Leading into the grass court season, I did quite a heavy physical block which was based around power. I was doing two or three Olympic lifting sessions a week (the three lifts I do with my trainer Jez Green are snatch, clean and push press), along with three or four medicine ball and jump sessions.

I have to take at least a month off and for the first two weeks I have to wear a cast…

I was also doing one core session each week. If it was during a tournament, I substituted in a treadmill sprint session for one of the Olympic lifting sessions. All of these workouts are designed to maximise the power generated by the body and use it in basically every move you make on a tennis court!

The highlight of the grass season was another appearance at Wimbledon – my second main draw match after playing doubles with Emily Webley-Smith in 2007. This time I partnered Anna Hawkins and we lost easily to Nathalie Dechy and Casey Dellacqua.

OK, I didn’t play amazing at Wimbledon this year, but I can’t put it down to nerves, because I really didn’t feel tight. I played some OK tennis, but just not with the level of aggression that I needed to compete with two of the top doubles players in the world.

Dechy and Dellacqua went on to make the semis, and Dellaqcua had just made the doubles final at Roland Garros, Dechy was also starting to do pretty well in singles again – she held match points against Ana Ivanovic in round two.

They were a really tough team to play against, they didn’t give us anything at all, and we couldn’t figure out a way to challenge them, and even if we had, I’m not sure I would have had the ability just yet to execute well enough to trouble them.

Overall, Wimbledon 2008 was a very good experience though and, again, I felt comfortable and at home in the environment. This year even more so than last year, because I got to know more of the senior players, instead of mainly juniors.

After Wimbledon, my coach Dave Sammel and I decided it was better to travel in Europe than to stay in Britain and play ITF grass court events in Felixstowe and Frinton. We agreed that to progress as fast as possible, it would be more beneficial to try and establish myself as a top level player abroad, rather than in the UK.

So Dave, Stefy Boffa, the Swiss girl, and I went to Spain. Sky TV commentator and former pro Barry Cowan joined us for the first 10 days as well. We played four Spanish tournaments – Valladolid, Badajoz, La Coruna and Vigo – finishing with one more in Coimbra, Potugal (my best result being a doubles final of the $25,000 in Valladolid with Stefy).

In Vigo, I was playing my first round singles match and it was only 2-1 in the first set when my foot started hurting when I was walking to change ends. I kept playing that match but it was getting worse. I took two days off, and it felt a little better. So hoping to play the final tournament of the trip in Coimbra, I played 30 minutes each day until my first round match.

I tried to play, got through one set but the pain became unimaginable so I had to pull out. I got back to the UK and had an MRI scan, which showed bone stress in the navicular bone in my left foot. So Doctor Turner at the LTA sent me straight away to have a CT scan, which came back the following day showing a fracture in the bone.

Sooooooo… I returned home to Sheffield from the National Tennis Centre in Roehampton (I got the scans in Wimbledon so stayed at NTC) about three days ago, and have been doing lots of upper body work, core and swimming since I got back.

I have to take at least a month off and for the first two weeks I have to wear a cast-boot thing when walking. I have to go down to the NTC once every two weeks to have a check-up with Doc Jackson.

The ultimate goal for me at the moment is to make qualifying for Australian Open in January 2009. It will be very tough given the limited number of tournaments I will be able to play between now and then (because of my foot), but with a lot of hard work, I believe I can do it. I will have to pick up enough points to get inside the top 250 in the world – from my current ranking of 396.

When I get back playing tournaments, I plan to stay in Europe until the end of the year competing at Challengers. We will wait until the year-end ranking lists come out to decide where to go in the New Year.