Pavey left frustrated as she trails home fifth

Pavey, in only her second competition since giving birth to son Jacob last September, struggled before the halfway point of the ten kilometres race and fell away from the leading pack.

That left the 36-year-old running in a vacuum as the Portuguese pair of Jessica Augusto and Ines Monteiro plus Aniko Kalovics of Hungary tried to match the Ethiopian challenge of Worknesh Kidane.

Despite the European trio's commitment to stay with the fairly fast pace on a chilly and windy Manchester morning, they had no response when Kidane, a winner of 21 world cross country medals, produced a huge surge going into the fifth kilometre.

Kidane, in her first ever serious 10km race, inserted a swift kilometre of two minutes 59 seconds to pull well clear and win in 31 minutes 19 seconds, 32sec ahead of Augusto with Monteiro third in 32min 02sec.

Then came Kalovics, who clocked 32min 20sec, followed by a weary-looking Pavey – who realistically, after becoming a mother for the first time, was always unlikely to add to her 2007 and 2008 victories.

"I'm so frustrated and disappointed," said Pavey. "I felt really awful and that was not a good run. 've focused on this race for months after Jacob was born and I've trained really hard hoping I would run well. But When the gun went off, I just didn't feel there was anything there."

Haile Gebrselassie easily achieved his ambition of winning the Great Manchester Run for the third time following his inaugural 2005 success and his second win a year ago.

Gebrselassie's prediction that the weather might, for the second successive year, prevent him posting a fast time proved correct and in the circumstances, his mark of 28 minutes 02sec was commendable.

The 36-year-old Ethiopian, always around the head of the field, finished seven seconds ahead of Ayad Lamdassem – a former Moroccan now representing Spain – who produced the best performance of his career. They were followed home by Ukraine's eight-times European cross country champion Sergiy Lebid (28min 29sec) with Mark Warmby the first Briton home, just a second ahead of triathlete Tim Don in 28min 55sec.