Kerenza Bryson: Five things you should know about me

Modern pentathlete Kerenza Bryson is never sitting still.

The 25-year-old is a medal-winning modern pentathlete, a sport comprising swimming, fencing, horse riding, shooting and running.

And as if all of that isn't enough, she did it all whilst studying to become a doctor and working in the Army Reserves.

As she reaches the final stages of her journey to Paris 2024, here are five things Kerenza Bryson wants you to know about her:

I'm a qualified doctor and want to specialise in acute medicine

My dad is a scuba diving doctor and my mum was a nurse so I come from a medical family.

But I didn't go down that route just because my family have done medicine, in fact I'd say that my dad actively encouraged me not to do medicine because it's not something you should do unless you genuinely care about people and want to help.

I think it's a really awesome mix of controlled chaos and I love how all the doctors are thinking on their feet so quickly.

During my degree we rotated through a lot of different aspects and I think I definitely want to do acute medicine in the future which is fast-paced and chaotic.

I also really love emergency medicine but it's one of the worst specialities for burnout and I think I want to do something that helps me manage my work-life balance better.

The emergency doctors I've spoken to are always run off their feet and exhausted and it's so fast-paced and trauma based they say it's good for 10 years but then after that you want to do something different, so we'll see.

I'm a Maritime Troop Commander Reserve Officer in 165 Port and Maritime RLC Regiment

When I was younger, I went to a competition where someone basically head hunted me and said I could be really successful in the Army and asked whether I had thought about it.

So I joined my University Officer Training Corps at Plymouth and I thought I'd give it a go and enjoyed the idea of long-term being a doctor in the army and travelling with a regiment.

From there I decided to go to Sandhurst and become a reserve officer.

I still do work in the reserves now but just remotely and they're super supportive in helping me continue my sporting commitments.

I actually won British Army Sportswoman of the year in 2023.

I look at my life at the moment as a triad with my sport, medicine and army but they're all very separate. My goal long-term once I retire from sport is to combine my army and medicine hats and become a full-time army doctor.

I'm a qualified scuba diver

I got my first scuba licence when I was about 13 so I've been diving for 12 years or so now which is quite cool. I've done the Open Water, the Advanced Open Water and the Nitrox Licences.

It's something I've inherited from my dad from his job and we always try to go on scuba diving holidays in the off-season if we can and try to go to cool places to see fish and coral life.

We went to the Maldives last year which was a huge bucket list tick off.

It was so special as we lived on a boat and went around following whale sharks and manta rays and so many other cool things.

The whale sharks were maybe the most amazing thing I've ever seen in the sea.

My most loyal running partners are my dogs

My family have two golden retrievers called Roxy and Raye and one springador - springer spaniel crossed labrador - called Lily.

We've always had goldens as a family and we breed them so we have a girl and when she's three or four she will have a litter of puppies and then we'll keep a girl and sell the rest and so on.

So it's like a family tree with great-grandma, grandma, mum and daughter.

We live near Dartmoor and when I was younger I used to go out and do my runs on the moors and take the dogs with me.

I still do it now and the dogs just love it. They see me and they know that we're going wild and exploring Dartmoor.

They've been with me since I was little and running 5km in half an hour all the way to now when they will run with me on hard tempo runs and sessions, just sat in the middle watching me do intervals.

They're my longest and loyalist running partners really.

I climbed Kilimanjaro with no training

One of my really good friends when I was at Plymouth college is Kenyan so we had been out to stay with her family before and then years later we decided to climb Mount Kilimanjaro after talking about it for so long.

We went to Kenya on holiday again in 2018 and my two friends and I travelled down to Tanzania and climbed it.

It was such a beautiful day when we reached the top - it was all snowy at the peak.

We didn't do any prep really! I went for two long walks around Dartmoor in the UK but that was it.

We finished climbing the mountain and then went straight into holiday mode and were on safari everyday and relaxing.

I hadn’t done much hiking or expedition stuff before so once I had done that, I just loved it and now have the bug to do more and be more adventurous.

Two years ago I went to Iceland and did a seven day hike with my partner and there's a plan to do another one after the Olympics.

Sportsbeat 2024