• Athletics

Radcliffe won't rush back to racing

World record holder Paula Radcliffe has her sights set firmly on London 2012, and as she prepares for the birth of her second child she insists she has learnt from her mistakes.

Radcliffe was the favourite to win the marathon in 2004, but was agonisingly forced to retire with just 6km remaining after suffering side effects from anti-inflammatory drugs. Then, in 2008, determined to break her Olympic duck, she faced a fitness race after breaking her leg just two months before the Games.

But despite her lack of success at previous Games, she is determined to get things right at her fifth Olympics. There is the added incentive of competing on home soil, in the city where she smashed her own world record in 2003.

"Regardless of any of the history that has gone before with me and the Olympics, the fact that it's an Olympics in London, on home soil, you just want to go out, perform well so there's a huge motivation there," she said.

Radcliffe is expecting her second child in September, and she will learn from the mistakes she made after the birth of her daughter Isla in January 2007.

"What I'm not doing this time is setting a race target - last time I did that in my mind and I was very keen to get back into racing after having missed it for a year and just pushed a little bit too hard and ended up injured," she said.

"This time I'm deliberately not setting a target, I'll just get back into shape and when I'm ready to race I will but the big goal is the London Olympics in 2012. Working back from there I've got the whole of 2011 to get my qualifying marathon done."

Radcliffe will take heart from the fact that Olympic champion Constantina Tomescu was 38 when she won in Beijing, and she has even set her sights beyond the London Games.

"As soon as 2012 is finished, if things go 100 percent perfect, that's not me finished competing, hopefully I'll be able to keep going," Radcliffe said. "I know that I'm pushing it at this stage but I'm taking each year as it comes."

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.