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To her surprise, Angie discovered target shooting was more akin to meditation than anything else. “I can spend an hour or more looking through my sight [the device on a firearm that guides the eye], concentrating on my breathing, bringing my heart rate down and adjusting my grip on the gun before I even fire a live shot,” she explains. ”When I’m in the right zone, all I can see is my sight, and all I can feel is my heartbeat and my hand around the grip.” During competition, Angie will only have 10 minutes to focus before taking her 20 shots, and only 40 seconds to take each shot. “A big part of my training has been learning to zone in and block out the outside world quickly so I can cope with the pressure of competition,” she says.

11.30am: Angie takes a break from training and heads across town to attend one of her architecture lectures at Melbourne University. “I started studying veterinary science, but when I became serious about pentathlon training I had to dedicate 35 hours a week to the sport, so something had to give. I’d always been interested in architecture and it only required six or seven face-to-face hours a week, so I knew it was right for me,” she says. Even so, Angie often needs to study for six hours a night and when assignments and exams are due, there just aren’t enough hours in the day. “I’ve had to pull a few all-nighters to fit in the training and the study at times, but it’s all worth it,” she says.

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It was at university two years ago that Angie met her boyfriend, Brett. “People ask me how I find time for a boyfriend, but we seem to see each other a lot. I think I fit everything in by compartmentalising my life so I know I have free time to see Brett, and we go out to dinner for our monthly anniversaries, which is really nice,” explains Angie. “He’s very supportive of my sport, but if we’re together watching a video on the couch, I do find it hard to tear myself away for training sometimes.”

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