That swim made my coach Vince Raleigh very happy as he thought it would be great if I could scrape under 8 minutes.

On Saturday I raced the 400 freestyle and qualified only 7th fastest for the final after the heats were a lot faster than I had expected. Lining up for a final against Phelps was a great experience in itself. The grandstand was packed full of spectators all on their feet trying to get a glimpse of him. Whenever he was warming up, getting changed or just relaxing with his iPod on, there would be at least 30 people standing behind his security guards trying to get a photo. As well, there were cameramen scattered all around the pool photographing him at all times.

That guy is under so much scrutiny! He is such a huge celebrity over here.

Behind the blocks for our 400m final Phelps was introduced as "the greatest swimmer of all time", not something that you really want to hear about one of your competitors just before a race!

For me that 400m race didn't go so great. I wore a new suit because I was so pumped for a special performance but as soon as I dived in the chest area filled with water. I was shattered. It felt like I was swimming with a weight on my chest and I wanted to stop after a 100m.

But I kept on trying as hard as I could and again I negative-split my race and finished a very close 3rd in 3:48.49, just failing to catch Phelps (3:48.02) and Canadian Ryan Cochrane (3:48.40). I was 3.5 seconds behind Phelps at the 200m mark and I closed 2 seconds on him over the last 100m. He called it one of the most painful swims ever, said he hates swimming the 400m and doesn't want to make it one of "his" events.

It was a very painful swim for me too! I was disappointed with what happened and I think that I could have beaten him if things went right for me. Anyway, it was good to race him for the first time and then to shake his hand on the podium.

I backed up later that evening with a great lead-off swim in the 4x200m freestyle relay. After a disappointing swim in the individual 200m final the day before when I slipped on the 2nd turn, I made amends here. I was put as first swimmer for Australia's B team against the A team's Kenrick Monk.... Australia's second highest ranked 200m swimmer. I swam over the top of Kenrick in the last 50m to beat him by 0.1 seconds in 1:48.36, less than 0.2 seconds outside my PB. This is a very good in-season swim for me. My time would have seen me finish 4th in the 200m final the night before.

On Sunday evening the meet finished with the 1500m freestyle final. Just a few minutes before the race when I was behind the blocks the strap on my goggles snapped. I just couldn't believe it! I had to make a dash to the stands and grab my training goggles just before the start of the race.

Again I finished best in the race and had the quickest final splits chasing down Olympic bronze medallist Cochrane and just missing to catch him in 15:07.08, only a few tenths behind his time of 15:06.70. This was more than an 11 second PB for me at my third time ever for this event and makes me 8th fastest Australian all-time.

Despite a few errors and mishaps, I had a great time in Santa Clara. I finished 3rd in the men's individual pointscore for the meet behind big guns Ryan Lochte (3 gold, 1 silver) and Phelps (2 gold, 2 silver). I took 3 individual medals (2 silver, 1 bronze). And these medals meant that I had to be drug tested 3 times over the 4-day meet!

It was terrific experience to swim against such high profile US swimmers and I learned a few hard lessons about new suits and goggles!

The altitude training which we did in Flagstaff (Arizona) is already paying dividends for my endurance races proven by the huge PBs in both my 800m and 1500m swims.

If my front-end speed improves over the next 6 weeks, which it generally does in the taper period, I'll race well in Rome and hopefully make it into the finals in some of the events at the World Championships there.

We travel back to Australia on Wednesday. It'll be good to get back, we've been in the US for a month now."