KEY POINTS:
If you hadn't seen it, you wouldn't believe it. It was one of those workouts that make your jaw drop.
Six times one-mile repetitions, with a two-minute rest in between. On paper, it sounds somehow less daunting. But get out there on the track and try it. Four
times around a 400m track, then catch your breath for two minutes, then repeat ... and repeat.
Now try it at the pace Kimberley Smith did during a workout early this year. After a three mile warm-up wearing an orange T-shirt with the ironic words "Run like a girl" emblazoned across the front, she laced on her running spikes and set about her work.
Her coach had set her a target of 4m 52s for each mile, but the first five read like this: 4m 51s, 4m 50s, 4m 50s, 4m 48s, 4m 46s. And so to the last one: she strapped on a fresh pair of spikes "to make me feel better". In the face of fatigue, you take any psychological boost you can find.
When she crossed the line, the stopwatch read 4m 41.3s. The national record stands at 4m 30.50s, set by Christine Pfitzinger in 1987. Smith, on the sixth of her miles during a training workout, had come within 11s of breaking a 21-year-old record.
Smith was typically underwhelmed. "Happy with that?" she was asked. "Yep." "Did the spikes help you?" "Yes, definitely."
Smith, who has run from Papakura to the top of the world's 10,000m field, is not one for embellishments. An email to her seeking an interview a month ago came back with this reply: "I'm not home. I'm in Europe so I don't have a phone, sorry." At least it was something _ requests to her when she was home weren't even replied to.
Luckily for her fans, the six times one-mile workout was captured on film by Flotrack, a United States track and field website which is following her progress to Beijing. A wisp of a woman with blonde hair, Smith would hardly be recognised on the streets of her home town (just the way she'd like it) but in US athletics circles, she's a star.
She can thank her success as a college athlete for Providence College, Rhode Island, and her recent form in the US and Europe. This year alone, she has lowered her own national records in the 10,000m (a sizzling 30m 35.54s at Stanford), and the 5000m (squeezing it down to 14m 45.93s in Rome a few weeks ago).
After her fifth place in the world championships in the humidity of Osaka last year, she threatens as someone who could, if everything goes her way, elbow her way on to the podium in Beijing. It would be an incredible achievement in an event dominated by Africans. It would be an achievement her parents, Alan and Jeanette, would be heart-burstingly proud of.
Already, they shake their heads in wonderment, trying to figure out how their shy little girl, the kid who almost fainted at the prospect of standing in front of her class to give a speech, has turned into a tough, uncompromising world-class runner.
"We watched her race in Rome last year and I was sitting in the stand and I couldn't believe how she could get out there in front of all those people and do what she does," says Jeanette Smith. But get out there and do it, Smith does.
Her mother believes the drive and determination that pushes her out of her shell and makes her compete with the best in the world traces right back to her very beginnings. Smith has a twin brother, Tim, who is completing a PhD at Auckland University, and has always been a talented academic and all-rounder.
The competition began in the womb and only got more intense. "Being a twin with a very bright brother, she had to strive to find something she was better at," says Jeanette. Not that Smith is an academic under-achiever by any stretch: she aced an A-bursary at high school, and has graduated with a social science degree.
But with running, she blossomed into an extraordinary talent. "To tell the truth, when she started running it wasn't obvious. We thought she had talent but we didn't think she had the drive. We thought she was good, but we never, ever thought she would get to this stage."
Her first win, though, was astonishing. The family was living in Karaka which had a thriving athletics club. Smith watched the boys racing over the longer distances and asked her mum, "Can I run with the boys?" Sure, said her mother, why not? Smith blasted them away.
From that day on, she stuck with running. The drive which her twin brother had always showed began to shine through and she applied herself to training. After an initial stint at a US college which she didn't enjoy, Smith found her feet at Providence and has never looked back.
She competed in Athens four years ago, but was carrying an injury and was overwhelmed by her first major international competition. Four years on, she has matured and has plenty of experience. She knows better than anyone that nothing is guaranteed at major competitions. Two years ago, she missed out on the Commonwealth Games thanks to a serious Achilles tendon tear and then had to miss most of the season thanks to a blood clot in her lung.
She came back last year stronger than ever and her performances this year have given her the confidence that she can foot it with the best. In January, at an indoor meeting in Boston, she ran a close second when Ethiopian superstar Meseret Defar smashed the world two-mile record. Smith too was under the record, running 9m 10s, more than 13s faster than the previous mark.
It was a breakthrough performance. She realises that Defar and fellow Ethiopian Tirunesh Dibaba have a lead on the rest of the world. "Those two are in a league of their own, but then, after that is when you start to think it's possible ..." Smith said at the time.
All she has to do is run like a girl.
