Aged 38, the Romanian became the oldest winner of an Olympic marathon with a clean break from the field in Beijing and a run to redemption that proved her doubters wrong

Olympic Games, Beijing, August 17, 2008, Womens marathon, first place, 2:26:44

I tried to get a medal in Athens in 2004 but I finished 20th. Afterwards, my coach who was my then-husband and I came back to Colorado and we put everything we did wrong down on paper so we could get it right for 2008.

Almost four months before Beijing, I went back to high altitude. For interval training, I was going out at 1600m up but for the longer runs on Thursday and Sunday, I went up the mountain to 2500m-plus.

We then did our acclimatisation at altitude in Japan, a four-hour flight away from China.

The preparation had gone well wed changed it a little bit to work in the hot weather, not going out very early. In Athens, it was very hot and there was also humidity but, in Beijing, it was raining for almost four or five days before the marathon and that totally changed things. I was lucky because I like the rain. The Beijing course was very good, too it was flat, which I felt was very good for my chances to win the gold.

I woke up four hours before the start at 3am. Going from the room to breakfast, we could see the weather was perfect for running. We have a phrase in Romanian along the lines of when its raining, youll be reached. And I was reaching for the gold medal that day.

Back in Romania, they didnt see much of me. Id come third at a World Championships and won the Chicago marathon but they didnt know. In the newspapers, it was mainly soccer. That was a motivation.

Another was to prove to people that age didnt matter. What mattered more was how you were thinking, how powerful you were and how you competed. I was very strong mentally. I was a hard worker in training. Sometimes my husband stopped me because I pushed too hard.

Wed been talking about strategy before the competition. When I ran the Chicago and London marathons, it was different because in that situation youre running for the time. At the Olympic Games, its different. Wed spoken about staying with the group for the first 25km and then, if the pace was very slow, to be the one to pull away.

You have a strategy but, during the race, you can change it a little bit based on what you what you see, what youre feeling from the other athletes and what theyre doing.

In Colorado, at altitude, Id done a half marathon in 1:11. In Chicago or London, wed go through halfway in 1:08 but in Beijing we passed it in 1:15. It was very slow.

It was very good for me. I didnt feel tired at all. I just stayed in the lead group to see if somebody would peel off and, if so, I would just follow them. But nobody wanted to go.

The strategy to start pushing from 25km was because I didnt have a great finish. I lost out because of it a few times. I did 200m or 400m in training, but I wasnt like the African athletes who could run the last kilometre in the marathon in under three minutes.

I thought someone would go at 15km. Or then at 20km. Close to the 20km mark, I took my rehydration bottle and said: Okay, you need to increase the pace a little bit and see whats going on with the group. I pulled away and the other athletes didnt come with me.

I was surprised, but I just kept increasing my pace by a few seconds every kilometre. That was very hard but I finished the second half of my race in 1:11, just as Id done in training.

It got a bit scary because I was thinking about what happened in 2006 when I lost the gold medal and world record for the 20km in Debrecen over the last two kilometres because I relaxed too much.

I kept looking to see how far the group behind me was and when I turned around with 800m metres to go before entering the stadium, I could see how far the others were from me. But for me, the gold medal wasnt mine until I passed the finish line.

I relaxed but not too much. It was amazing. All the people were cheering me. There were more than 70,000 people in the Birds Nest, even though it was 9:30 in the morning. Doing the last lap, I didnt believe I was doing this. My dream as a young child was to build something like this in my life.

I did two laps afterwards around the stadium. On the first one I didnt have the Romanian flag the delegation had to go and get one so I went out again. And, with that, my dream came true that day.

As told to Mark Woods

Constantina Dita is an Ambassador for Asics find out more about the Metaspeed shoe at asics.com