Kenenisa Bekele gets a Scottish wig and bonnet in Edinburgh in 2008 to mark his sixth long course win at the World Cross Country Championships. Now, with sights set on a 2014 marathon debut, he plans to return to Edinburgh in January for another cross country ©AFP/Getty Images


Speaking recently to Dave Bedford, who stepped down this year as race director of the London Marathon, the subject of Farah's impending debut inevitably cropped up - and a parallel was swiftly drawn with Eamonn Martin's marathon debut in the 1993 London race, in which he became the last Briton to win the men's event.

Bedford - holder of the world 10,000m record a few years before Bekele started reducing it to its current level of 26min 17.53sec - insisted that no special favours had been given to Martin that day, and was equally insistent that no special favours would be given to Farah in 2014 in order to help promote what would be an enormously popular home victory.

Britain's Eamonn Martin wins the London Marathon title in 1993 - Dave Bedford, long-time race director for London, insists there were no compromises in the field to aid the home runner, and says it will be same for Mo Farah next year ©Getty Images

That would lead one to believe that Bekele - who is unlikely to be selling his talents at a cheap rate for such an important race in his career - could yet line up in Blackheath come April alongside his fellow debutant.

A year ago, even four months ago, the presence of the Ethiopian on the start line would not have seemed a great threat to the home hope. At the 2011 World Championships in Daegu, where he qualified as a defending champion, Bekele dropped out of the 10,000m final with 10 laps remaining and did not contest the 5,000m. He had missed two years of track running with calf and knee injuries - and it showed.

It seemed as if the runner who had been unbeatable for so many years, amassing three Olympic and five world titles, not to mention an extraordinary 11 gold medals at various distances in the World Cross Country Championships, was confirmed as a declining force.

In contrast Farah, who took the 5,000m title in Daegu and silver in the 10,000m, was the rising talent, and a year later he matched Bekele's Beijing 2008 exploit of winning both events at the Olympics.

But in September this year the declining force offered evidence of resurgence with a flourishing victory in the Great North Run, where he outfoxed and outran Farah. On January 11 the 31-year-old Ethiopian will offer further evidence of his progression towards a new goal as he runs the Great Edinburgh XCountry race for the sixth time in his career.

Kenenisa Bekele holds off the challenge of Mo Farah in this year's Great North Run after outfoxing him tactically ©AFP/Getty Images

This event mirrors his overall fortune, given that three successive victories from 2006 have been followed by two defeats - a fourth place in 2010 and, ignominiously, 11th place in 2012. Bekele will seek to repair his reputation in the Scottish capital before, perhaps, zeroing in on the English capital three months later.

"If I am going to do a Marathon, of course, I want to win," he told the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) website this week. "I don't know [where I will run my first marathon]. Of course there is respect for my past results and I should be paid as one of the good paid athletes."

According to the report, Bekele has resisted asking advice of other marathon runners, preferring to gather information from online sources. The technicalities of the event are clearly preoccupying him.

"Some marathoners complain that until 30km it is easy," he said. "Some of them say after 35km, some of them they say after 38km, some of them after 40km. This is feedback I get from different athletes. Everyone can have a different capacity."

But his comments to the website about how he had conducted himself during the Great North Run victory made it clear that Bekele has the nous to win in any company if he is close to his best.

He explained how he had dropped back after six of the scheduled 13 miles and lulled Farah and his illustrious fellow Ethiopian Haile Gebrselassie into thinking his challenge was over, prompting them to up the pace in order to finish him off.

"You know, sometimes, when you are running together nobody makes the race faster," he said. "Nobody wants to pace. I don't want to pace; maybe Mo Farah and Haile do not want to pace. That's why I went a little bit behind, maybe thirty or forty or fifty metres. Maybe they will think Kenenisa is tired and they will try to drop me.

Mo Farah kisses the track in Moscow after retaining his world 5,000m title; but now he faces a resurgent Kenenisa Bekele ©AFP/Getty Images

"The pace picked up. So this is the tactic to improve the pace. So they did it. They did it like I thought. When I came back after five kilometres and I reached them, maybe they were nervous and shocked. They were watching me. Haile was looking over at me two or three times. Farah was checking me all the time.

"In the end he tried to catch me but there was no way he would catch me. No way. It's a calculation. It's like science, If they increase the pace, I can increase the pace no problem."

Words befitting a current, rather than a past champion. And they take one closer to what it must feel like to be an athlete of Bekele's quality, and to what goes through his mind as he races. The more detail one gains, the stronger and stranger the performance becomes...

There was a similar insight offered recently by the current world record holder for the marathon, Wilson Kipsang, who set his new mark of 2 hours 3min 23sec in Berlin on September 29.

