Katie Archibald believes Great Britain will need to break their own world record if they are to defend their women's team pursuit title at the Tokyo Olympics.
Archibald was part of the quartet – alongside Laura Kenny, Elinor Barker and Joanna Rowsell Shand – who set a new mark of four minutes 10.236 seconds to take gold in Rio de Janeiro five years ago.
That time still stands as the world record, but rumours abound of rival teams having gone faster in training rides.
At a time when the pandemic has denied riders the opportunity to hone their race tactics in a competitive environment, that has meant frequent battles in training with the men's academy riders – who just happen to be coached by Monica's husband Ben Greenwood.
"We're preparing for the races to a far higher level," Archibald said. "This is one of those silver linings that comes up with the pandemic delays.
"I suppose that we've been given that space to find excellence and I'm grateful for that, grateful for Monica."
The Scot said the rebalancing of focus has helped freshen up training in a way which should benefit the team when competition gets under way in Izu in a little over a week's time.
"We are obviously still balancing it with the team pursuit as our primary objective," the 27-year-old added.
"It's an interesting one – I guess we're guilty of always referencing things against Rio, especially because Rio was a success and it can become tempting when you're nervous to lean back on that and say, 'Well, this worked, let's just repeat it'.
"And you can't do that. We don't just want to repeat Rio."
