Rio 2016 crunch time begins after summer of change at British Cycling

After three long years since London 2012, we’re down to just 10 months to go until the Olympic Games in Rio and it’s a great position to be in once again.

The seasons immediately after a Games are still important and exciting, but this is the point at which every training session, every race and every result really starts to matter. It's crunch time and the reason you get into the sport.

We have five major international competitions left before Rio and the first of those are the European Track Championships in Switzerland, starting on Wednesday.

It's a key meeting for us because we have made a lot of changes to the way we work at British Cycling over the spring and summer and this week is our first opportunity to see what effect they have had.

We had to shake things up because our performances and results at February's World Championships in Paris were below the standard we have set over the past decade and carrying on as we were was not an option.

I can't go into too much detail about what's different because I don't want to give anything away to our rivals, but we have new coaches, new training techniques, more support staff, more analysis and a few other little bits and bobs to try to extract marginal gains.

At first it was a bit scary and a shock to the system because I had been doing pretty much the same things every day for the past eight years, but I gradually got used to them and it has turned out to be a really exciting and stimulating summer.

And as a member of the women's team pursuit squad, we needed that, having been beaten for the first time in more than four years at the worlds.

That was a big blow for us all to take, but I also feel that it was a blessing in disguise. The last time we had lost a race was in 2010 and that proved to be the catalyst for our victory at London 2012 and the subsequent run we went on.

I think February's defeat can have the same effect. OK, Australia beat us by three seconds with a world-record time that changed the landscape of the whole event, but that sort of ride is not beyond us either and now we have extra fight and motivation to get back on top.

I actually think the battle between ourselves and the Australians could be one of the best and closest races of the whole Olympics. It should be really exciting to watch.

Another exciting race was the women's World Championship road race a couple of weeks ago, which was won by Britain's own Lizzie Armitstead.

It was so tactical but Lizzie absolutely nailed it. She's a good friend of mine and I know how hard she has worked to get to the top of her sport, so to see her become world champion was hugely satisfying.

Only three other British women have won the world title before, so it was an historic day for cycling in this country.

Hopefully she can now go on to claim gold in the road race in Rio and, with a bit of luck, we'll be celebrating a win as well.