Karen Shinkins is heading off to the world track and field championships, starting in Seville next Friday, with the kind of excitement that only those at ease with their event, will ever know.

A steep upward curve in the graph of her career, first identified in last season's Europa Cup meeting in Lithuania, has taken her to the periphery of international acclaim in 400 metres running.

And come Seville, she hopes to announce her arrival at the next stage of that ambitious journey, by setting down additional markers for next year's Olympic Games at Sydney.

The woman from Newbridge, Co Kildare, has come a long way in just a couple of eventful years, since abandoning her school sports of hockey and basketball to pursue success in one of the toughest disciplines of all.

"There are no easy routes to success in athletics," she says, "only dedication, hard work and the ability to suffer the bad days as well as enjoying the good ones.

"So far, there has been more enjoyment than disappointment. But you have to go on working in the belief that there will be times when you're not going to get the full reward for all the effort expended in training." If sacrifice is a pre-requisite of fulfilment in her chosen sport, she is entitled to believe that she is paying the price of her success. Because of the vagaries of the Leaving Cert points system, she had to go to Waterford to do a third level course in business and marketing.

Removed from the camaraderie of a sport which is still largely Dublin based, she would occasionally experience the loneliness which is not necessarily the prerogative of the long distance runner, particularly in the fourth and last year of her course.

Then the numbers endeavouring to combine sport and studies began to drop and, taking the difficult option, she found herself isolated more and more in the relentless crusade to drive her times down ever closer to the elusive 51 seconds mark.

Two and a half hour sessions, six days a week, were designed to ask pertinent questions of the inner person. And without ever shirking the primary purpose of her stay in Waterford, she responded generously.

"The gym work, I was usually able to fit in between lectures," she says. "And that left me free to go to the track later in the day. At times it was tough, but with my performances improving it was bearable."

The other big factor in her development was the coaching of Jim Kilty when she returned home at weekends. Kilty, often one of the unsung heroes of Irish athletics, has had much to do with the improving standards of sprinting with the progress of athletes like Ciara Sheehy, Paul Oppermann and Darren Hough all bearing testimony to his progressive thinking on the sport.

"His coaching structures, devised in three week blocks, are such that they are never repetitive. And the results he achieves with them, speak for themselves," says Shinkins.

In her own case, they were quite spectacular. Running in the European meeting in Lithuania last year, she claimed the national 400 metres record which had stood in the name of Patricia Walsh for so long, with a time of 52.81 seconds.

Later she would reduce it further to 52.13 seconds when reaching the semi-finals of the European championships at Budapest and now, it's down to 51.07 seconds thanks to a superb performance in the World Student Games in Majorca earlier this summer.

The effect is to heighten the sense of expectancy going into the biggest test of her career next week but profiting from experience, notably in her first major championship in Budapest, she's quietly confident in her ability to handle the pressure.

"The point which struck me most about Budapest was the high media pressure," she says. "That's something than can throw young athletes but at least now I know what to expect.

"Compared to the European championships, this is another major step up in class. Now, truly, they can claim to have all the best athletes in the world at the same meeting and in that situation, it would be silly to go making wild predictions.

"All I promise is to run to the very limit of my potential and, hopefully, put down a few markers for the Olympics. If I achieve that, the journey to Seville will be well worthwhile. And all those long hours spent in training in Waterford, will again have been justified."