Photo by Janos Schmidt/ITU

We joined the first U.S. Olympic Committee’s 12 for ’12 media teleconference series today, featuring two-time Olympian Allyson Felix and 2012 Olympic qualifier Sarah Groff. After dealing with injury for much of last year, Groff’s breakthrough season continued last weekend as she placed seventh at the ITU World Championship Series event in London to qualify for the 2012 U.S. Olympic Triathlon Team. It marked her third top-seven finish on the 2011 WCS circuit and moved her into sixth in the WCS rankings. A long-time member of the USA Triathlon National Team, Groff placed third at the 2011 WCS event in Austria on June 19 to mark the first-ever podium finish for an American female in the event. Here’s a snippet of what she had to say regarding her fitness, preparation, and next year’s Games.

On the London course:

“The swim is a one-lap swim in the Serpentine and it’s a very straightforward course, very difficult for athletes to get away. Us U.S. girls tend to be stronger swimmers. The bike course is flat. It’s a disadvantage for American women … we tend to be swim-bikers. But there is an opportunity for breakaways. Hopefully there will be more team tactics going on. The run is around the Serpentine as well, a very fast course, straightforward four-lap course, resembles a cross-country running course as well in that there are ups and downs and tight turns. You have to be able to adjust to the differences in the course.”

On how her sacral fracture affected her training:

“I fractured my sacrum in March last year when I was commuting to a run workout and crashed. I basically just landed the wrong way. Crashing is part of the sport but normally you expect to do it in a race. I trained and raced through the fracture thinking it had healed. I found out in November that I’d actually re-fractured it and then had to miss a lot of early-season training in January. Months ago my brother, who’s watched me plug away at the sport for a while, told me this injury would make me a better athlete. He was absolutely right. I had no margin for error: I had to do everything right. I had to learn how to run again from scratch. My muscle pattern was completely messed up, but now I’m running better than I ever have before. The increased focus on improving my core strength and improving the symmetry of my run form, the minutae, that focus is paying off.”

On whether we could see a bike breakaway in the women’s field:

“Seeing how Alistair and some of the other boys were more aggressive on the bike showed that if you’re committed to a breakaway you can definitely stick. My assessment of the women’s race this past weekend … there were so many countries that had qualification spots up for grabs. Whether it was top eight, nine, 12 … with those countries it wasn’t that you had to be a podium finisher, so I think people raced more conservatively. Personally I would have liked there to have been a break on the bike. Maybe I need to train so I can personally take that initiative. There are definitely opportunities to break. It’s a less-than-ideal course for that, but as [Alistair] Brownlee showed it definitely can be done.”

On the riots:

“We didn’t feel threatened. Everything was done to make us feel safe. Let’s just hope everything there gets resolved.”

On a typical day of training:

“When you have three sports there’s no typical day of training. In the morning we swim, maybe a 5000. Mid-day we do a bike workout and in the afternoon we run. We could do two hours or six hours, and just really try to find a balance between the different disciplines and recovery. This coming year, we may cater to the course a bit more specifically than how we normally operate. For example, take a bit of emphasis away from the swim and more towards the run. It will quite possibly be a run race, or a bike-run race. We’ll be moving forward and addressing some of the weaknesses I have while trying to keep my strenth intact.”

On celebrating:

“I celebrated with my training squad and my coach and my boyfriend. I lost a completely unrelated bet and was forced to go out to dinner in a Wonder Woman costume. I honor my bets and there are some good photographs to prove it.”

On deciding to become a triathlete:

“After being a swimmer and runner for a number of years. It was a really hard decision for me to choose between running and swimming. When I graduated I still felt like I had unfulfilled athletic potential. I jumped into a few amateur triathlons after college and was pretty good at them, and so just decided to see how far I could take the sport.”

On medaling:

“I think that representing the U.S. at the London Olympics would be pretty amazing. I’m still trying to wrap my mind around that. As for a medal, that would be a different dream. I can say though that after running in a podium position, that the thought of trying to chase a medal next year is definitely there. I’m going to do everything I can to put myself in that position.”