When it comes to her sport, athlete Ellie is still uncertain of her full potential.
Despite having run just a handful of races, this weekend will see the 17-year-old from Sedgefield representing team GB at the 2022 World Sprint Distance Duathlon Championships.
For her, training and competing is a great way to channel her focus, particularly, she says, having autism.
“I am definitely a perfectionist and I like to follow rules and that means I enjoy the routine of regular training. It’s the one thing that allows me to totally switch off.”
As it happens, from a family of athletes, she is good at it too, which means she is taking competing at an international level in her stride.
The Bede Sixth Form student hopes to bring home a medal.
Jetting off to Targus Mures in Romania on Friday, she said: “I didn’t think I was nervous, but I am starting to feel it now.”
A former sprinter, up until lockdown, Ellie’s switch to the duathlon came as an unexpected change in direction, even to her.
She said: “Cycling is always something I have done for leisure, yet it turns out it is where I am stronger.”
It was dad, Rob, who suggested she give the duathlon a go and not one for doing things by halves she set her sights on the British Triathlon Duathlon World Championship qualifier.
“It was tough, especially as a I contracted covid just weeks before competing, which meant I lost a full week of training,” she said. But undeterred, Ellie came second in her age group.
Regularly training five times a week, this weekend she will compete in the under 20 female category at the world championships and while it will be no walk in the park, she is eager to see what she can do at full strength.
The race comprises a five-kilometre run, a 20k bike ride, followed by another 2.5k run.
Rob, a teacher at Bede, said: “It is a tough endurance event which means working at your threshold for just over an hour.”
A keen endurance athlete himself he knows how it feels, and mum’s a runner too, with more than 20 marathons under her belt.
For Ellie, who is studying chemistry, law and sport at college, she said the best bit is the regular training and the feeling you get crossing the finish line.
Whatever the result on Sunday she said: “I get a massive boost out of training and really pushing myself and that sense of achievement after an event.”
With the next big race already on the horizon, Ellie has qualified for the 2022 European Sprint Distance Duathlon Championships taking place in Bilbao, Spain, this September.
