91Èȱ¬

Straight after the Games, I took a long trip to Mongolia and I think it was absolutely the best place for me to gather my thoughts again and remind myself of who I was. I don't know if you've been to but there's not much there except space, and it was space that I needed.

After a long time thinking about Beijing 2008 and looking to London 2012, I decided that I hadn't quite finished with the lure of international sport, and I wanted to give it another shot.

This brings me up to where I found myself last weekend - back in a boat, sitting on a start line of an international regatta, in that moment of utter stillness before the starting buzzer sounds.

This was the in , the Olympic regatta venue for . We have three of these World Cups, which are points-accumulating and have less significance, before the big one, the World Championships in Poland in late August.

And even the World Championships is less important on its own as it forms a marker on the road to London 2012.

This World Cup provided more than the usual set of challenges, however, as four of us competed in two different events: the double scull and the quad scull.

Unlike swimming or cycling, where competitors routinely compete in several events, in rowing the technical demands of building a crew boat together with the physical demands of rowing a 2000m race flat out means that doubling up is comparatively rare. Steve Redgrave tried it at and 'only' managed a gold and a bronze.

The double scull found me back in my 2006 combination, with , in which we finished a respectable fourth at .

She's spent the last four years in this boat, winning a world bronze and Olympic bronze, so is incredibly confident and experienced in the double.

Having spent the past two seasons in the quad myself, it's been quite a learning process coming back to the small boat, where the races are longer and more tactical.

In Banyoles, we with a controlled race, and followed that with a victory in the quad.

It was a great regatta and - after the pressure, razzmatazz and huge media interest in Beijing - it was great to be able to get out there and race hard without all the song and dance surrounding it.

Of course, in London in three years' time, no-one's going to remember who did what at the first World Cup of this Olympiad. But at the same time, it's the old saying: If not me, then who?

We go out to win every race and we think we should be the fastest double out there. Battle re-commences in two weeks in Munich at the second World Cup and the competition will get tougher with our main rivals expected to be Bulgaria and Germany. Watch this space...