Using a World Championship as training

At the Olympic Games in Beijing Kate Allen wants to defend her Athens 2004 title. How her day-to-day training is going five months before the event, and how her competition is motivating her, the 37-year-old triathlete divulges in an interview.

It’s nine o’ clock in the morning. Just the right time for breakfast. For you, too?

Yes, but for me it’s already the second …

Why?

I get up at five, have a small breakfast, and then do swim training for two hours.

Please tell us a bit more about this phase of preparation. What do you focus on about five months before the Olympics?

At the moment my life only consists of training, eating, sleeping and regenerating – unfortunately there’s no time for family and friends. I’m training 25 to 30 hours a week. In the last seven weeks I’ve done a particular amount of swim training and have tried to improve my technique.

Spending so much time with swim training, isn’t there a danger of compensating your best discipline, running?

If you spend so much time on one discipline, it’s normal that you’ll lose something in another. At the beginning I did a lot of stamina training, which is why I’m not worried about my running performance. It’s relatively easy to get back my speed with short, intensive training.

For the cycling stretch you’ve got a secret weapon. What’s new about your 2008 bike?

The most important changes are of course the colors – I like the bike much better now than I did before. But seriously, due to the new geometry of the frame I can channel the power better from my legs, and the position of the seat is also more comfortable than before.

… whereby the term ‘comfortable’ is a fairly elastic term when it comes to triathlon training. How do you cope with situations when your body just wants to give up when it comes to particularly strenuous parts of training units?

If training doesn’t go so well, I think about my competition. I know that they’re giving 100 percent for sure. That’s why I also have to do the same in order to have any sort of chance. My target is the Games, and I can’t afford to make any compromises here.

Before the Olympic Games there’s the EC in Lisbon and the WC in Vancouver to come. What are your aims at both of these contests?

Medals would be nice, of course, particularly because they’re going to be my last European and World Championships respectively over the short distance. Whether I pack on another Ironman season on top of that, I’ll decide in the fall. I’m actually only using the EC and WC as warm-ups for Beijing. In both events I want to get closer to my Olympic form.

Don’t you ever get a little voice whispering in your ear, saying: “Why do you subject yourself to all the drudgery? You’re an Olympic champion as it is”?

I love the fact that I’m an Olympic champ, but that doesn’t count any more. I want to go to Beijing with the feeling that I did everything in my power to prepare for it.