Geraint Thomas is one of Great Britain's team pursuit riders in track cycling.

The 22-year-old, who was part of the GB team that broke the world record in Manchester, is also a professional road cyclist, riding for the Barloworld team.

Thomas will be competing in his first Olympics, in Beijing.

Watch his recent video diary from the Smithfield Nocturne race in central London.

I’ve just arrived back in the UK, after my block of road racing where I was based in Italy since the start of April. I have been renting a place out there for the last two years now, however my Italian is still pretty ropey! I can talk about a bike race or order coffee but it ends about there.

I had a heavy block of road racing in this phase, where I had 37 days of racing in Portugal, Belgium, France, Holland and Italy. The bulk of these days were during the Giro d’Italia, which is three weeks’ long. We (my pro-road team, Barloworld) had our fair share of bad luck during the race, where three of our best guys all had bad crashes. There were broken bones, viruses and muscle injuries which meant only five out of the nine of us finished.

For me personally I had a good race. I felt a lot stronger than I did during the Tour de France last year and was able to race at the front, rather than just suffering at the back!

My birthday fell on probably the hardest stage of the race which was… nice. Luckily, I had a good day and didn’t suffer too much. After the stage, my team-mates and I got a helicopter lift from the top of the mountain back to our hotel. It was my first time in a helicopter, and it was amazing. Apart from when the pilot made a few aggressive movements, which gave me a few butterflies to say the least. Being my birthday it also gave us an excuse to have a few beers in the evening!

Mind you, they nearly came back up the next day after a gruesome mountain time trial, where it took me about six minutes to complete the last kilometre. That was by far the hardest kilometre of my life! I also realised then that I could be having my birthday at this race for the next 10 years… what a thought!

I enjoyed a nice easy week after the Giro. It was quite strange being home on my own at first, rather than being with a bunch of riders and staff with the same routine day in day out, for three and a half weeks! The roads are great for training out in Italy, the weather’s generally good and cycling is massive, so road rage is a lot less frequent compared to here in good old Blighty.

The life style is easy to get used to as well. Everything is so relaxed. When I wasn’t racing or training, I was either in the café with the other GB lads or playing on the Xbox. Or eating the occasional pizza and ice cream! I’m going to miss the life out there.

In the meantime I am in Manchester for a couple of weeks for our final blocks of preparation before the Olympics. We’re then off to Majorca for a short road camp before returning back to the Motherland (Wales) for our final block of track work. I’m going to have to take the lads to my local curry house in Cardiff - just the one won’t hurt!

We’ve been aiming for this for the last couple of years and for it to be so close now is pretty exciting. I think we (the GB Team) will be going to the Games as favourites after our performance at the worlds. It was a great feeling to be part of such a great success. In the Team Pursuit we won the world title in a world record time, which was amazing, especially in front of a massive home crowd.

Even when I watch the video now it gives me goose bumps! But we can’t afford to rest on our laurels because the other nations are right behind us. We still have to aim to go faster and try to achieve that ‘perfect’ ride. To be honest we’re saving it for the Olympic Final on 18 August.

Let me know if you have any questions – I’ll do my best to reply, if I’ve got time (and Internet access!) in my training schedule.