She may have been thrashed when she ran with John McCain against the Obama-Biden ticket but Sarah Palin, the defeated vice-presidential candidate, still believes she can beat her opponent — if the race is long enough.

In an interview with Runner’s World Mrs Palin predicted that she would come out ahead in a one-on-one long distance race with her fellow jogger, Barack Obama.

“I betcha I’d have more endurance,” the Governor of Alaska told the August edition of the magazine for runners, citing her performance in a marathon where she beat the four-hour mark by 24 seconds.

“It wasn’t necessarily a good running time but it proves that I have the endurance within me to at least gut it out,” Mrs Palin added. “What I lacked in physical strength or skill, I made up for in determination and endurance.”

Mrs Palin has given few interviews since her disastrous media appearances during the election campaign last year.

Any hints that she hoped to drop about a 2012 presidential run were overshadowed by the release of a Vanity Fair profile alleging her psychological unsuitability for office.

The article, which was released on the website at the same moment as the Runner’s World interview, cites numerous aides to John McCain anonymously decrying his choice of running-mate, calling her a “Little Shop of Horrors,” and a sufferer of “narcissistic personality disorder”.

A week before either piece is due to hit the news stands the Vanity Fair piece is already the talk of Washington. It has been dismissed by Republican supporters as a “nasty little hit job” and hailed by detractors as a wake-up call to those who still see Mrs Palin as the rescuer of their party.

Todd Purdum, the national editor of Vanity Fair, paints Mrs Palin as a vindictive egomaniac who horrified campaign workers with her arrogance, ignorance and refusal to prepare for the challenge of a lifetime. In “It Came from Wasilla”, Mr Purdum writes that McCain aides were motivated to speak, albeit it anonymously, by a lingering sense of survivors’ guilt about their role promoting an unqualified candidate.

“They can’t quite believe that for two frantic months last fall, in a Bermuda Triangle of a campaign, they worked their tails off to try and elect as vice-president someone who, by mid-October, they believed for certain was nowhere near ready for the job and might never be,” he writes.

Some of the criticisms such as Mrs Palin’s alleged vindictiveness towards local opponents and her sketchy knowledge of foreign and national issues are well known. New interviews however, accuse her of barely civil relations with key McCain aides, questionable judgment and relentless self-promotion.

Mrs Palin appeared to hint in her Runner’s World interview that she is in for the long run and is expected to make a bid for the Republican nomination in 2012.

The row over the Vanity Fair piece may presage the Republican family feud that looms over her 2012 bid.

William Kristol, the right-wing Republican stalwart who “discovered” Mrs Palin has accused the McCain campaign manager, Steve Schmidt, of feeding anonymous quotes to Vanity Fair.

Mr Schmidt accused Mr Kristol of defamation and threatened legal action. Such splits may be what play to Mrs Palin’s advantage, Mr Purdum remarks, noting the Republican party’s current lack of leadership.

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