Recently in Fitness Category

Nothing to do with your choice of mandatory helmet (Giro Prolight is my current choice) but with the art of mentally preparing yourself for the event. It's as important as your physical fitness to get your positive, winning attitude right and to know how to cope with the challenge.

There are some things you should know now about what your head will go through on the day.

• Once the euphoria of starting has worn off and the first flat sections are done, you will spend the rest of the ride wondering why you are doing it
• Your mind will tell you to stop frequently and repeatedly on the climbs and even on the flat bits
• At some point you will enter a very dark place in your mind where you contemplate falling off to make it end
• You will want to sit by the road and take a few minutes to ask "where is my mind?"
• There will be an unexpected swelling of emotion when you cross the line which might make you want to cry

The distance can seem overwhelming but if it's broken down into what Team Sky have started calling "phases" then it's much easier to prepare yourself.

Phase One - Before the start

Don't panic. Be meticulous in your preparation and making sure you have everything before you leave your hotel. If you lay it all out the night before and check it then you'll worry less when you wake up at 4am.

Give yourself plenty of time to get to the start pens and find people you are riding with. Try to relax and stay alert to groups that look like they might be worth tagging on the back of for shelter and a fast tow through traffic in the opening sections of the ride.

Mostly, relax and enjoy. You've spent god knows how long getting ready for this so you might as well make the most of it.

Phase Two - Le Grand Depart

I've seen plenty of strategies saying "conserve your energy" and encouraging you to ride conservatively to the first climb. You can do this, but I think mentally trying to ride conservatively is more dangerous than taking things as they come.

The Col de Marie-Blanque is narrow - four bikes wide in places - and there's several thousand riders trying to get up it. You need to get there as quickly as you can to avoid walking or being caught in a bottleneck.

Mentally prepare yourself to go a bit harder than you'd like in places to stay in big fast moving groups. Think about digging in the suitcase of courage to stay with a good group rather than sitting up at the first harsh breath drawn.

Phase Three - Col de Marie-Blanque

This will be tough, it will come as a shock to the system and you will have a bit of a panic. But remember: this is the toughest obstacle between you and the Tourmalet. The Col du Soulor is going to be hard, but nothing like as bad as the Marie-Blanque. Prepare to go hard and get over in a good time.

Don't think you have to get over it quickly and go into panic mode. Stay calm, ride hard and try to avoid hitting your limit too early.

I've seen so many people fighting to go forward with panic in their eyes. Panic puts the heart rate up and that will affect how hard you can go. So: DON'T PANIC.

Phase Four - Relax and flow on the descent

You'll be tired by this point so take a moment get your wits about you at the top, put on your jacket or gilet and refocus on getting down.

When you're tired, you'll tense up and big mountain descents deserve your full concentration. Try to relax your body so it acts like a shock absorber but keep you mind focused on reading the road ahead and looking for hazards and the best line through corners.

Resist the temptation to brake too much or worry about your speed creeping up beyond what you're used to. Comfort braking on straights doesn't help make the sped go away for very long and if you're going a bit faster than usually you just need to take more care on the approach to corners.

Phase five - Onwards to the Col du Soulor

The big danger now is that after the Marie-Blanque you start thinking about saving something for the Tourmalet. You need to push on through the valley and the relatively easy early slopes of the Col du Soulor.

It would be easy to sit up a bit and start going backwards here so focus on breaking down each kilometre in a manageable time. Try to keep slippage to a minimum.

By now eating and drinking are things you'll need to remind yourself constantly to do as they slip in the mental task list.

Phase six - Descend and prepare

You need to try and give yourself enough time to descend comfortably to the foot of the Tourmalet. If you're chasing to make the cut it's going to be tough and a bit hairy. Not good when you're tired and hurting after 100km in the legs.

Eat at the top, drink on the descent and just mentally ready yourself to go all in on the Tourmalet. you need to get your tired mind cleared and ready to take on the beast.

Fight the rising panic/excitement and concentrate on getting to the final elimination point. Once you're past there, take a moment to compose yourself and remind yourself to pace yourself.

It's good to figure out how much time you've got and how hard you think you can go. Then push it from your mind and concentrate on just riding.

Phase seven - To the end

Even though the goal is in sight, you need to keep pushing yourself on mentally. I've seen guys give up on climbs with less than 300 metres to go simply because they didn't think they could go any further.

Break down the Tourmalet into landmarks or time chunks and tick off each one as you achieve it. The time will pass more easily this way.

So that's my final Etape guide. Good luck one and all. I've got to sort out my bike over the weekend. It's developed a ticking noise near the bottom bracket which I want to get looked at before the Etape.

After bemoaning that I was getting nowhere with getting back in shape I managed to get in about 5-7 hours riding in the last week or so.

As liversedge pointed out on twitter: "They say to form a habit you need to do something 17 times. You've lost the habit. Plan to get to 17 workouts and force yourself".

