Twenty five year old Kate Reed is making her Olympic debut this week in the 10,000m. Sportsister met up with her before she left for Beijing to chat about her preparations and goals for the Games.
It’s your first Olympics, how are you feeling?
It’s just relief really. I ran the qualifying time quite a while ago and I have just been hanging on hoping that I had done enough to get selected.
Are you in the best shape that you can be?
Yes I think so. Although I have had a few niggles this season and I haven’t raced that much. I have had to change the training slightly because of that; we haven’t done very much speed work. It’s been mainly long reps and long mileage and a lot of stuff on grass rather than on the track. But I am in one piece and I just have to keep my head down and make sure that I stay that way for the next few weeks and see what I can do out there.
What are your hopes and goals for the Games?
If you look at the results for the 10,000m last year in Osaka it was quite a strange race, because it was more tactical and less about just speed. It wasn’t a very fast race. Kara Goucher came out with a bronze medal and no one would have thought that she was capable of doing that before the race.
So I am certainly not going to be put off by the fact that I will be one of the slower in the field, I am going to go there and be as positive as I can about it, and try and make a race of it, and hang on for dear life.
Once you put on a British vest you just want to go out there and do it for your country and make everyone proud, so I will certainly be giving it everything I can.
Are you worried about the conditions in Beijing?
I am training in a heat chamber (an airtight room that is used to recreate the heat and humidity the athletes are expecting in Beijing) and I have been out in Albuquerque for three weeks training in the middle of the day with a full tracksuit on and it was 97 degrees, so I like it quite warm! The 10,000m is at night so hopefully it will have cooled off slightly by then anyway.
It must be great having Jo Pavey racing along side you?
It’s fantastic; she is such an inspiration to me. She is the reason I started running. I used to be a badminton player, and when I was 14 I went along to a sports event and she was the guest speaker. She inspired me so much that I quit badminton and took up running immediately and it went on from there.
If I hadn’t met her that day I wouldn’t have even been in this sport, so to be stood on that start line with her in Beijing will just be incredible, I just admire her for everything she has done.
We are very good friends as well and she is always giving me little tips and keeping me positive, so that is a big boost for me.
What was it about athletics then that appealed to you over badminton?
I had been playing badminton since I was six. I was playing about 30-36 hours a week from 6-14, and I had been doing it so long and it was very intense, and in the end my heart just wasn’t in it. When I gave it up I was ranked number 1 in England for mixed doubles in the Under 14 age group.
When I started running there was just something about it; it was incredible. I just loved it from the start and felt I belonged in the sport. I had a couple of successes early on and that really boosted my confidence.
I love running, and even though I have had a hard time in running and it’s not always been an easy ride it has come good in the last year or two. I wake up every morning and just want to go running; I have never woken up and thought I can’t be bothered to go.
In a recent interview we did with Liz Yelling she tipped you as one of the names to watch in the future of British athletics. Does that add extra pressure?
What an honour that is, Liz has been in the sport for years and I have raced against her so many times. I think pressure is good; I don’t want to go to Beijing and rest on my laurels, thinking that I have made it, because it is not about that. I want to get as much as possible as I can from it. 25 is still relatively young to be running a 10,000m and hopefully I can gain quite a bit of experience for 2012 as that’s the big one for me.
Louise Hudson, Sportsister
The Women’s Sports Magazine
More Olympic hopefuls on Sportsister:
Badminton - Gail Emms and Donna Kellogg
Read Sportsister’s round up of Britain’s top Olympic sportswomen, in a handy who-to-watch guide for the Beijing Olympics 2008.
Our Olympic athletes will be competing at the Aviva British Grand Prix, Gateshead on Sunday August 31st. Tickets are available at www.ukathletics.net and 08000 556 056.
