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?