Whether it is a white water slalom sprint or a half-marathon, every race is a contest between two inner voices, says world champion canoeist Jessica Fox.
Fox, 20, knows she can rely on familiar mental techniques when she takes on November's Rebel Run Sydney, presented byThe Sun-Herald.
"You've got a goal you want to reach and you're probably going to hit a moment during that race where it's going to hurt," Fox says.
"You have that little voice saying, 'Oh, I'm tired, let's slow down.' "
Which is where the second voice comes in: not to argue, but to repeat clear, positive messages.
"I usually use three or four key words, like 'tall', 'power' and 'glide'," says the Rebel Ambassador who will fire the starting gun in the half-marathon, one of three events that day.
"Those put me back into the race and focus me."
Fox, a silver medallist at the London Olympics, needed all her focus last month to become the first woman world champion in both the kayak and canoe events.
She sat on the start line at Deep Creek in the United States, the last to compete in the kayak event, knowing she would have to better her semi-final time by two seconds.
"When I crossed the line and saw there was number one next to my name, I just lost it," she said.
Fox claimed victory in Maryland 25 years after her parents, Richard and Myriam, each won individual world championship events in the same state. Her father competed for Great Britain and her mother competed for France, where Jess was born.
"[They won] only half an hour or an hour up the road from where we were racing so it was pretty cool to be in the same state, same country, and have the Fox family undefeated in America," she said.
Fox, who was named the Prime Minister's Outstanding Woman in Sport for 2014, had three weeks off to relax and catch up with friends after the competition.
But now she has returned to running alongside her work in the water to boost aerobic fitness; she would run more if it were not for the painful shin splints that have dogged her in the past.
"I usually do between five and eight kilometres a couple of days a week," she said,
Hours after completing Rebel Run Sydney, Fox will board a plane, bound for the south of France, near her birthplace, where she will train on a special course for three weeks.
She has two events to defend at the under-23 world championships in Brazil next April. And while she still feels like "the young one, really hungry to race", she feels expectations grow with each new victory.
"You move from hunting that number one spot to being the hunted."
For more information go to runsydney.com
