Once again, at the World Championships - which took place in Vancouver two weeks ago - the Great Britain age group team did us proud and bought home 28 medals in the sprint race and 15 in the standard distance race. Sophie Whitworth is a regular contributor to the medal haul at major Championships, in 2007 she was crowned the overall European age group Champion, she's won three World Championship silver medals and also won countless national races, including last year's New Forest Half Ironman and the London Triathlon sub 2:30 race. After 15 years in the sport, Sophie's more passionate about the sport than ever, as Annie Emmerson found out.

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AE You've been involved in triathlon for quite sometime, where and how did it all begin?

SW Yes it has been a while, it was back in 1989 that I started doing some swim training and got caught up in the triathlon swimming lane, I was at Bath Uni at the time. It really just happened by accident, I wasn't planning on doing any triathlons, I just wanted to get fit. Bath Uni wasn't the triathlon mecca that it became, but the Bath Triathlon was a pretty major event on the racing calendar at that time and you couldn't help but take notice of it.

AE So how did you change your mind and become involved in triathlon?

SW At the time Joe Beer, who's still racing and also coaching in triathlon, Chris Humpage, who was an elite triathlete in the late eighties and early nineties and my future husband Mike Whitworth, were swimming in the lane that I had joined. They weren't students, but were just using the pool facilities so I kind of stuck with them over the four years. At the end of my degree I decided to stay on as sports President and with the encouragement of the guys bought a bike.

AE Tell us about your first race.

SW My first race was the Olympic distance race in Bournemouth. It was a pretty hairy swim - in fact I think it was even worse than Vancouver this year. I ended up finishing fourth overall and second in my age group, I noted that the girl who was in my age group had been to the World Championships that year, so I thought my mission for the year would be to try and make the World age group team. I did make the team in the 20 - 24 age group and so went to my first World Championships in Wellington, New Zealand in 1994.

AE And how did you get on in Wellington?

SW I'd qualified quite easily at the Windsor triathlon and I guess because it had been easy I thought I was well prepared, but I went to Wellington and finished 46th out of 48. I was out-classed and out of my depth, I hadn't really known how to prepare for it and didn't really have a clue, but I learnt a lot from that experience. Since then I've qualified for the World Championships thirteen times, which is every year since my first one.

AE Wow, that's amazing, have you been to everyone?

SW No, I haven't managed to go everyone, it's been dictated by my job to a degree. This year was my ninth World Championships that I've actually been to.

AE Even though you'd been in the sport for sometime it wasn't until a bit later on in your career that you started to win medals?

SW For the first six or seven years I just really enjoyed the personal achievement of making the team, just participating, making it my holiday every year and meeting loads of great people. I used to go on Joe Beer's training camps in Lanzarote and I trained hard, but I don't think I was particularly focused. My turning point came when I moved to Oxford in 2002, my job changed slightly and I was able to train more consistently although I didn't really have a plan. It was also my wedding year and I started to lose some weight, it was totally unrelated to triathlon, I just wanted to make sure I could lose half a stone and get into my wedding dress. In the season of the summer that I got married, my results just seemed to improve and a major turning point came when we went on our honeymoon to Cancun in Mexico for the World Championships. I met and travelled out with Sonia Hurst and Graham Brookhouse, and because I was going to be there for ten days before the event I hooked up with them and got involved with their planning and preparation. I finished tenth that year, it was a good feeling to be rubbing shoulders with some of the medal winners and that's when I started thinking about actually winning medals myself.

AE So how did you go about making some changes to put yourself in a medal winning position?

SW I skipped a year in 2003 and did the Sherbourne Half Ironman to try and build some more strength and endurance. In 2004 I did Madeira, I did ok and came 14th, but my plan was really to wait for 2005 when I moved up to the 35-39 age group, as I knew this would be my best chance of winning a medal. In 2004 I put a proposal into my work to take a leave of absence in 2005, with the goal of trying to get a medal at the Worlds. I basically took a 16 week sabbatical in 2005 which started around July time, so I was able to put in a really big training block before Honolulu, it paid off and I won silver!

AE So after that were you gunning for gold?

SW More than anything I just wanted to keep winning medals. The following year, in Lausanne, I didn't take anytime off work and finished 6th, but the year after in 2007, I won another silver medal in Hamburg and then this year in Vancouver I won my third silver medal. It took 13 years to win my first medal so I guess you could say it took a labour of love to get there.

AE Vancouver sounded like a tough race, were you happy with silver again?

SW I think my mind-set has changed a lot this year. From the physiological testing that I've done, I've learnt more about myself as an athlete and from my test results I can tell whether my performance in a race is good or not. Although I didn't get the gold medal in Vancouver, when we looked at the data and compared it with all the other British age groupers, it was an excellent performance, so I'm over the moon with my silver medal. The most important thing is that I progress as an athlete and enjoy the experience of races all around the world. If you asked me two years ago, I would have been hell bent on getting the gold medal, but I think I've mellowed a lot these days.

AE There's been a lot of talk about how bad the weather was in Vancouver, did it effect your race?

