The 'grande dame' of British marathon running has announced her return to the unforgiving tarmac for a 26.2-mile challenge. It's 10 years since Paula Radcliffe, of Bedford & County AC, last completed the distance in the 2015 Virgin London Marathon, running 2:36:55 as an over-40 master athlete – the first female to finish in the non-elite race.

So what motivates a former world record holder and unquestionably the greatest female marathon runner of her era to want to scratch that marathon itch again at age 51?

Surely, Radcliffe has done it all with victory in Chicago in 2002 and wins in London (2002, 2003, 2005) and New York (2004, 2007, 2008) plus World Championship gold in Helsinki in 2005. Her world record in London 2003 (2:15:25) lasted for 16 years until broken by Brigid Koskei in 2019 – not bad for an athlete whose first taste of national competition was finishing 299th in the English Schools Cross Country Championships, aged 12, in 1986!

Radcliffe has announced on her new podcast Paula's Marathon Run Club that she will exchange the commentator's mic for a pair of racing shoes in the Tokyo Marathon on 2 March and the Boston Marathon on 21 April 2025 – with just over six weeks between these Abbott World Marathon Majors.

Running Tokyo and Boston will make Radcliffe an Abbott World Marathon Majors Six-Star Finisher as she has already bagged the remaining original quartet with her wins in London, Chicago, and New York plus a third place at the 2011 Berlin Marathon.

Radcliffe says she was inspired by her experience of running the 10K race in the Marathon Pour Tous event held late at night on the same day as the 2024 Paris Olympic Marathon when she was commentating at the Paris Olympic venues.

Gaining the coveted Six-Star Finisher's medal at the historic Boston Marathon could be an incentive for the former world record holder. The current world masters record for a W50 athlete is 2:31:05 by Tatyana Pozdniakova (Ukraine) set in 2005 in Los Angeles but that is unlikely to be a realistic target.

Perhaps the biggest driver behind Radcliffe's surprise comeback is her 17-year-old daughter Isla's debut in the London Marathon this April. Isla will be running for Children With Cancer UK having recovered from a rare form of cancer that she was diagnosed with at age 13.

Radcliffe senior, who will be commentating on the London Marathon for the BBC, told the Mail: "Isla wants to make a difference – she just came out and told me she is doing it. It will be wonderful." Radcliffe junior certainly won't be short of advice and her mum will be brimming with pride as her daughter strides towards the finish on The Mall.

Photo of Paula Radcliffe in the 2005 London Marathon courtesy of Wikimedia Commons