Back in the late Nineties, a teenage runner called Amy Waterlow was snapping at Paula Radcliffe’s heels in cross country races. In 1999, she finished 15th in the IAAF World Cross Country Championships short-course race and, aged 20, was touted as a potential star of the future.

Sadly it was not to be. A succession of cruel injuries – including three stress fractures – intervened, together with a busy career as an English and drama teacher and then motherhood in 2009 – all combining to thwart her dreams of being an Olympian.

Yet now, aged 33 and running under her married name of Whitehead, she has a second opportunity. It could be a golden opportunity, too. Injury-free and in the form of her life after the first truly serious training spell of her senior career, she goes into the BMW Berlin Marathon on Sunday quietly confident of smashing the 2:39:27 PB she set in the Virgin London Marathon in April.

Impressively, she also set that time off the mass start, as opposed to the less crowded elite start. Luckily, she evaded the worst of the crowds, but she remembers: “Superman was ahead of me at one point! I thought ‘oh, god, he’s running quite well!’ But I got past him at about 10km, I think.”

Whitehead is ranked No.6 in the UK in 2011 and has an outside chance of beating the Olympic qualifying mark of 2:31:00. If she does, it still won’t guarantee selection into the Olympic team, such is the quality of competition in the event in Britain. But it will at least give her the satisfaction of knowing that, more than a dozen years after her high-flying junior days, she has finally demonstrated her talent as a senior.

The Nottingham-based Whitehead is one of six British athletes who have been supported by the London Marathon in their quest to fulfil their Olympic dream on the roads of Germany. She is joined in Berlin by Andi Jones, Ben Whitby, Martin Williams, Antony Ford and Scott Overall. The athletes have also been part of the London Marathon-funded UKA altitude training camps in Font Romeu and Kenya.

“I experienced success at a young age,” Whitehead explained, “but then I had three stress fractures which pretty much kept me out for two years. I also got glandular fever and post-viral fatigue. Then I went into teaching at a fantastic school – Loughborough Grammar – they were wonderfully supportive but I found it hard to concentrate on running due to the demands of teaching.”

Whitehead had a daughter, Holly, two years ago and went back to teaching. But she found she was healthy and injury-free for the first time in years. “My body felt refreshed and healed, so if I was ever going to give it a go, then it was at that point,” she said.

Since then, she has knocked chunks off her PB. In 2007 she ran a mere 2:53:34, improving by eight minutes the following year and then taking a further six minutes off this year.

“I’ve always thought that because I did well as a junior and in my first year as a senior then if I could get a good block of training in then I might do well,” she says.

Whitehead will certainly be prepared for the challenge. Her long-time coach is the ultra-experienced George Gandy, who among other things steered Jon Brown to a couple of Olympic fourth places.

She also won’t be intimidated about following in the footsteps of Radcliffe on Sunday. After all, this won’t be the first time she has chased a super-hero through the streets of a big city marathon.

>> Follow the progress of the Virgin London Marathon-funded Brits in Berlin in Athletics Weekly’s September 29 issue.