Well I'm up to three, one of which involved going to a gym/health centre for the first time in about four years. I was immediately reminded why I haven't been - it's because they are soul-sappingly depressing, even if the new Trixter cycling machines were quite entertaining.

Far more enjoyable was getting out on a frosty Saturday morning of sunshine in Richmond Park for the regular London Dynamo club ride which, if you are taking part, is probably the best introduction to group riding there is in London. If you're not then you probably consider it some sort of stockbroker-led affront to basic cycling etiquette. It seems there's nothing the wider London cycling community enjoys more than a bit of Dynamo bashing.

These last two sentences are intended to act as a suitable deflection from me getting dropped a few times and struggling like a dog to keep up with pretty much everyone over the course of four laps (about 40km). But the return to fitness has to begin somewhere, usually at the bottom of a well of despondency.

I got out again on Tuesday morning before work and got in two fast laps done before I realised that my cycling was cutting into the time I was allowing for my middle class battle for victory in a lunch hour, otherwise known as getting our broken kettle replaced under warranty by John Lewis, without a receipt. While the hill up to Richmond Gate and from Kingston Gate may still have the better of me, I'm pleased to report that I won against Customer Service, coming away with a free replacement and a receipt. EPIC WIN!!1!!

Back to that Trixter bike though. Exercise bikes, spinning classes, turbo trainers = boredom. The Trixter Xdream was actually quite fun once I figured out what I was doing.

Figured out what you're meant to do and how to get started was one of those poorly designed user experiences that can ruin a product. Someone seems to have forgotten it's an exercise machine and insisted on a ludicrously anti-intuitive interface by trying to get you to work through a PC-based access screen using cursor keys.

Then there's the stumbling block of having to create a user to progress. Nope, ain't gonna happen. When I hit "quickstart" on a guest login, I want to be able to access everything and try it, not be offered Level 1 and told to work my way up.

Then there's the controls. Easily adjustable in the style of a mountain bike the kit may be, but that's where the similarity ends. Turning to keep on the course feels like trying to crowbar open a safe door. I'm not sure why they bothered.

But past all that there's an easily enjoyable game of riding where you can see wattage, cadence and all the other information a cyclist might want. Plus you can use it with your SPD shoes. We enjoyed ourselves arsing about on multiplayer mode for an hour and a bit but perhaps next time I'll just take my headphones and sit on one of the spinning bikes to endure my session.

And if all that's not enough, then let me tell you this: it's got a glowing endorsement from Sinitta. Quite literally SO Macho.

If ever there's a good weekend to come down with a heavy case of the manflu, aka the common cold, this weekend past was it. Temperatures below freezing added to sleeting snow and rain should and would have had me reaching for the excuses book had "ill" not got there first.

Looking around the internet I see people still went out riding; the Belgians even held a Superprestige cyclocross race in it. Don't believe me? Then go to the Sporza.be site and click on "wedstrijdverslag" to see the video proof.

If I had one, I'd be putting a big Asterix-tapping-his-head graphic up to qualify the lunacy involved. Instead I shall just continue snuffling into my umpteenth hankerchief of the weekend. I've taken to dousing them with a few drops of Olbas Oil
which is excellent for helping clear the tubes.

In winter I'll put a dot or two on the back of my glove when I go out as I find it quite nice to get that menthol scent and eucalyptus in to help clear my sinuses and make breathing less congested. It's not much different to a dab of Vicks VapoRub on the chest but in a slightly more convenient form as far as I'm concerned.

Nearly forgot to mention Observer Sport Monthly which featured some excellent cycling stuff this month including:

The Forgotten Man - a great interview with Mark Cavendish, winner of Best individual achievement 2008.

Elsewhere in the paper, there's an equally fascinating interview with Nicole Cooke, under the heading 'Queen of the road'.

Meanwhile the times carries a David Walsh piece on the most fascinating figure in the whole of the British setup: Steve Peters, cycling's psychiatrist. I think it's hard to over-estimate the difference that he makes to the whole operation. There's a huge part of living and performing that relies on confidence and he seems to be key to making sure there is confidence.

The Beyond MTB Spring Crits at Hillingdon are the sort of races I have to do - a test of attrition with the 2nd Cat boys hauling along as foolhardy 4th Cats like me try to cling on to the pace. The only way I'm going to get stronger is by getting out of my comfortable "pootling in the 4th Cats" box and pushing my limits in 2/3/4 races.

32 laps of Hillingdon goes by pretty quickly so I'm chuffed to report that I lasted 8 laps before getting shelled for the first time. That's 3 more laps than last year's equivalent race, most of which is down to better race craft and not allowing myself to drift to the back so quickly. The reason I went out the back was that I stopped concentrating on the wheel I was trying to follow and drifted. Had I stuck to my fellow Dynamo "Sneaky" Sneyd's wheel I would probably have stayed in the bunch all the way.