Kipsang, who broke his compatriot Patrick Makau's world mark by 15sec in Berlin, accepted that it had been a motivating factor for him to have missed Makau's record by just four seconds when he ran the 2011 Frankfurt Marathon, where he clocked 2:03.42, the second fastest official time ever.

"That was not really a disappointment for me, though," said the 31-year-old, who won the London Marathon title in 2012 before returning to the capital to take bronze in the Olympic race. "I can say it was a plus for me, because then I could think 'I am just away by four seconds', and it inspired my training."

Kipsang said he realised the world record was within his grasp at the 40km mark in Berlin earlier this year.

"When I crossed the 40km mark I tried to see the split time, and I saw it was 1:57.13. When I had got to that point in Frankfurt it was 1:57.20, so then I knew I could get inside it. I felt good, and then I started to push hard."

Wilson Kipsang sets the world marathon record in winning this year's Berlin race ©AFP/Getty Images

He added that he had visited the Berlin course a month before the race in company with the previous year's winner, his training partner Geoffrey Mutai - who has the fastest marathon time of 2:03:02 to his credit, but on a Boston course not recognised for record purposes.

"I checked the course, and Geoffrey talked to me about it, and then I went back to Kenya to prepare," he said.

Kipsang, who said his mentor was Kenya's former 10,000m world record holder and five-times World Cross Country champion Paul Tergat, said that it "would not be easy" for anyone to break two hours for the marathon, but added: "The world record can easily be broken. There are a lot of new guys now training harder who want to go for the record. For me, I think I can do a sub 2hr 3min. It's possible."

But he added that running marathons at such a pace was "very difficult", saying that the mental effort was most telling.

"The main problem in the marathon is to control your mind for two hours," he said. "You have to be aware of how you are feeling, what time you are doing your splits, what are your targets, when do you break away from the group...

"Mind control is really difficult, but you find that if you concentrate too much at the beginning of the race you lose a lot of energy. You should be doing that at the end.

"At the start you keep running with the group, you just relax, relax. But you have to keep a look out. Sometimes you can see someone go off like crazy and - he's gone. You have got to keep a close eye on the other runners. At the water stations you have to be careful who is doing what. You try to see how the others are running."

As he spoke, it seemed as if Kipsang was back out on the course again, his eyes shining, watching and waiting, testing himself, performing the myriad tasks required to win an elite marathon in an era when the general level of performance is rising inexorably.

It was clear that the complexity of the challenge was one which completely subsumed him. It was one of those moments when one gets a real insight into the mind of an elite competitor.

Asked to explain the rising levels of achievement in the marathon over the last ten years, Kipsang commented: "I think the level of competition is really high now. There are more guys running fast and training in a more professional way. They are working at a higher level than the guys who used to run before.

"But the big difficulty is timing. Many runners are working with the same schedules, the same routines. But you have to know what training should you do three months, two months, a month, a week before the race? Sometimes runners are in top shape two months before a race and then they don't perform. Or sometimes runners start too late, and on race day they are not at the right level. Everybody does the same programme, but the most important thing is knowing how your body reacts and getting the timing right."

Asked about his hopes for the future, Kipsang confirmed he would swap his record for an Olympic or a world gold medal. "For me, I prefer gold," he said with a grin. "When I went to the Olympics last year I wanted to go for the gold, and maybe go for the world record this year. It is still my target to go for gold in the World Championships or the Olympics."

For Bekele, however, whose medal cabinet is now replete with gold, the reverse is true. The man who holds world records at 2,000m indoors - 4:49.99, two miles indoors - 8:04.35, 5,000m - 12:37.35, 5,000m indoors - 12:49.60 and 10,000m - 26:17.53 - is once more looking to the stopwatch as much as the podium for his next reward, albeit that his ultimate ambitions reside in the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.

Should he go on to revivify his career, this year's flourish at the Great North Run will have been a critical achievement for him.

"That was a race I needed to win," he said. "It really has told me that now I am injury free. My confidence is back. I now intend to prove myself as a road runner and I am looking forward to my marathon debut."

Edinburgh in the New Year will offer the next indicator of how realistic are his hopes of resurgence to former heights of glory. But the prospect of Bekele, fit again and with confidence returned, is a fearsome one for any competitor.

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, covered the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics as chief feature writer for insidethegames, having covered the previous five summer Games, and four winter Games, for The Independent. He has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, The Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. His latest book Foul Play – the Dark Arts of Cheating in Sport (Bloomsbury £12.99) is available at the insidethegames.biz shop. To follow him on Twitter click here.