Keri-Anne Payne

Progress towards 2012 I'm pretty much where I want to be at the moment. I did the British Gas Great Salford swim on the 15th of May, and I won that. It was an outdoor 1,600 metre swim, which was brilliant. This weekend I'm going to Barcelona for the Mare Nostrum, which is a series of European pool swimming events. Then I'm off on a three-week training camp in Sierra Nevada, so that's going to be a really good time for me to get a block of work in before the world championships in July. After that I come back to the UK to do the British Gas Great London Swim on the second of July. I use events like the British Gas Great Swim Series as a really good training venue because we don't get that many outdoors training opportunities in Britain since it's quite cold. So having that series run five times a year is brilliant for us to go out and get more experience. You can never have too much experience. For the first couple of years I went abroad quite often because it was all about getting experience, but I don't really travel too much now because training is so important. You need to have that big block of work that you can get in training. That's where you get the base you have to have, especially when doing 10K because you need to be really fit. Biography Born 9 December 1987, Johannesburg, South Africa Educated Cardinal Langley High; currently studying at London School of Journalism Hobbies I love watching TV, and cooking and baking If I wasn't an athlete… I can't really answer that. I always knew from when I was very young that I was going to be an Olympic swimmer Favourite band Above and Beyond, they have a podcast coming out every Friday and I just love it. It's really good chilling out kind of music Favourite book I'm enjoying reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes at the moment Favourite film The Count of Monte Cristo Training Being in Sierra Nevada for a few weeks will be good because it means I can focus. I think changing things during the last year would be quite a big risk. I've been doing this all my life, and I've been training 10 sessions a week for 50 weeks a year for the last 10 years of my life. If I'm not doing things right now I'm never going to be doing things right Key statistics 2004 400m freestyle gold at European Short Course Championships in Vienna 2008 10km marathon silver at Olympic Games in Beijing 2009 10km marathon gold at World Champ'ships in Rome 2010 400m individual medley bronze at Commonwealth Games in Delhi 2011 1500m freestyle gold at British Championships, Manchester Countdown to 2012 2 July 2011 British Gas Great London Swim, London, England 16-31 July 2011 World Championships, Shanghai, China 24 September 2011 British Gas Great Scottish Swim, Strathclyde, Scotland 3-10 March 2012 British Long Course Championships/ Olympic Trials, Venue TBC May 2012 British Gas Great Salford Swim, Salford Quays, England June 2012 British Gas Great North Swim, Windermere, England (participation tbc) Venue The Serpentine in London's Hyde Park will host both the Marathon swimming event and the triathlon In numbers 4 Years old when Payne started learning to swim. She could "do proper front crawl" by the age of five 2 Days after Payne's 17th birthday she took a 400m freestyle gold medal – at her first senior international meet 10 Two-hour sessions Payne completes in the pool each week, in addition to five one-hour gym sessions Keri-anne Payne is a British Gas ambassador. The 2011 British Gas Great Swim Series takes place at five locations across the UK between 15 May and 24 September. Visit www.greatswim.org