The head agrees with Pearson's injury-ravaged body and makes a strong case for the former. Does she think about retirement?

"All the time, all the time, especially with these injuries," Pearson told Fairfax Media.

"I'm only 30, I know I keep saying that but that's old in athletics age I guess. I really have to look after my body, I have probably a 60-year-old body in a 30-year-old person."

Then Pearson's heart chimes in. A heart still wrenched by missing the opportunity to defend her 100 metres hurdles London gold medal in Rio last year, when the injury curse struck yet again.

"It [missing the last Olympics] is definitely a driver," Pearson says.

"That does help for me to want to do three Olympics. I wanted to do four but I'm not going to get that chance, I'm definitely not going to be doing anything after Tokyo. It's the same thing, can I do it? I don't know.

"I'd love to be able to but I'll be turning 34 in 2020. A world champion in 2009 in my event, she was 35 – it's doable but at the same time I keep coming back to whether my body can do it and whether it can handle it. It's another three years of training to get there."

All the while there's another itch in the back of Pearson's mind – the chance to compete at next year's Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast, a city which she calls home.

She has another medal to defend up there, the gold she won in Glasgow in 2014, secured just seven weeks after tearing her hamstring, and Pearson can take a huge step towards the 2018 Gold Coast Games in Sydney on Sunday at the Australian Athletics Championships.

Should she run 12.98 seconds or better in the 100m hurdles, she'll secure qualification for this year's world athletics championships in August.

It'll be Pearson's first serious outdoor hurdle in about 10 months, during which time she's torn a hamstring, missed the Rio Olympics, decided to coach herself and competed in the European indoor season.

She was due to race in Canberra last month after returning from Europe, but pulled out, once again, with a hamstring issue.

Much of Pearson's recent injury trouble stems from the brutal race fall she suffered in 2015. She injured her Achilles tendon while jumping a hurdle, and landed on her left wrist as she tumbled to the ground.

The wrist dislocated, every bone in the joint shattered and she required surgery and a year off to avoid an early retirement. There's more surgery still to come, although she plans to defer that until after the Commonwealth Games.

"For me to try and get back from that was quite difficult, because of so much strain you put on your other limbs," Pearson said.

"The rest of your body takes a lot of load because you're limping a lot, so then my hamstring went two months later.

"My body was just breaking down I think and mentally I was stressed and emotional and it was seven weeks out to the Olympics and I was in no shape to be even trying to defend my title.

"In a way it was a bit of a relief to have to call it quits on the Olympics but at the same time it was devastating as well because it's an Olympics, no one wants to miss an Olympics.

"It was pretty hard, all those injuries in such a short space of time but we get through it, and we're back again.

"Your body doesn't forget those injuries so you have to make sure that you look after each of those parts of your body that you've injured several times before.

"I can still do what I've done 10 years ago, I just hurt a lot more doing it. I don't recover as quickly. I've learned a big lesson in my career and that's to take it day by day, rep by rep, session by session because you just have to."

Pearson's desire to compete still overrides the endless aches and pains she suffers every day, and her philosophy has never wavered.

"Even in your job you can have these moments where you're like 'For God's sake what's going on', even in just general life if you're just having a bad run you're like 'What do I have to do to get out of this' but you keep pushing through don't you," Pearson said.

"They're hard moments to get through but you do get through them and that's what I have to keep telling myself that we'll get through it, we'll persevere, and if you have resilience anything can happen."