top-10 ranking at 10,000m, Smith had run half-marathons only in training as a teenager in Papakura before entering last Sunday's half-marathon world championship in Birmingham, England.

She finished seventh on a course she described as slippery, somewhat hilly and with plenty of corners in a time of 1:09:35 – which lopped precisely a minute from Nina Rillstone's 2007 national record.

And yet Smith wasn't that pleased.

"I think maybe I could've gone a bit faster," she declared yesterday from her home in Providence, Rhode Island.

"I didn't really know how to race it and I went a bit too easy – I felt way too comfortable at the end. Next time, with more experience, I will push it a bit. It sounds like a long way, but really it was probably the most comfortable race I've had all year."

But the result has given Smith the belief that she can move up to longer distances after dropping out of her debut marathon at New York this year after just 30km. She admits now she should have heeded advice to not run because of a cold, having felt sick after just a mile.

"Last Sunday was a positive step, trying to do New York put me off; it seemed a bit too hard, but this has definitely got me excited to run a longer distance," Smith said. "It felt easy, so the plan now is to run London and see how the marathon goes."

Smith says she will persist with the marathon move only if she shows world-class potential to suggest she may be successful in 2012.

"If I am going to be running slow, there is no point. I would be better being a 10km runner. The only reason to run the marathon is to compete with the top women in the world. I am pretty high up there in the 10k, so I need to be running fast by the time 2012 comes around."

A 2:25 marathon would give Smith a place in the world top 10 for 2009, and although a good 10 minutes shy of Paula Radcliffe's world record, it would be a truly promising start.

London is likely to be Smith's only marathon next year, and she may run the 5000m, or more likely the 10,000m, at October's Commonwealth Games.

For now, though, she'll take a fortnight off and then head to New Zealand for Christmas, where she may stay for a three-month training block. With the average low for January in Providence being -7C, that would be a wise move.