You get to the end, pass under the arch, pass by all the fuss - and there you are, completely on your own. Nobody comes near you. That's what I noticed about this World Cross Country Championships. You finish outside the top half-dozen or so and you are lost. Winners and losers get to live in different worlds.

On the Saturday in Portugal I came through in seventh and realised I was all on my own. Seventh place. You just come out, find your gear and make yourself scarce. I wandered about thinking, Where do I go? What do I do? Is that it?

I stood in the middle of this field looking around, wondering who to see and who to avoid. I couldn't see Nick (Bideau) for a minute or two, I was still frustrated and couldn't think straight about the race. So I just stood there scanning the faces.

That was this year's cross country, a weekend full of new experiences for me. Beforehand I was very upbeat about the whole business, but I should have known that it was impossible to predict what might happen there. In hindsight I wasn't realistic in thinking about it all. You can fool yourself a little bit running around in small races in Australia, but it's not the same as lining up against the best in the world.

It's not the fitness, but the whole idea of lining up with a world-class field again, the business of going out hard and being able to adjust instantly to a break if it is made. You forget just how tough these women are and how you have to be so tough yourself. The races before Christmas in Loughrea or the Great North were good runs, but I wasn't putting anything on the line and the result didn't matter that much. Some of the Australian races I ran in were so controlled in terms of pace that I could think through every step. Raw racing with elbows flying and everyone going helter skelter, that takes getting used to again.

It's a hard thing to own up to yourself that perhaps you're not ready for this yet, so the conclusion from Portugal was that maybe I wasn't ready. But it was good to have gone there. I feel better for doing it. It's one of those tough lessons you'd prefer to learn behind closed doors rather than out there in front of your peers and the whole world, but sometimes you have to go out and put yourself on show and take what comes. Then you come home, look at the result and face the hard facts.

After the Saturday race I got lost in one of those strange circles of logic which led to me being at the starting line again on Sunday. Don't ask! I got to thinking that my average for the cross country at that point wasn't so bad, two firsts, two sevenths and a ninth, which averages at about fifth. I figured if I went again I could only improve the average, couldn't possibly finish lower than seventh.

I felt okay, and so I decided to go for the run. I just felt that if I could go out and do a bit better I'd have got more out of the weekend.

Well, over the past few years the second race, the 4k, has been the weaker event, but as luck would have it the 4k was much more competitive this year, and with the course being as fast as it was it was harder again for me. Half-way through and I was having a conversation in my head trying to figure out what exactly the idea had been to run in this race in the first place. The lessons are obvious. First, I have to be ready for it the next time. It's strange, in a road race or a cross country race everyone gallops off full pelt like horses in the Grand National. In track races, people tune into the pace that they should run for each lap and work towards a final overall time. You might have a fast first lap, but then the field adjusts it back if needs be. In a big race people will take turns in the lead and, although things change, it's all fairly controlled.

In a cross country race though you don't have an absolutely precise idea of distance, so we all take off like scared kids going as hard as we can, for as long as we can. No relaxing, no taking it easy. We just go hard the whole time.

On the Saturday in Portugal, I remember, there was a point when I got dropped off and I realised that I wouldn't be catching up. The race was gone just like that. From then on I just wanted it to be over. You know it might be a five-mile race, but the real race might last just for that minute when suddenly the field stretches itself and you are gone. You have to be 100 per cent ready for that moment or else you are nowhere, finishing on your own and wondering where you left your gear.

The second lesson of Portugal relates to fitness and just being patient about it. I'm fit right now and I can run for a long time, but I know I find it hard to be running really fast just yet. That top racing speed is what I'm missing. I haven't done a lot of that sort of stuff for a long time. An injury before Christmas took me a step or two backwards when I was in Australia, and then when I went to Falls Creek to work at altitude the work went so well for me that I think I fooled myself into thinking I had more work under my belt.

It's a question now of building slowly. Training hasn't changed for me. I do the same sessions, except I've thrown in a bit more quick stuff just to get the leg speed back again. I just want to get used to that fast feeling again.

I'm back in training on Tuesday nights in London, which is great. It's always encouraging to go out and run with the people you know best. There will always be somebody ahead of me and somebody chasing me and I can't relax at all. On my own there is a tendency to relax a little bit and not go after it every time. On Tuesday's now I'm pushing myself to the limit and it's good to know that I'm being honest with myself.

We have a few good new people, like Rob Denmark, Keith Cullen and Karl Keska (who finished 13th in the cross country), down at the track now, lots of good men who are even further ahead of me. Gives me more to chase, if you know what I mean.

My instinct after something like Portugal is still to step up the training, to do more and to do it faster. I called up Alan Storey and asked about my "in between" days, the days when I'm not doing hard stuff. At the moment I do 10 miles in the morning and six in the evening, and I thought I might need to step this up. Alan just said no, he thought that was fine for now.

Alan's temperament and knowledge in these things is important. I could think of good reasons not to have gone to Portugal or not to have done what I did there, but I took a chance and found things out that in my heart I needed to know. I got a look at what everyone else is doing, how quickly they are going, how hard they run. Everyone who has been good is still good.

Alan is able to put these things into perspective and funnel them into a plan for the summer. I think I'm not on top of my form right now, not the best I can be. I have to be a little bit patient, and I will be. Alan and I have worked out a good plan for the summer, and in my head now the world cross country races are a closed book. It's hard even to look back and recall what I did and didn't do in detail. We have moved on to the next stage and the challenge for me is to find a path between the emotional highs and the lows. I raised my expectations too much after Australia and can't let them sink too far after Portugal.

I'm looking at 12 weeks of work before the track races get going this summer. I'll take that time to run a lot of miles and do a lot of big sessions. On the way I'll do a couple of road races for fun, just to break up the training. I ran a relay for the club, Thames Hare & Hounds, over in Milton Keynes last weekend. We got a bronze medal for the first time ever in the southern relays. I ran the fastest leg, so I was happy with that, but more importantly we were all happy. It was low-key and it was a break from training and it was fun.

I have a couple of races down on the calendar and we're still working on picking out 1,500, 3,000, and 5,000 metre races later in the summer. I'll definitely do a couple of road races between now and the summer, starting with a five-mile road race in Balmoral on Easter Saturday. I do a lot of running around Hampton Court when I'm in London, so I hope I'll get my own television series about running around Royal Palaces! I'll do another 10k road race somewhere in May, and my first track race will probably be 3,000 metres in June, in Helsinki.

That all seems quite a distance away right now, and I think we'll keep the plans fluid. It's much easier to think about a race when I'm two weeks away from it than it is to start planning at this distance. This summer is a special case anyway. For every race I run there will be a reaction, we'll have to review it, analyse it, go back to the drawing board and decide what would be the optimum next step.

I'll try to handpick races and get really ready for them. That's another change in my thinking. It's not a fixture list, Alan says, we're going for a "plan of action" making "a schedule". It's not the Premier League soccer.

It's been wet and cold in London the past while, but the stretch in the evenings gives you a hint that it's spring going on summer. Other things too. I called up Gerard Hartmann, my physio, and he had gone on holidays. He knows it will be a long, long summer and he's getting his holidays in early. Alan is busy these days with the London marathon, and when that's gone past it will be another sign that the winter business is behind me. Some more weeks of hard work and I'll find myself watching a couple of early track meets on Eurosport in May. I'll know that the time for setbacks and hard lessons is gone and we'll be moving into the country of last chances.

In conversation with Tom Humphries.