I sat out a few more laps before being persuaded to get back in the back of the bunch and see how I went. I don't usually do this but it turned out to be worthwhile as I managed to stay in for another 8 laps or so before coming off the back again. It adds up to two sessions blasting around at near the top end of my limits for 20 minutes and extending myself, which is the sort of training I really need to improve.

What I was careful about was ensuring I didn't overdo it. It's early in the year and I'm not fully fit so there's no reason to put myself past my limit so much that I get ill in races where I'm not really going to stand a chance of a point. So far this year I've lost a few weeks of training to being too shredded after races to train properly during the week and it's not getting me anywhere so I've decided to be more measured in my approach to what everyone else describes as "training races".

I'll be back on Saturday to have another crack at it with a single intention: not to get dropped for the duration of the race. It's going to need a bit of application but I hope I can manage it.

Looking at my training, the last time I had a decent long ride was 25 February, almost two weeks ago. This is probably not an ideal training plan if I'm going to improve this season.

It's starting to nag a bit in my mind that I'm probably not where I would like to be in terms of fitness this year. Then again it would be much easier if I wasn't so exhausted all the time at the moment and picking up niggling little injuries more often than points. The latest list of them is some sort of muscle pain in my right shoulder, a tightness in my left leg and a bit of a sniffle.

If I were any further from being in some sort of shape I'd probably need home help. Hopefully things will get back on schedule this month with things due to settle back down a bit. I'm going to try and get out for the Park Ride this Saturday for the first time in what seems like forever and then get back into riding during the week to build up my fitness again.

There's a race at Hillingdon on 15th March which I feel like I should be aiming to do although it's the 2/3/4 series that was a brute last year. Why I want to flay myself behind a bunch of 2nd Cat riders I don't know, but given there not much other racing about I feel like I should. Or maybe I could just go training instead. Which neatly brings us back to where we started.

*Sigh* It's not easy is it?

That is the observation from Ian Paine as to where I went wrong on Sunday. He's absolutely right. The mistake I made was to allow myself to drift down the field in the final laps.

It's frustrating but I know where I went wrong in the second Surrey League London Dynamo Beginners Series Race which means I can and will improve. I'd better start doing so soon because not scoring points is starting to frustrate me.

My first mistake was to ignore my own observations about the head and cross wind down the straight and first bend and trying to force a break with a clubmate with about 4 laps to go. That put my heartrate right through the ceiling and left me gasping and battling to stay in the bunch. I went back through the group faster than a greased pig out of a butcher's shop.

Stay in the bunch I did, whereas in previous races I've slid off the back of the bunch, which counts as a personal victory. However, it left me with a long way to go to get back to the business end of the race. By the bell I was mid-bunch but failed to work my way up into the first third which is where I needed to be over the lumps at the back of the course.

My speed over the downhill bits got me up a few places but not enough to to contemplate the sprint. Let's face it, if you're forty places back off the last corner with about 1km to the line there's not much point in burying yourself for 12= again. So I sat up a bit and coasted in to the line.

Actually I had a good reason other than lack of personal pride in my finish: getting home to my girlfriend's for lunch in one piece. I've not been doing big miles so far this year and wasn't entirely certain how my body would cope. Acton to Chertsey (20 miles/33km, race (24 miles/38km) and then Chertsey to the far side of Islington (35 miles/56km), counts as a bit of a long one for someone who hasn't even done the Surrey Hills since some time before Christmas.

The good news is that I made it in one piece, managed lunch and didn't pass out on the sofa. The bad news is that my legs hurt like hell for the rest of the day and then I had to ride back to Acton in the rain which means I have to clean the bike this week. Not that it's not due a wash and check.

Really the good news is that I was moving a lot more determinedly and powerfully, barring a small fade round Hampton Court on the way back. Add up the the distance and how I feel and divide by the time of year and it's all gravy (onion to go with sausage and mash) for where I would like to be come July.

A busy weekend with two days of racing, none of which went quite as well as it could. First a quick hello to Paul, a reader who races and who I met on Saturday at Hillingdon. It's good to know there's someone out there reading and finding it useful.

Now to Hillingdon, first race of 2008 for me. January was plagued by illness and holidays and I'm slightly amazed to find I failed to get out and race once in the entire month. I only realised this as we were lining up on a beautiful day - bright sunshine, relatively little wind and dry.

The traditional advice would be "Don't try anything, just sit in and finish in the bunch", but tradition and good advice are rarely to be found anywhere near where I am in a race. So guess who decided an ill-thought-out attempt to bridge up to a two man break in the later stages of the race? I'd managed to close down a couple of breaks earlier in the race and wasn't feeling too bad when I started out across the gap. Halfway there and I was feeling strong. One look over my shoulder later and I was sitting up and waiting for the bunch having decided I wasn't getting anywhere.

