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{ Jessica Ennis is not concerned about expectation levels on her ahead of London 2012. Photograph: Franck Fife/AFP/Getty Images

Jessica Ennis wrinkles up her face and laughs at the suggestion that she is the poster girl for London 2012. "I don't even really know what that means," she says. "It just kind of started sprouting up everywhere, that phrase, I suppose after the two good years I've had." The 25-year-old heptathlete who, juggernaut-like, won three major titles – world indoor and outdoor champion and European champion – in just 18 months following her return from a horrific career-threatening injury in 2008, is typically understated.

"It's not just me on my own doing the Olympics," she says with a squirm, "there are so many other people – Tom Daley and Rebecca Adlington – all those people who did brilliant things in the last Olympics and I think next year that's when all those faces will start getting thrown around and everyone will start looking at different people more. So although right now it's quite hyped up I don't think it will be that way next year. I hope."

With 2012 just around the corner Ennis is asked the same questions nearly every week – does she feel pressure? How will she cope? What is it like to be the face of these historic Games? She shrugs. Ennis, the girl next door from Sheffield, is not one to dwell on such things.

Still, doesn't she sometimes wish that Britain's only other world champion athlete – triple jumper Phillips Idowu who actually hails from Hackney, one of the five Olympic boroughs – would share the load as the face of the Games? "Yeah, come on Phil!" says Ennis, giggling, "pull your finger out! Get that face plastered round a bit more! Actually it's really weird," she says. "We've virtually achieved the same things – in fact he's achieved more than me with a silver medal at the Olympics."

Idowu's silver medal was won in Beijing, and it is easy to forget that Ennis, so accomplished and now so indelibly linked to the London Games, has never actually been to an Olympic Games before. "It is really weird. People talk to me as though I've been to an Olympics and experienced it but I haven't. It will be all new to me but I'm hoping that my experiences from other competitions, like the world championships and the Commonwealth Games will help."

Ennis was offered the chance to fly out to Beijing while recovering from the injury to her right foot, but in the end she decided not to go. "I just thought: no chance. It would have been unbearable with the injury, just to be hobbling around watching everyone else compete when I could have been a part of it so I turned that down." Instead she watched the heptathlon from her sofa at home in Sheffield, her foot in a protective boot, desperately trying not to dwell on what might have been. "I did feel upset, but I think by that point I was over it, I had moved on. There was no way I was going to be in Beijing and I'd had the whole [experience of] being upset about it already. I just wanted to watch it and then I wanted it to be over so that I could move on."

To combat the pressure of being the home favourite it has been suggested that Ennis speak to athletes who have been in a similar position such as Australia's Cathy Freeman who won 400m gold at the Sydney Games, and the Swedish heptathlon legend Carolina Kluft who won gold at the 2006 European championships in Gothenburg. Ennis hums thoughtfully at the suggestion, but although she wouldn't turn the opportunities down it is clear that she has her own ideas about how to approach a home Games.

"I think I am on my own path," she says resolutely. "It's nice to speak to people who have experiences of similar situations but at the same time I feel that I have to do it for myself, it's my own journey and I will learn from my own experiences. Of course little bits of advice help along the way, but at the end of the day I have to try and do it for myself. I have to try and get myself through it."

Her response sums up the single-mindedness of an athlete her predecessor, the heptathlete Kelly Sotherton, once dismissed with the nickname "tadpole". At five foot five inches Ennis is indeed tiny, especially when set against the enormous frame of the current Olympic champion, Nataliya Dobrynska, but her determination marks her out as unique and – so far – indomitable. Ennis appears to achieve the impossible – despite her tiny size she jointly holds the British record in the high jump at 1.95m – a whopping 30cm higher than her own height, a leap ratio which only six other high jumpers in the world have ever pulled off.

Ennis admits that she struggles to recall much about past Olympic Games. "I think I have a lot of false memories, thinking I've seen Linford Christie and Sally Gunnell run in Barcelona, when actually I've just seen videos of them later on. The first Games that I remember properly is Sydney in 2000."

By then Ennis had already begun competing in the heptathlon and, naturally, it was Denise Lewis's gold medal-winning performance in Sydney that captured her imagination. "She was taped up and really struggling and still managed to come out on top and win. I've got a real appreciation for how much mental strength she had to get through that.

"To be able to pull yourself together, push the pain to the back of your mind and go on to the next event, that's something really special. When she ran the 800m she was taped up on the start line and she just gritted her teeth and got through it, and I know how hard that event is even when you're not carrying an injury. That moment when she crosses the line and realises she's won gives me goosebumps, especially now I know what that feels like."

This year Ennis will concentrate on winning a European indoor title in March, before going on to defend her world title in Daegu, South Korea, this summer. But if Ennis had to choose between two world championship titles and an Olympic gold medal, which would she go for?

Without hesitation she answers. "The Olympic gold medal, especially with a home Olympics. It's just more special, isn't it?"

The suspense ahead of the Games must be unbearable, how will she get through the next 18 months? "Oh this year will fly by. It's going to be really busy…especially with me so preoccupied with being the face of 2012."

Ennis descends into a fit of giggles.

With that level head on her shoulders she will manage it just fine.

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