I wrote in this column last week that we're currently in the middle of our internal selection, which has not been helped by the Arctic blasts of freezing weather currently sweeping the country.

Rowing, being an outdoor sport, is much more enjoyable in the summer and it can be difficult to row when your fingers have frozen to blocks of ice!

To keep us focused on the end goal, we had a presentation this week from the British Olympic Association about competing at a home Olympics.

This is one of several formal seminars that the BOA has organised, to ensure that we maximise the opportunities of a home Games and are not intimidated by the challenges that lie ahead.

The BOA has studied long and hard the experiences of other competitors and other nations competing on home turf to ensure we're ready for our own home Games. Every environment in which we compete has its own set of challenges, and preparation is key.

In 2008 it was the heat, humidity, pollution, and possible political protest – you may remember there were a lot of problems around the torch relay.

This time around, for example, it will be having British newspapers and television, or volunteers that we might know, or friends and family around, or people ringing our mobiles all the time. There will be a different set of distractions, and the planning we do now will be crucial.

We've been studying the examples of previous competitors who either thrived on their home turf or were throttled, to learn and feed into our own experiences.

The classic example here is Cathy Freeman, the great Australian runner who won 400 metres gold in Sydney in 2000. The interesting thing about Freeman is that her race was a showdown between her and her rival, the Frenchwoman Marie-Jose Perec.

Freeman had become a national heroine, went out to race knowing that the entire Australian nation expected her to win, and even lit the Olympic flame at the opening ceremony.

In that situation, you'd expect Freeman to be the one struggling with the pressure, but in the end it was Perec who cracked and the day before the heats quit the Games and flew home, citing harassment by the Australian media.

We've also looked at it from the perspective of our opponents. If I'm competing, say, in Germany, beating the Germans has an added edge.

Therefore I'm sure there are a lot of rowers training hard this winter motivated by the idea of beating the Brits at our home Games. So, for us, it's a case of accepting that we'll be in everyone else's crosshairs, and relishing that challenge.

When I say much of it comes down to planning, the thing about sport is that you can only plan so much.

I firmly believe it's an art, not a science. It's the final one per cent which you can't control, and it's the final one per cent which separates the Olympic champions from the rest. It's the magic ingredient that you can't always put your finger on which might give you an extra inch at the finish line separating first from second.

I've been fortunate enough to race at home twice before – a regatta in 2005 which was my first international race for Britain, and the World Championships in 2006.

Both were incredible experiences, and have left me with memories I will treasure to my grave. More importantly, on both occasions I felt the fact of it being at home enabled me to produce better performances than if it had been elsewhere.

Why was that? I couldn't tell you, exactly.

I'll finish with this comment from the Polish rowers who beat my crew to the gold at the 2009 World Championships, held in Poland. Asked about the impact of a home crowd, the Poles replied: "It was amazing. During the last 300m it felt as if we had a third person rowing in our boat. It was exactly as our coach had told us before the race: 'You only need to row 1,700m. For the last bit, the crowd will carry you to the finish line.'"

In 2012, that extra person will be British.