Hi again and welcome to my world as the Beijing Games get ever closer.

Last weekend's World Cup race in Kitzbuehel in Austria was an important hit out in my build-up to the Games.

If there's one part of this sport that I never get bored of having to deal with it is 'racing' and getting to do it in some of the most beautiful places on this planet!

Kitzbuehel is in the heart of the Austrian Alps. With green rolling hills and mountain peaks that look so steep only a crazy man would try to ski down them (which they do by the way), it's hard to think about racing!.

Luckily for me though I left my skis at home and all the other tourist stuff is on hold until after Beijing!

This race was all about finishing off a block of training that had lasted over 10 weeks.

You all know I've been based in Font Romeu, at the French Altitude training centre during that time.

I've done some other races directly from there but this was slightly different as it was at the end of my block and presented some other challenges because of it.

There was no taper for Kitzbuehel though, I essentially kept training right through the race and it is only now that I am enjoying an 'easier' week of training.

This is just the way we have planned things with August 19th in mind.

Coming down from altitude leaves me with a great feeling, it is like I can breathe through a straw.

This of course is great for your head if the heart is going at about 180 beats a minute.

That 'giddy' feeling was not allowed to get in the way of my objectives in Kitzbuehel though.

I was careful not to get caught up in what the others were doing and how fast they were racing.

Kitzbuehel was about me and racing comfortably while achieving a few personal objectives, all of which are relative to my training and timing towards Beijing.

Let's quickly look at the race itself.

My swim was going ok until around 1000 metres into it.

Then some kind soul in front of me lost the feet of the guy he was swimming behind (I know who and he knows I know it was him - if you know what I mean).

I realised it slightly too late and over the last 500 metres a gap opened to the front guys.

I pushed past 'him' and took five guys with me into transition.

We jumped on our bikes and pushed really hard to get to the front of the race.

I wanted to push on the bike at the start anyway so this was more about me and less about the race unfolding.

I'll admit I thought my pushing on the bike would be at the front of the field, not making an effort to catch up!

Not to worry, the gap of 20 seconds slowly came down and by 10k we were back on the pace.

After that the front group was about 20 strong.

No one really was doing much for the rest of the ride and in the end the third group caught us to make 50 guys heading into T2 for the run.

I made sure as I always do that I would be in front off the bike.

With a big group like this one of two things always seem to eventuate.

Someone generally just streaks it in the first kilometres and guys try to follow and they blow up.

Or everyone just runs quite controlled in a big group until guys get dropped from the change in pace.

It actually happened both way's in Kitzbuehel.

Ivan Rana (who had not won a world cup since 2003) blew us away over the first 2km and then a group of eight guys ran together 15 seconds back - including myself, Bevan Docherty and Athens Bronze medalist Sven Riedier.

For the next 8km this is pretty much how it stayed.

Rana in front by 15 seconds, but our group kept getting smaller and smaller every lap.

In the end it came down to racing for second as Ivan had his best day for over four years.

I waited as long as I could for the sprint into the finish and in the end out sprinted Sven for second.

I'm now at my 'home' in Germany for an easy few days of training post altitude and post race.

I have a little sprint race on August 2 in Germany. It will almost be like my last quality session before Beijing.

We then head over to Jeju in Korea to meet up with the New Zealand team for 12 days prior to traveling to Beijing for the BIG race on August 19.