Road to Rio: Race walker Rachel Tallent continues family's Olympic tradition

For many first time Olympians the hardest part can be juggling training, work and sometimes education. For race walker Rachel Tallent, that balancing act has made the Road to Rio even more rewarding.

Source: AAP

It's 7am, dewy and very, very fresh at the athletics track at the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra.

The long day is just beginning for ambitious race walker Rachel Tallent, who's just months out from her first Olympic Games.

"Getting up in the morning is probably the hardest part and then the rest of the day just flows, because I enjoy everything that I do," Tallent told SBS News as she began her warm up.

But as training progresses, it's good to know even Olympians are human too: "A lot of whinging today," Tallent quips as she takes a short, hard-earned break between laps.

Tallent walks four mornings a week, runs on most of those evenings and does alternating gym and swimming sessions up to six times a week.

The 23-year-old says the ultimate goal is to beat her 20-kilometre personal best race walk time of 91 minutes 32 seconds.

"To be competitive in Rio you've really got to crack that 90 minute barrier," she says.

"I took almost three minutes off my PB this year at the nationals. We've found a much better training program that suits me personally, so it's just about continuing working on that."

Tallent completes 20 laps of one kilometre intervals and stops for a feedback chat with one of her AIS coaches, former race walker Daniel Coleman.

Over a week, Tallent walks about 85 kilometres as part of her training.

But the session doesn't end there. Next it's to the gym where 15 minutes later Tallent is doing sets of squats with around 50 kilograms of weight on her shoulders.

Growing up on a farm, Tallent was always an active kid, much like her older brother, London Olympic gold medallist Jared Tallent, who's also heading to Rio where he'll attempt to defend his title - awarded belatedly this year after the London gold medal was stripped from Russian race walker Sergey Kirdyapkin over doping.

Coleman says the younger Tallent is no less ambitious.

"Jared's biggest strength is his consistency," he says.

"Every major championships he's gone to he's been able to perform and you see that in Rachel now.

"She turned up to national championships and there were a lot of girls there who had the qualifier and were going for that first place but Rachel was the one that held her nerve and came out on top at the end."

The gym session comes to an end, but the working day continues for Tallent. The Ballarat native receives considerable support at the AIS but there's no such thing as a free ride.

"You've met Rhys but my name is Rachel, I'm going to be one of your tour guides as well," Tallent tells a group who've arrived at the institute about an hour after her gym session has finished.

The AIS receives regular groups of curious folks who want to learn more about the facilities that have made Australia's athletes among the best in the world for decades.

Tallent also works in the AIS physio department. It's a busy life, Tallent says, with a single goal.

"To crack that 90 minute barrier (at Rio) would be probably a dream come true," she says.

"It would mean that I put everything out there and tried my best."

The Rio Olympics women's 20km race walk gets underway on August 19.