I had a very early start (5am wakeup) this morning and then flew from Stuttgart, Germany to London. I met up with the rest of the Aussie TT team and we then flew to Manchester. From there it was a 45 minute drive to Preston where we will be training for the next few days. I had a gym session this afternoon (the others who had arrived from Australia were too tired to train – quite understandably) which will be my last good session until competition. I did my squats (60kg, then 80kg, then a couple of sets on 100kg), lunges (3 x 12 with 20kg), bench press with dumbbells (15kg, then 20kg, then 24kg), bent over row (3 x 12 on 20kg) and a number of ab, core and twisting exercises. I will do more core work before comp starts in London but will likely do more explosive leg work without weights rather than more heavy lifting.

On Monday we play a test match against England with Paul Drinkhall, Liam Pitchford and Andrew Baggeley. 500 tickets to the match have been sold so far and they are hoping for more. It will be good to play in front of a decent crowd so that it doesn’t come as some kind of shock in London at the Olympics. Playing in front of a crowd can both inspire you to perform well (luckily I find this is usually the case for me) or make you nervous and perform poorly. Whatever happens it will be good for us to get some practice at preparing on match-day (just like we will in London) and then going out in front of the crowd and competing. I find it is important to keep my focus inside the court and I avoid looking out into the crowd when possible.

There was a fair bit of buzz around Heathrow today when we arrived there. Hoards of volunteers and people who are there to help. We even had some photo requests!