NORWAY – Kristin O’Connor starts her morning with sit-ups, push-ups and a cardiovascular workout on a bicycle, finishing up after one or two hours.

And then after work, she heads to Maine Kyokushin Karate school for three to five hours of fighting and teaching.

“Every day but Tuesday,” O’Connor said, about her training regime. The 25-year-old Karate brown-belt has been following this intense schedule since January, gearing up for the 2006 Karate World Cup in Sydney, Australia.

She left Saturday with her coach and owner of Kyokushin Karate, Martin Petrovich, and with her husband, Tim O’Connor.

Twenty-seven countries will be represented at the World Cup, with 20 competitors in O’Connor’s class. The only female from the United States, she will join three other American men for her first world tournament.

“It’s bare knuckle,” Petrovich said, explaining the Kyokushin style. “We kick to the head, we kick the legs.” In other words, this fighting is not for the faint-hearted or those overly squeamish about pain.

And O’Connor does not seem to mind being bruised up a bit. Two months ago while fighting Petrovich, O’Connor got her nose broken and her ear drum perforated.

“She fights like a man,” Petrovich said. “I’ve been here 12 years, and she’s the best female fighter ever produced in this dojo,” a Japanese martial-arts term for a formal training hall.

In the past few months, O’Connor has become leaner, too, to drop down to the light-weight class below 133 pounds.

“I would physically exhaust her,” Petrovich said. “And then when she was at that point, I had everyone fight her.” He also had her carry Tim, who weighs 170 pounds, on her shoulders around the studio.

“The fights there will be easy compared to here,” Petrovich said.

O’Connor grew up in the North Shore of Massachusetts but left that area three years ago with her high-school sweetheart and now husband to settle in Andover to be closer to the mountains. When she is not working as a ski tuner at Sunday River, both she and Tim hike and snowboard, as well as dabble in music, she said.

Two weeks after the couple’s honeymoon, they started taking karate lessons with Petrovich.

“We wanted to do this so we could always do something together,” Kristin said.

Tim then admitted, “It kinda took over.”

“We got absorbed,” Kristin agreed.

And three years later, both have qualified for the World Cup, but Tim has a tender leg from an injury so will not be competing. He will however travel as Kristin’s coach. Petrovich will be working as a center referee. All three are being sponsored by Striker International in Oxford, which is contributing $10,000 for the two-week trip. The actual fighting takes place Nov. 4 and 5.

“I’m going down there to win,” O’Connor said.