Hannah Miley: With 18 months to go, focus is all on peaking at London 2012

Incredibly, it is just 18 months until the London Olympics. From now until then, everything I do is about preparing to swim my best in the summer of 2012.

Last year was far and away my favourite as a swimmer. Winning both the European Championship and the Commonwealth Games gold medal was a huge inspiration. I was the fastest for the year in the 400m individual medley and that proved that all the hard work put in by my dad - he's also my coach - and myself has paid off.

It confirmed that I am a contender at the top level and I want to relive these winning feelings time and time again.

But last year's achievements already seem a long time ago. I'm now ten weeks into a new programme and I am looking forward to my next big target of the world championship trials in Manchester in March. I competed in last week's British Gas Scottish National Short-course Championships in Glasgow (winning nine out of 11 events) and the heavy workload was all part of my training regime. I always enjoy swimming in Scotland - we get a great reception in Glasgow. After the Commonwealth Games, I started this new season a little bit differently. I went to Perth in Australia to train with Blair Evans (fourth in 400m medley at Commonwealth Games) and her coach Matt Magee. It was a nice change with a new venue (I only trained in 50m pools compared to my usual 25m at Garioch) new training partners and a different coach.

Going out to Australia at the end of the year was great because it meant I almost had a second summer. The training was quite a bit different. I did a lot my high intensity speed work and I even got to try a bit of surfing. But I can safely say I'll stick to the swimming.

The last couple of days of my stay in Australia were spent at a place in Canberra where they have very high tech equipment that can analyse and give instant feedback on certain areas of your dive, streamline, stroke, power and so many other things. The only trouble is that I received so much data that it was pretty hard to figure out what to do with it all.

But, hopefully, it will be a great tool in helping me improve my starts and turns, which are definitely my weakest areas.

It was a huge reality check landing back in Scotland … so much snow. I shifted from around 36-degree climate to sub zero and it was really weird. But, before Christmas, I also had another trip to the sun when I went with a small team to Dubai and swam for GB at the World Short-course Championships. This isn't one of our targeted meets but it did offer a good opportunity to race against my global competitors and to gain more experience.

I wasn't competition sharp in Dubai but it's all about the training and targeting this year World Championships in Shanghai in July, and then carrying on the good work towards London 2012. I was fourth in the 400m medley in Dubai and I was only 0.8 away from a personal best. It was a really close race and I was very happy with my performance considering I had hardly any rest going into the championships.

Now I'm starting to look ahead to the world trials. Just a few weeks to go and I know I will need to be ready. There are always youngsters coming through and so I'll need to swim well to make the GB team.

lHannah Miley is one of Scotland's leading prospects for the 2012 Olympic Games and is a member of Team Kellogg's