Four years ago today, the anxiety really started to build; it was Olympic year. A funny thing happens when the calendar flicks over into Olympic year because all of a sudden, you realise that it’s almost here. There’s no more pretending that there’s plenty of time left to qualify for the biggest sporting event on the planet - no, it’s later this year. It’s an extraordinary period of time and if there is one thing that I don’t miss, having retired from professional sport, it is having to go through the months leading up to an Olympic Games again. At the risk of sounding overdramatic, it nearly killed me.

When January the 1st 2012 arrived, there were just 209 days until the London Olympics. This seems like a considerable amount of time but it was nothing. It’s easy to feel panicky when the realisation dawns that the Games are so, so close. In what felt like the worst timed serious injury in the history of the world, I had undergone a knee operation in October 2011, leaving me unable to compete for three months of the Olympic qualifying period and reducing my chances of being selected for Team GB quite considerably. So when Olympic year arrived, the ticking of the clock was deafening.

I found that often, people assumed that Olympic year was quite fun. There was a presumption that having the opportunity to actually be competing at the Games was overwhelmingly exciting and energising. Deep down it was, but it was too deep down to actually feel it. At the start of 2012, my emotions were fluctuating between pretty miserable and very miserable. I was moving between being very stressed out and ‘oh my god, I’m so stressed out I think I might die’ stressed out. Imogen Bankier - my fellow Scottish badminton player who was also trying to qualify for Team GB- and I would talk about how long it had been since we had enjoyed a good night’s sleep. It got to the stage that neither of us could remember the last time.

The few months leading up to the Olympic Games were, without question, the most pressurised of my life. It is commonly said that athletes have spent the preceding four years of their life training for the Olympic Games; this is not true - they have spent the past ten or fifteen or twenty years training for it. I remember watching Sally Gunnell win Olympic gold in 1992 and it ultimately took me twenty years until I actually made it to an Olympics myself.

I had my selection for Team GB confirmed in May 2012 - it was one of the best days of my life but, funnily enough, it did not remove all of the stress that I had been feeling over the past few months. While selection was, obviously, a huge relief, the worry then set in that something catastrophic would happen and I wouldn’t actually make it to the Games. I was still recovering from my knee injury so I had a constant fear that I would reinjure it and not be able to compete. I remember telling my physio that I didn’t care if I had to have my leg amputated after the Games, just make sure that I get there.

And I became ridiculously paranoid that I would become ill. Elite athletes’ immune systems are typically depressed making catching a cold or picking up a bug much more likely. So any time I was around people and they coughed or sneezed, I would look at them like they were intentionally trying to pass on some kind of debilitating lurgy to me that would prevent me from getting to London.

In the end, I survived that stressful first half of 2012 and made it to the London Olympics but the calendar flicking over to 2016 has brought the memories flooding back of the pressure of Olympic year. There are a couple of hundred Scots who will be fighting for Olympic selection this year. There were 55 Scottish athletes in Team GB at London 2012 and there are likely to be a similar number or perhaps slightly fewer who will make the team for Rio 2016.

It is easily forgotten that Olympic Games themselves are such a tiny part of the process; it is the next 217 days until the Opening Ceremony of Rio that will really put those athletes through the mill and decide whether they ultimately make it to the Games or not. There are medal contenders like Katie Archibald, Ross Murdoch and David Florence and there will be others who will scrape into the team at the last moment but they will all have the nerves and anxieties that come with Olympic year. But despite the sleepless nights and the constant stress, it’s worth it. There is nothing in the world quite like the Olympic Games and it’s unlikely that I will do many things in my life that will ever surpass having competed at London 2012. I’m still glad I’m not going through it all again though.