NAIROBI, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- World record holder Brigid Kosgei said she's still recovering from fatigue and pain in the leg, which she picked up in Chicago, and that her focus is on winning gold for Kenya at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games.
Kosgei, the London marathon champion, will relish the prospect of defending her title in the English capital, but said she will not rush into training after running a world record time in Chicago two months ago.
"I am relaxing a bit, after Chicago," Kosgei said on Friday in Eldoret. "So I am maybe jogging once a week. I still have pain following Chicago. I will start slowly next year.
"I am preparing to run at the Tokyo Olympic Games. I want to run for my country again."
Kosgei is not disturbed by the decision by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to shift the Olympic road events from Tokyo to the cooler environs of Sapporo amid concerns for athletes' welfare.
"It depends on how the climate will be. But I will accept what it will be at the time. It will depend upon how I have trained in Kenya. I train at altitude, and sometimes I train in some hot places. So it cannot affect me. I will accept what weather there is at the time. But I prefer a cold marathon," she said.
Kosgei warned that the Olympic marathon race in Sapporo is going to be all about position rather than time.
But how fast does the world's fastest female marathon runner think females can run the marathon.
"A woman can run even two hours," said Kosgei.
The 25-year-old is not ruing missing the World Athlete of the Year award despite registered superb results in 2019. Kosgei made the final female shortlist of five.
Though she did not win the coveted World Athlete of the Year award, which went to Dalilah Muhammad, the U.S. 400m hurdler, Kosgei is biting her time and hopes a win in London, Tokyo Olympics and maybe her title defense in Chicago will enable her 2020 season to blossom.
That eclipsed the mark of 2:15:25 set by Paula Radcliffe in winning London in 2003, and the Briton was in Chicago to witness the landmark performance, greeting Kosgei in the finish area.
Kosgei's performance has left fans dreaming of how fast a woman can run a marathon. She became the youngest woman to win the London Marathon, in a personal best of 2:18:20 - and ended it by knocking more than four minutes off that to set a world record of 2:14:04 at the Chicago Marathon. The former record was held by Britain's Paula Radcliffe, who was on the finish line in Chicago when Kosgei crashed the record.
"Radcliffe spoke to me after the line," recalled. "She was happy, somehow she was happy. Somehow. She didn't believe her record had gone."
Belief was something Kosgei appeared to have inexhaustibly as she moved relentlessly towards new athletics territory in Chicago. She revealed that she had been emboldened by the example of her fellow Kenyan Eliud Kipchoge less than 24 hours before her marathon as he had become the first athlete to cover the marathon distance in under two hours.
Like millions of others, she had watched Kipchoge's progress in Vienna via a live feed. Kosgei said that, after watching the entire race live, she "felt inspired.
"I decided to persevere with my own goal, to run more positively and see what was possible," she added.
Even so, she confessed that the magnitude of her achievement had been a shock.
"When I crossed the line in Chicago it was really amazing. I was not expecting to break the world record. I was well prepared for the race, and at the starting point I knew it maybe would be a record or not, so long as I would be near to a record. But I was not expecting it.
"But when I got to 15 kilometers I realized I was almost at the record pace. And then for me, it was a matter of perseverance, and then I could become the world record holder," she said.
The question was asked - how had she managed to trim more than four minutes off her London Marathon time between April and October?
"After London I returned to my training camp and I did a lot of practice which would enable me to run well in Chicago," she said. "By the time I got there I was very well prepared, and that is why I got the world record at that time.
"I didn't change anything. It depends on how I have been training in Kenya. But maybe I have improved the speed on some of the long runs.
"I run 200 kilometers a week. I do a 20k run in the mornings, and in the afternoons either 20 or 15k."
Responding to another question, she estimated that, in the course of the year, she has undergone 54 doping tests. Perseverance, the quality she mentioned several times while reflecting on her Chicago run, is something this 25-year-old has shown throughout her life. In 2014 Kosgei - who has two brothers and four sisters - had to drop out of the educational system as her parents could no longer afford to pay her fees.
"I could not be sad," she said. "At that time I just accepted what had happened and focused on other things."
Her regular training camp, at an altitude of around 3,000 meters, is no more than six kilometers away from her home. Hardly a marathon distance. But she revealed that, for two months before the Chicago race, she remained in camp, while her husband, Matthew Mitei, looked after their twins - a boy and a girl aged six.
"The kids, they know that their mum is doing good work there," she said.
At this stage it seems unlikely either will follow in her footsteps.
"They say to me: 'I don't want to run'," she recalled with a smile.
