Paris is O'Sullivan's target

ATHLETICS: After several weeks of injury problems Sonia O'Sullivan is ready to resume serious training in the countdown to the summer track season.

Next Monday she travels to the US for four weeks of high-altitude training at the Laguna Mountain resort outside San Diego, and is still eyeing the World Championships in Paris in late August as her main target for the year.

O'Sullivan missed the World Cross Country championships in Lausanne last month with an Achilles tendon injury, which had severely limited her training since mid-February. Subsequent treatment from Gerard Hartmann, firstly in New Mexico, and then during visits to his sports injury Limerick clinic, has so far proved successful.

"It does look like I'm over the injury now," said O'Sullivan yesterday. "And obviously I wouldn't be going out to the US if I didn't feel like I was ready to train hard again. But right now I'm still only running once a day, and also taking a day off every other few days."

Since returning to her London home in mid-March she has gradually resumed light running, and also done supplementary training on a Nordic ski-machine - which on Hartmann's advice can maintain much of an athletes' cardiovascular fitness. Later today she also plans to have her first track session in several months.

"It will be good to get up on the toes, and get a bit a speed going again. And I'll see then how I recover from that, and have one more check-up from Hartmann at the weekend before leaving for the US. But hopefully I'll get through this week without any problems and then up the workload a good bit next week.

"But I actually don't feel like I'm too far behind schedule. I just feel like I've ended up having a longer rest than I normally would. But I have been doing bits for the last six weeks now and when I get out to the US then I will be training a lot harder.

"And I feel I can run now without worrying about the injury, which is the most important thing. The first few sessions out there will be tough but if I can get through them then hopefully I'll be right back to where I would normally be for this time of the year."

O'Sullivan also used the high-altitude of Laguna Mountain last year in her build-up to the track season, and it proved time well spent. At this stage, however, she hasn't set any short-term racing plans. The only date still highlighted on her calendar is the last week in August, and the World Championships in Paris.

"Paris is the big goal now, absolutely. I think that having missed the World Cross Country and also the World Indoors that I had to set myself Paris as the target, and try to get ready for it.

"So definitely I'm thinking about the 5,000 or the 10,000 metres out there. And probably it will more likely be the 5,000 metres. But there was no point in trying to set any other definite plans for races now. We'll wait until we come back from the US and have a look around then."

Having missed out on the last two editions of the World Championships (Seville in 1999 and Edmonton in 2001) - and in both instances because of pregnancy - O'Sullivan has additional reason to target Paris.

As a stepping-stone to next year's Athens Olympics, where O'Sullivan still has very real ambitions of capturing a gold medal, Paris will also offer much evidence of how close she remains to the top of world athletics.