Almost exactly four years before the Beijing Games, Costin was just nine days out from competing in his second Olympics, at Athens, when hit by a truck which was driving on the wrong side of the road.

He broke two vertebrae in his back, fractured several other bones and there were fears he would never walk again. But he did, and soon after the Beijing race where he had to be carried from the track due to exhaustion after finishing 44th out of 48 athletes he started to get angry.

Now he's getting even and starting his comeback in Canberra.

Costin and his partner Zuzana Malikova, from Slovakia, are two of four international athletes at the month-long race walking camp in Canberra that also includes Australia's Beijing dual Olympic medallist Jared Tallent.

And while for pretty much all of the 35 athletes involved it's an intensive training camp, Costin is also interested in the science behind a heat acclimatisation study that is happening at the same time.

The study involves three groups, each comprised of seven athletes, on different diets. Its aim is to research a number of factors including nutrition and physiology in the way the body best deals with heat.

Given that major athletics event are often held in hot summer weather in places like Osaka and Beijing and in the height of the European summer Costin is keen to learn from the research.

''My first reaction [after the Beijing race] was relief,'' Costin said. ''But very soon after I started getting angry with the performance, and anger is all well and good but if you aren't going to do something about correcting what happened, well this is why we are here for this study.

''First and foremost we are here to train, but for me this camp is a very important opportunity to manage how I react to heat. In Beijing, with the heat and humidity combined, my body really just didn't work properly.''

Australian Institute of Sport race walking coach Brent Vallance hopes that the study will not only benefit his sport, but help all disiplines in preparing atheletes for events in high heat and humidity.

The heat sessions the AIS, which will run over the next month, will be inside, with heaters around treadmills set at 32 degrees in a controlled environment of 60 per cent humidity.

The study also means that Australian athletes could spend more time preparing at home for overseas campaigns.

''Our most successful athletes at the Olympics trained most of their time at home,'' Vallance said.

''Sally McLennan was injured and came home, Steve Hooker spent most of his time at home because he had a few injuries and in June and July, Jared Tallent was basically all that time in Canberra.

''There are so many benefits to doing prep at home, access to physio, recovery, nutrition is right here.''

Leading up to Beijing, Tallent did a six-week stint of one heat session a week and lived in the altitude cabin at the AIS.

He thinks it worked.

However, Vallance thinks there is still room for improvement.

''The way we prepared for Beijing was good, but it could still be tweaked a little.''