He recalls a couple of "45 minute rambles".
"It hit me hardest in the two weeks after being told, and in the lead-up to the Games," Webster says in his still barren house in a pop-up Cambridge suburb a short ride from the new national cycling centre.
"Your whole career is based on [chasing] Olympic gold medals. Four years is dedicated to one race that can be less than 30 seconds for a particular role.
"I felt I deserved to be in London and missing out is still an emotional trigger. There had been previous disappointments in individual races. But this time a dream was absolutely shattered.
"I had to lean on people like [mental skills expert] Pete Sanford, separating logical thoughts from the emotional, irrational, snap decisions."
It was then that Webster - nicknamed Wiki, as in the encyclopedia website, because of his inquiring mind - became a champion of the sports science drift.
"I started getting into it after London, a bit before the others were on to it," he said.
"We have this resource revealing so much, with some great minds helping us out. We'd be fools not to embrace it.
"We were sceptical at first because it was an unknown and we were used to training and being directed in a certain way. The computer can't deal with emotions - we are athletes, not machines.
"But the science enables you to get so much more into micro goals. Sports science is so huge these days. There is more testing, and training is more clinical.
"For instance, you might feel like rubbish, but the data says you are hitting awesome numbers.
"The legs were feeling very sore because of a heavy gym session in the morning, but the performance was still in them."
Science is tailoring and refining, including the way each cyclist is "primed".
The sprinters know everything, including how many unnecessary centimetres they have travelled through riding off the perfect line.
With all the sprinters now based in Cambridge, the competitive edge will be further honed in an intense lead-up to the 2016 Olympics.
Five elite sprinters - Webster, Eddie Dawkins, Matt Archibald, Simon van Velthooven and Ethan Mitchell - are chasing only three places for Brazil.
All roads lead in and out of Cambridge.
Webster is living away from his family's Mt Eden home for the first time. Soaring Auckland house prices scuppered his hopes of owning a home by the age of 25, but in Cambridge he's got that first house at 22.
Of the transitions, Webster says: "It is not one person doing the prescriptions and trying to deal with all the riders any more - it is a team approach.
"It was a little bit different under Justin [Grace, the previous coach], including more rider preference-based.
"It's very important that Anthony [Peden, the new coach] has been as far as you can go in the sport.
"He knows what it's like to lunge for that line and win or lose, to be selected and not selected ... what it's like to crash and lose, or win because your opponent crashed.
"But he also understands the sports science side.
"Science is not a golden ticket - it's about working and evolving it. The data produces targets and either you hit them or don't. You can track progression precisely.
"Moving here [to Cambridge] also raises the bar for everyone. We used to train at Justin's home and there were great times in that little garage and terrible days of pain as well. I suppose that is another shift - we have gone from there to this new home of cycling.
"Ultimately, we are moving down different paths. If we hadn't, we would have been left behind."
