I might have mentioned that I didn't think I was in the points which is what probably gave the game away. I was right in my assessment: I finished 23rd or so.

Good thing was that I didn't really feel like I had gone too early or used up all my sprint when I crossed the line. OK, maybe I should have felt a bit more spent at the line but it felt much better than going too early and blowing myself out. I was still coming through people towards the line even if a couple of those were sitting up which felt good. Now I just need to find a way to get in the points.

Yes there was the statutory early dig when, after a couple of laps of waiting to see what happened, I bridged up to the guy who went from the gun on a lone break. My legs felt good but I think I went a bit hard getting across to him which left me with that metallic taste of blood in my mouth. That in turn led to a sticky throat that wouldn't shift for the rest of the race and which turned into a nasty sounding rattly cough by the time I got home.

Some will say that I should have just taken let the bunch gradually bring him back but where's the fun in that? It's a Tuesday night "training" race to most people but I always see it as a chance to have a go and test myself a bit. As I've said before "where's the fun in sitting in for an hour then playing the bunch sprint lottery?" I enjoyed it far more having a go then toughing it out and trying to recover a bit for a few laps than not pushing myself.

Now I'm looking forward to recovering a bit in time for Saturday's race down at Chertsey, a circuit I like and which I feel pretty comfortable on. Yes, it can be a bit nervy and a break rarely gets away but I know where I need to be and when I need to be there. It's in the first 15-20 places coming off the final bend on to the straight and tucked in looking for someone's wheel to take coming into the last 500 metres to lead me out.

It's one thing to talk about it, now I really want to start scoring results. It's my second full season of racing and I really want to get out of this run of not improving my results.

I was reading a tech article on cyclingnews.com about New road goodies from SRAM which has got me thinking about it again.

The upgrades to Rival detailed make me think that I should consider saving up over the winter for a new groupset. I've got the current version on both the Merckx and my Dolan cyclocross bike and really love it but adjustable reach and trim and so on just make it that bit more appealing.

I've been thinking about the Cervelo R3 as a frame or really saving up and getting a Serotta Legend made up for me in London Dynamo colours like Paul Callinan's. There's always the uber-flash Ottrott option as seen on the Cyclefit site:

Serotta Custom Bikes

However, I have a few criteria in my head that keep on coming before issues such as cost and fit and whether I even have space for such things:

• It shall be white
• It will have a classic/shallow drop bar
• It shall be a classic geometry with no slope on the top tube
• It shall not be flashy or over complicated visually

I hate training rides. I find it mentally boring and get annoyed at how much time it consumes. So I've taken to doing 30 to 60 minute rides in and around Central London to liven it up and give me the bonus of fast moving traffic (where available) to keep me on my toes. Mostly this consists of riding from Acton over to Islington to my girlfriend's place. On a good day it's 35 minutes, on a bad one more like 50. This consists of a couple of uphill lumps and plenty of fast flat and false flats.

The first lump is up Holland Park Avenue, which is nothing to write about in your guide to the great climbs of Europe but it's long enough to charge up hard when the lights are in your favour. Call it a long interval if you will. On a good day I can crest the top breathing hard but with my legs still not quite at their limit, on an average one I run out of puff just as I can see the end in sight.

From there's it's fast, fast, fast from Notting Hill through to Kings Cross via Marylebone Road and Euston Road. I like to treat this stretch as a bit of a burn up and a mini time trial and confidence builder for riding in among fast-moving traffic and in close proximity to things.

Then there's the one I can't crack: Pentonville Road. So far I've tried going steady, I've tried hammering it, I've tried going slow. None of them gets me to the top without tying up. Consistently I get as far as the lights at Rodney Street before the burning sensation kicks in and I start to tie up. Halfway to the lights at Amwell/Penton Street the lights start to dim and I'm struggling. By the time I reach the lights I'm clinging on and just trying to roll over the top.

Is it just the case that I'm never going to get over there without hurting like hell? I wish it wasn't but things haven't improved in the last month, so I'm starting to lose faith that they will. Man, I wish I could climb, or at least ride hills with the belief and ability to get over them ratehr than fade halfway up.

As per the well established formula I didn't score a point and tootled over the line well back having sat up after trying to go the long way round the long bend before the final sprint. I'll get it right one week and go flying up that last 200 metres to a win.

