Local girl Mara excused hothouse

No, not Paula Radcliffe arriving as an 11th-hour saviour. Britain's current No 1, the second fastest ever, is Mara Yamauchi, and with a surname like that it is little surprise that she did not need to join her team-mates at acclimatisation camp. Her home is in Japan.

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Yamauchi, 34 last week, lives in Tokyo, a three-hour journey on Japan's bullet train from Osaka. It has been her home since the beginning of last year, having married a Japanese whom she met while serving with the Foreign Office at the British Embassy.

So, what is her message for her team-mates when they start arriving from Macau today? "Acclimatise, take plenty of rest, don't rush around, keep out of the sun," she said.

"Really, just don't do anything crazy. It is exhausting here in summer." The former Miss Myers, born and university-educated in Oxford and fluent in Japanese, spent three years working in Tokyo as a diplomat, acting as an interpreter on one occasion for Baroness Thatcher and on another occasion sharing a hot-sand bath with Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.

"Osaka is more humid than Tokyo normally but on a hot day they are not dissimilar," she warned. "Temperatures reached 40 degrees in some parts of Japan recently but it is the humidity that makes it so tiring.

"You simply can't run as fast in hot, humid weather. Run too fast and your body heats to the point where it will not function. You will certainly sweat more, which leads to dehydration and that's another danger."

Mara, who ran her best of 2hr 25min 13sec in London last year, expects times to be adversely affected. "Championship marathons are always slower and this certainly will be. People like me, part way down the field on paper, have more chance. There will be surprises. I just hope I am one," she said.

"Anyone capable of running under 2hr 30min on a fast course could win because the fastest might struggle in hot weather or go off too fast. The first 15 kilometres in Osaka is flat so that is tempting."