Only steamy weather will dampen sizzling times

afternoon on Sunday, there's likely to be another 40,000 or so people convinced of the impact of global warming. The 2007, and 27th, London Marathon promises to be the hottest on record - both meteorologically and metaphorically.

The former will, of course, affect the latter, as the race organisers again attempt to assemble not only the biggest marathon field in the world, but also the best.

But with the weather forecast for Sunday promising an unseasonably hot 24 degrees, allied with 40 per cent humidity, even one of the best quality fields ever assembled may find it a little bit too steamy as they trace their way along the River Thames and attempt to add to the seven World records set in London since the race was first staged in 1981.

From World Cross champion to London Marathon winner?

And yet, with all that said, the women’s race - which sets off in the cool of the morning at 9am local time, 45 minutes ahead of the elite men and the mass of humanity that comprises the bulk of the field - looks capable and likely to deliver one of the fastest, and most competitive, women’s races seen outside an international championships.

Consider this: the two women with the slowest personal bests among the top dozen runners are both winners of the IAAF World Cross Country title, Benita Johnson of Australia and Lornah Kiplagat, the in-form Dutchwoman buoyed by the experience of winning her first World Cross title in her native Kenya last month.

“I want to win,” Johnson said earlier this week, "And I think I'm going to have to run under 2:20 if I'm to win. My training suggests I am definitely capable of that and I believe that's the sort of time that is going to win on Sunday.”

"Everything I've done in the last few months has been totally focused towards London and I'm in the best shape of my life. I'm capable of running better than 2:20.”

Such a winning time would smash her own Australian record, 2:22:36 set when finishing third in Chicago last October, and place Johnson in the all-time top 10.

Her confidence is based on more experience of the distance and the form she showed when beating Edith Masai by more than a minute to win the Berlin Half-Marathon at the beginning of April.

“Chicago last year was a big breakthrough for me,” Johnson said. “I don’t have a time in mind for Sunday’s race. I am more the sort of athlete who loves racing and competing. I think this year with these girls in the field, it will produce the kind of race I enjoy and a great atmosphere.”

Those ranged against Johnson include the winners of the 2006 Berlin and Chicago Marathons, Ethiopia’s Gete Wami and Berhane Adere, plus the Asian Games gold medallist, Zhou Chunxiu of China, herself already a member of the exclusive sub-2:20 club and someone who believes that she, too, will run faster than ever before on Sunday.

Add in to the mix top eastern Europeans such as Galina Bogomolova, who set her Russian record 2:20:47 in beating Johnson in Chicago, Lyudmila Petrova, the 2006 London runner-up, and the consistent Romanian, Constantina Tomescu-Dita, and there is compelling strength to Johnson’s argument.

London is special for Kiplagat

London is a special place as well as a special race for Lornah Kiplagat. It was at the 1997 London Marathon that Kiplagat, hired as a pacemaker, met the man who was to become her husband, Dutch agent Pieter Langerhorst. And it is the place where, in 2007, she believes that she will break her duck in the big five city marathons - New York, Boston, Chicago, Berlin and London - and claim victory for the first time.

"Everything comes at the right time,” Kiplagat said. “I still have something to achieve in this event, and I believe it is my time now at the marathon."

Despite Kiplagat’s great reputation as a top road runner, and now as a World Cross Country and World 20km Road Race champion, she acknowledges that her marathon personal best of 2:22:22, set in Osaka in 2003, does not do herself full credit. Because she knows London, and its flat, fast course, so well, she is sure that as well as being the right time, it is also the right place for her.

“I am excited about running here on such a fast course. It gives me a good feeling to be back here. That already seems to me the right mood to come into the race on Sunday.”

Kiplagat also has the right form: two world bests on the road, at 20km and 10 miles, pointing towards her being in the best form of her life. She even says that her dominating run in Mombasa last month came in the midst of heavy marathon training aimed at London.

"I didn't specifically train for the World Cross," she said. "All my training was focused on London.”

Like Johnson, Kiplagat expects that a particularly fast time will be necessary to take the winner’s share of London’s $500,000 prize purse.

"When I ran 2:22 that sort of time was in fashion but I know I will have to go under that on Sunday to have a chance."

The forecast of high humidity on Sunday may affect Kiplagat, who suffers from asthma.

"I sometimes still feel it when I'm running, but it depends if the humidity is high, or if it's misty, or dusty, or the pollen is high. In the last two years we have got it under control using an inhaler."

Ryan Hall – the outsider

If the women’s field is hot, then the London men’s line-up is sizzling, with 10 of the starters having PBs of sub-2:08.

They include the Olympic champion, the double World champion, the World record-holder, a former World record-holder, the Olympic silver medallist, a double Olympic 10,000m gold medallist, and the past two winners of the London Marathon.

But not among that stellar cast list is the slightly built Californian, Ryan Hall, making his marathon debut at 24.

In January, Hall stunned the distance running world when he clocked 59:43 for the Half-Marathon, the fastest ever by a non-African.

Yet in one important respect, Hall’s running background is very much like the top Africans he will compete against on Sunday. For he, too, was brought up living at high altitude, 7,000ft above sea level in the San Bernardino mountains, where from his early teens he would go on long, stamina-building two-hour runs alongside his ski instructor father who was training for triathlons.

“I have the same nervousness about running a full marathon that anyone who has never raced a marathon would feel,” Hall said, “but at the same time I feel my training has been special and I am really well prepared.”

Former champions return to London

Life has not been easy for the two most recent winners of the men’s London Marathon, with both Martin Lel and Felix Limo struggling with injuries since they breasted the tape strung across The Mall in front of Buckingham Palace.

Lel, the 2005 champion, has been unable to complete a full marathon since he just missed out on a second consecutive London victory last year. “I was injured in August when I got cramp in my calf muscle,” the 28-year-old Kenyan said.

Limo, a past winner of the Chicago, Berlin and Rotterdam marathons who ran 2:06:39 beat Lel to the line in London 12 months ago, has had a wretched time since, literally being hammered by his physiotherapist to sort out a long-term back problem.

“I missed three months of training after September,” he said. “I was doing some fartlek, sprint training sessions when one leg slipped away from me and I dislocated my lower back.”

“I went to see a doctor in Kenya who treated it by hitting me with his hand and with a small hammer. The hammer hurt a bit but you have to persevere with the pain if you want to get better. I just lay there and let him get on with it.”

So the pain in the final miles of Sunday’s race should hold no fear for Limo, then.

Another record?

Ryan Hall will be among a particularly strong American men’s contingent in London this year , with the US’s two African-born marathon stars, 2002 race winner and course record-holder Khalid Khannouchi, and Meb Keflezighi, the 2004 Olympic Marathon silver medallist, also on the start list.

Khannouchi has managed to defy sceptics to come back from a long-term injury and two operations on his feet to build a career average of 2:06:13 (from his five best marathons), the best in history. That includes the 2:07:04 he clocked in London last year when placing fourth.

Khannouchi also has a special place in running history, being that rarity: the man who beat Paul Tergat and Haile Gebrselassie in the same race, as he clocked 2:05:38 in a 2002‘s thriller.

The organisers are hoping that with all three back on the start line this year, another record run is on the cards.

Steven Downes for the IAAF