A fight consists of three fiveminute rounds with a oneminute rest period between rounds. It takes place in an octagonal caged arena and there is a full set of rules that all fighters have to abide by. It looks as if I'll be fighting Magenta Louther, who's Belgian, in the Dublin event.

In the lead up to a fight I'll stop drinking about two months beforehand and make sure that I'm sticking to a healthy diet.

There's no particular nutritional regime that I follow other than eating a good range from all the different food groups with plenty of lean meat, fish and chicken and lots of fresh fruit and vegetables. I'm lucky that I find it easy enough to stick within the weight range for my category, which is 55-60kg.

On Sunday mornings I train with my coach, John Cavanagh.

He used to fight himself but he's concentrating on coaching now.

He's the only Irish black belt in Brazilian jujitsu. We do general fitness and cardio work, some running and some weights.

Because there are so few women in the sport I often have to travel at weekends to get opponents to fight or else to find people I can train with. A few weeks ago I went to Sweden for a week to train. There were three jujitsu girls there for me to fight with and we were fighting twice a day for six days. It was fantastic to get so much practice in. My last fight was in Denmark . . . because of the lack of opponents I only get about three or four fights a year. I'm really looking forward to fighting in Dublin . . . we get quite an educated crowd, they know what they're watching. There are 10 fights on the bill but only one of those is a female fight.

On the circuit I'm known as 'Ash the Bash'. I have a gang of supporters who come to see me fight . . . they have t-shirts printed up and it's great to know that they're out there rooting for me.

My Dad comes to all my fights but my Mum is too scared. She watches them on DVD afterwards when she knows that I'm okay. So far . . . touch wood . . .

I've been lucky in that I haven't been injured: bumps and bruises is as bad as it's got.

My two brothers usually come to watch too but my sisters aren't that interested. None of the rest of my family is really into martial arts, my brothers are more into GAA.

If I'm not travelling then I usually teach on Sunday afternoon. There's a kids' club in Inchicore . . . Celtic Mixed Martial Arts. We have about 10 or 15 kids aged between five and 16 and they absolutely love it. Girls are definitely getting more interested in the whole area.

Then I put in a few hours in Schuh on Grafton Street where I work part-time. Later on I chill out at home with the family in Drimnagh for a while.

Sunday tends to be my night for hooking up with my girlfriends . . . we usually head out for a pizza or else rent a couple of DVDs and take it easy.

In conversation with Katy McGuinness