Anticipation is mounting in New York as the Big Apple gets ready to stage its annual running jamboree through the streets of its five boroughs, from the Verrazano Narrows Bridge on Staten Island to the Tavern on the Green in Central Park. It is the prospect of the elite women that is setting pulses racing ahead of the New York City Marathon a fortnight today. It promises to be the mother of all battles.

At 33, Britain's Paula Radcliffe will be contesting her first marathon, and only her second race, since giving birth to her first child, her daughter Isla, in January this year. As the holderof the world marathon record (by some distance, with the 2hr 15min 25sec she recorded in London in 2003), there will be considerable interest in how she will fare at her specialist distance on the comeback trail from childbirth and with the Beijing Olympics just nine months' distant on the horizon....