SW This year so far (apart from the Windsor triathlon) I don't think I've done a warm race. I did the Thames Turbo bank holiday Monday race, which felt like sub-zero temperature and then I did the Steyning triathlon, which has been renamed the Steyning snowman. I actually got caught in a snow blizzard and couldn't run, I didn't have any feeling in my hands to put my shoes on. I then did the New Forest triathlon, where they thought they were going to have to shorten the swim because it was so cold. I've just done so much cold racing that by the time I got to Vancouver I couldn't see what the problem was, as if felt normal to me.

AE You've done some elite racing, but mainly age group racing, you've obviously had some fantastic results, do you regret not having tried to race more at elite level earlier on in your career?

SW I would have loved to, but I didn't really know how to get there. It wasn't really until later on that I got involved with Mike Dunmoore who gave me some proper guidance. It also wasn't until later on that I became involved with Filipe Salbany, who heads up the Oxford Brooks human performance centre, he's given me a huge amount of advice on sports physiology and it's probably only now that I realise that I do have quite a lot of potential. In 2005 after my Honolulu result I raced Blenheim, which is always a nice and slightly lower key race than some of the other big elite races, and came fourth. I then went on to do Windsor, but that year it was the National Championships and it was probably the wrong race to do, as the entire elite population were taking part, I learnt a lot from that race. I made the decision, that at 35, I wasn't an elite athlete and with having to work full time my best bet was to stay with age group racing, as that's where I'm happiest. I decided to do the elite race at Windsor again this year, as I knew from looking at the start list it wouldn't be nearly as tough as in 2006, it was a lot of fun to be involved in such a big race and it was a big buzz to come of the bike in the chasing group.

AE You're well known for being quite scientific in your approach to your training, although this isn't the case for most athletes and there was an amusing moment when you asked Emma Dews (last months Gatorade athlete of the month) at the end of the New Forest Half Ironman last year, “So what was your HR and power output at the end" and Emma replied “HR? Power? I don’t know, no idea!” Just how important is it for you to do fitness testing and follow your heart rate most of the time?

SW It all helps and by using the heart rate monitor on the bike, it helps me make decisions about what I need to in the race, if I need to go harder or take it more steady. It's very useful to be able to download the data at the end of a race and see how I've gone, to see what worked or what didn't work. I would definitely use it in a long course race, but there were times when I didn't use it all in racing.

AE You're a Planet X sponsored athlete along with non other than the legendary Spencer Smith, have you met him?

SW No, I haven't, I tend to get on with my own thing, but I do write a regular blog for the site. I'm very fortunate that Planet X are very supportive to my needs and I love the kit and the bike I get from then.

AE What's your proudest moment in your triathlon career so far?

SW Definitely my Honolulu medal, when you get a World medal and go up onto the podium it's an amazing feeling. I was lucky that Honolulu was such a well organised event, the setting was amazing we were on the beach and because there was no elite race the main focus was on the age groupers. The atmosphere was incredible and because they did the award ceremony so quickly after the race everyone was there, it felt like getting an Olympic medal, I'll never forget it!

AE What would you be doing if you weren't doing triathlon?

SW I can't quite imagine what I would be doing if I wasn't doing triathlon. I'd definitely be doing some kind of sport, as my initial sport was running, I think I would be doing some kind of running. I imagine that I would have had a family, my husband has two daughters, who I'm very close to, but I guess if I hadn't taken up triathlon I would have had my own children and would have wanted to really support them in whatever they wanted to do.

AEDo you have any plans to do an Ironman?

SW There's a whole world of racing out there and firstly I'd like to focus on some Ironman 70.3 races, but yes in time I'd definitely like to give it a go! My testing has shown that I should have a good Ironman race in me, which is good, because if I do do one, I want to be competitive.

AE We've talked a lot about your triathlon career, but you also work full time, what are you doing at the moment and how do you manage to fit in your training around work?

SW I work for Cadbury's in the sales area, I've recently been promoted and I'm responsible for five national account managers, who have the responsibility of looking after a massive amount of customers, my work does keep me very busy. I'm lucky that all sales people who work for Cadbury's tend to work from home, this doesn't mean that I'm at home every day, but it does mean that I have quite a lot of flexibility to train in the morning and at lunchtimes. Because I work from home it means I can work on a Sunday night for example and plan and organise for the week ahead, this really helps me to be consistent in my training and means that I'm not binge training. On average I train around 13 to 14 hours a week. I don't have a lot of spare time, if any, and I can't remember the last time I watched a program on TV.

AE Who's your sporting hero?

SW I would definitely say Lance Armstrong, the pain and suffering that cyclists have to endure is just incredible. Within triathlon, I really like Sam Warriner (Bronze medalist in the Elite race in Vancouver) I've watched her move up the ranks over the years and I remember seeing at the World Championships in Madeira a few years ago and was really impressed by her performance. She's a similar age to me and just someone I feel that I can identify myself with. She used to be very middle of the pack and now she's worked her way up to become one of the top triathletes in the World.

AE If you had a magic wand what race would you like to win most of all?

SW I would love to win my age group at the World Championships, in any age group and over any distance.

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Sophie may have waited 13 years to win her first medal, but with her passion, commitment and now military precision like training techniques, we don't think she will have to wait so long to win a gold medal!