At this point I should have just slid back into the pack and admitted I wasn't back to full fitness. Instead, I found myself going out the back rather fast and the taste of blood rising in my throat. Knowing I had another race on Sunday and that my fitness isn't where it should be I packed. No point getting ill again trying to get fit.

Sunday was the London Cyclocross League Team Championship and I was in the B Team, hoping to be more than just making up the numbers. The journey out was simple enough: train from Liverpool St to Romford and a gentle enough ride up to Hainault Forest Country Park. So far so good, helped by unseasonal mild weather which meant not too much mud.

Then things went badly wrong. On a warm-up lap something went clunk into a corner and my rear mech hanger snapped. In and of itself, not a disaster. Except that as it snapped it wrapped the mech itself up into the back wheel, bending it into shapes that I'm fairly certain a rear derailleur isn't meant to be. The positives would be that I can probably recycle the jockey wheels and possibly a couple of other parts. Unless of course I can find a way to replace just the cage bit - unlikely.

Luckily for me Russ had a spare bike and with a little adjustment for my size I could still ride. And ride I did, right into last place of the finishers, 4 laps down. It was such a poor performance I don't even plan to shame myself by describing it.

After the race I managed to cobble together a chainline that would allow me to get back to the station and home again. It worked, albeit very slowly, a fact driven home this morning as I limped across town being passed by everyone and their three-legged dog.

Next weekend marks a year since my first proper race so I'll be making the trip down to Chertsey again for the London Dynamo Beginners Series. If you are looking for a place to dip your toe into the waters of racing then I can't recommend it enough - it's a nice wide circuit and there's plenty of riders on hand to introduce you to riding in a bunch. Come on down, you know you want to.

By this point in January I was meant to have a hatful of points and be looking at racing as a 3rd Cat. Instead I have a nasty lingering cold and haven't raced since before Christmas. Unhappy with things doesn't quite cover it.

Worst of which is that any fitness gains from a week's snowboarding in the Courmayeur have been entirely eradicated by the following week's flu which has left me feeling about as strong as a newborn kitten, and about half as lively. Even my flat 4km commute currently leaves me a little out of breath and hot. Not where I was planning on being at this point.

I'm trying to resist the urge to train in any way for fear of pushing myself back into illness. It's incredibly frustrating to keep on having to ease off the moment I get up to a decent speed. Even more frustrating to keep on having to stop myself from wanting to race seeing as I haven't done so since before Christmas and I'm really missing both my cyclocross and road racing.

Any tips for speeding up my recovery are more than welcome because it's starting to get on my nerves.

It's that time of year when I feel like I'm getting fat and worry about how hard I'll be battling come January to shed the pounds, or rather the kilograms I've put on.

With no race last weekend and work this weekend I feel like I'm plumping up again. I don't feel like I'm riding enough to be as fit as I want to be for next year, although the Cyclocross is helping with that. I currently weigh in at betwen 74 and 76 kg, depending on the prevailing wind and the previous night's menu.

In reality it's not particularly heavy, there are plenty of riders heavier than me out there. It just feels slightly lumpen to me when I aspire to getting down to 70kg for racing next season. I got down to around 71-73 last season but can't help feeling that little bit more off would make a difference.

It doesn't help that I've not been eating well and that my hours and general lifestyle has been a little less than routine of late, but these are the things that every amateur - and no doubt a few professionals too - has to cope with in their cycling life. I know I've said before thatI'm not a pro and there's no reason for me to try pretending that I am in my training and lifestyle, but I would at least like to be a respectable amateur.

The lack of riding makes me a bit fretful and I tend to make it up by riding like a man possessed when I can. So winding it up hard on a 50 minute ride from Acton to Islington via Kings Cross counts as an intensity session and sprint repetitions mixed into one, while the reverse route in 35 minutes counts as a threshold session. No prizes for figuring out which way is up the hill and which is down.

Is this helpful training? If you regard all time spent on the bike as good, then yes. If you think that lack of structure is poor training, then no. I'm just glad I can do any training at all.

Yet another cycling injury!, originally uploaded by leguape.

This is from last Saturday, I should have posted it earlier. It's gradually healing up but is still a bit sore around the edges. It's at the scabbed over, not quite healed in the middle stage.

I am of course stuck at work this weekend, missing out on what looks like another nice day for Cyclocross. I've been meaning to write some articles for work recently but just haven't quite found the time or motivation.

Interesting article in the Telegraph about British Cycling setting up a women's professional team around Nicole Cooke:

Nicole Cooke at hub of new British team

Aim is to build towards the Olympics and Worlds next year. All sounds very exciting and would be a great draw for getting more women into the sport, which it would really benefit from.

I'll write something more considered tomorrow when I have the day off.