She's no runaway bride as Caroline's set for NYC marathon on Rory wedding date

By Elaine McCahill

Tennis ace Caroline Wozniaki may not have been a 'runaway bride' but she will be racing in the New York City marathon on the same weekend that she was due to wed golf star Rory McIlroy.

The Danish tennis star (24) was due to walk down the aisle in New York next weekend but she was cruelly dumped by Rory (25) after the couple had sent out their wedding invitations in May.

Now Caroline has spoken of how training for the run has taken her mind off the heartbreak.

"I think you can never feel too sure in life. You can't really plan ahead because you never know what's going to happen tomorrow," she said. "To be honest, this half of the year I've been great tennis-wise, and the running and everything has definitely helped me with everything.

"It's cleared my head, but also it's helped me physically, and I feel stronger on the court. So it's been a great thing for me. It's a nice challenge."

FEARS

But Caroline admits training alongside her tennis career hasn't been easy - and she now fears whether she'll be able to run the full 26 miles for charity.

"I was like, 'I've got this; I'm cool; it's going to be easy.' And then I started running more, and in Asia I felt like, 'Where am I going to run?'

"I started panicking a little bit - uh oh, it's getting close, and I don't know if I can do this," she told the New York Times.

"I think playing [tennis] and sprinting in intervals is really tough, and you feel sore in your whole body.

rhythm

"And running, the calves are what feels it the most the same day. But at the same time I don't feel particularly dead whenever I run because you get into a rhythm, you breathe, you find a breathing pattern," she added.

Meanwhile, American actress Meghan Markle has rubbished rumours that she's romantically linked to the Northern Irish golfing number one.

Meghan (33) and Rory were spotted having dinner at Fade Street Social and at the Westbury Hotel while she was in Dublin at the One World summit and she admits that she knew people would "go crazy" seeing they were together again - but she just shrugs off the rumours.

"I've just stopped reading it. I think that's probably part of the value of that.

"We're going to have dinner this week and I'm sure people are going to go crazy over that," she told U Magazine.

hnews@herald.ie