 Mark Carroll returns to competitve action tomorrow in the Thanksgiving Day road race in Manchester, Connecticut, and has hopes of repeating last year’s victory. It will be his first outing since the disastrous 5,000 metres at the World Championships in Seville last August when trailed in last. But Carroll has taken his time to recover from that low point and is now ready to prepare for next year’s Olympics. Health problems, and more specifically a low count of iron in his blood, caused Carroll’s form to drop dramatically at a number of stages last summer and it’s taken some diligent diet supplementation to bring him back to normal training at his base in Providence, Rhode Island. “I’ve definitely put the iron problem behind me now but you do have to stay on top of it to make sure it doesn’t creep back,” he says. “The form is good even though it’s just mileage training at the moment and this race is always a good indication of how things are progressing at this time of year. I don’t necessarily prepare for this race,” he says, “and run it off volume training rather than any specific speedwork. But I feel I can run as fast as last year and we’ll just have to see whether that’s good enough to win.” More importantly, Carroll has prepared his schedule for the coming indoor season with the main target the European Championships in Ghent next February. He will return to his usual winter training base in Florida after Christmas for more specific preparations for that event. |
