The 35-year-old Bedford runner admitted defeat earlier today in her battle to be 100 per cent fit for the marathon at the World Championships in Berlin, where she had hoped to regain the title she won in Helsinki in 2005.

 

 

But she is already targeting the World Half-Marathon Championships in Birmingham on October 11 as a way to make partial amends for missing out in the German capital.

 

Radcliffe said: "Now I've put everything right with the surgery [to remove a bunion and then repair a broken toe], I want to put it behind me.

 

"I want to race and race again and don't go over-reaching and put myself on the line in the World Championships unless I'm 100 per cent.

 

"In some ways it's been really hard coming here because you want to race, the team is doing well and you want to play your part in it.

 

"Because I was so close I had go through that process.

 

"It's still going to be really hard watching it but I had to give it every shot to be sure in my mind."

 

Racing in Birmingham in October would fit nicely with the New York marathon a few weeks later, a race Radcliffe has won for the last two years and which she is expected to take part in again.

 

Radcliffe has also won the World Half-Marathon Championships three times, including in 2001, the last time the event organised by the International Association of Athletics Federations was held in Britain, at Bristol.

 

Her last victory in the event was at Vilamoura, Portugal, in 2003 but since then she has run 65min 40sec for the 13.1 mile distance, the fastest time ever by a woman.

 

Radcliffe said: "The World Half-Marathon is a good one.

 

"It would not make up for, but go some way towards [making up for] not being able to get the [British] vest on now."

 

Radcliffe had hoped to run in Berlin after winning the New York City Half-Marathon last Sunday in 69:45 but did not feel she recovered quickly enough to take the risk of competing over the full 26.2 mile distance.

 

She said: "Do I feel I let people down?

 

"If you asked me years ago, yes I would have done.

 

"There is a little tiny bit, but most of it is just disappointment for myself because I wanted to go out there and it was important to win here.

 

"I don't think you can feel that you've let someone down when you've done everything that you could to get there."