Throat is feeling a bit sore which is probably down to the cold but my legs don't feel at all bad. I rode pretty well apart form the last bit where I tried to go for a long one on the last lap. It never works.

Still, first week of Hillingdon and I actually feel like I might get out of the 4th Cats this year if I can screw my head on right and get over my fear of the bunch sprint.

Last year I made the pilgrimage to Flanders fields (and hills) to ride the sportif and watch the race. There's a whole bunch of stuff archived in the Tour of Flanders archive on the site. The tag cloud doesn't seem to be working for some reason which I'll try and figure out.

There's also my reports on the BBC:

Twenty thousand Belgians can't be wrong - on the sportif

First over the Muur wins - on race day

My new raleigh burner, originally uploaded by leguape.

Sitting here watching the World Championships via the red button on the BBC *thumbs up* and cheering like a loon at the Team GB success rate.

I forgot I hadn't posted up a picture of this beauty that my girlfriend got me for my birthday. As you can see I've not got round to finding some pedals for it yet so I haven't ridden it yet. Hopefully will sort that on Saturday with a trip to Woolsey's of Acton, my local bike shop and Raleigh dealer.

I'm getting my girlfriend a Bianchi Milano 3-speed in white in return, once I get a moment to find one. It's a bike so sexy I'm a bit jealous that it is a women's model.

Then again it was a 2/3/4 race and I did fail to concentrate hard enough on my positioning in the bunch. Again I let myself get worked towards the back of the bunch far too easily so that when the attacks started I was having to work too much to keep out of the wind and stay in.

Then again the wind was fierce. Apparently some of the kids got blown clean off their bikes earlier in the day and with it gusting across the track at the top end and straight down the finish straight it was a real struggle at times to keep the bike going forward and upright. You could feel the nervousness in the bunch throughout and only the really strong riders were able to show in conditions where the field was slowly shredded by the wind.

Having been shelled out the back after about 8 laps I sat up and contemplated trying to get back on and stay in. What I hadn't banked on was the speed differential caused by the wind. It made it almost impossible to get back on as by the time I had got up to the bunch speed and managed to drop back in I was near my limit from being in the wind. That meant I wasn't able to hold the wheel and get back in with enough to recover and stay in.

Actually my big worry is that I seem to be getting dropped at the same point in the race and hitting my limit very suddenly. It's been about 7 laps in (about 10-15 minutes) the last couple of weeks that everything seems to go tight and no matter how hard I dig I haven't got anything left to stay in the race. Is that just me hitting my current threshold of fitness/power or am I just going to have to admit that I'm never going to have more powere than that to play with?

If anyone has any thoughts, I really could do with something to lift me from the despairing thought that I really might be nothing more than rubbish on a bike.

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.

At the weekend I managed to see some seriously ugly bikes and one seemingly mis-priced one. So, unless I mistook one cute Bianchi Milano town bike for another that price was 200 quid out. This is of course a trivial matter compared to the outbreak of ill-thought out bikes that plagued me.

Drop bars are a thing of true beauty, certainly in their classic form, with the smooth oval bend framing the front of any racing bike like the shoulder on a good wine bottle frames the neck. Dressed in white bar tape and attached to a quill stem there's something almost chivalric about them in those pictures that define the sport.

In this age of four bolt solutions and ergonomic bends that look like dropped spaghetti my heart is always lifted to see a well-positioned classic bar: the drop parallel to the ground and shifters reaching out from the top of the arc like a bowsprit and with the top edge also parallel to the ground.

OK I'll get to the point: I hate cut-down bars, be they flop'n'chop or shortened flat bars.

With the trendification of cycling in that hotbed of the ill-considered, Shoreditch, and increasing absorption of "messenger style" into the mainstream there's signs that Bikesnob NYC may find himself a second source of wonderment in London.

I will never understand why someone would want to ride a bike with a handlebar that resembles the top of a track pump or a hacksawed drop bar that looks more suited to use as a candelabra than steering.

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?

Pendleton poses nude and the demise of the Archer

Their take on it seems to be that she can make her own choices and has done so. It's a line they take in reference to Richard Williams in the Guardian who questions why she has to strip off under the strapline "Pendleton gets dragged into a vicious cycle":

"Victoria Pendleton is a terrific athlete and an impressive woman but a world champion track cyclist, even a drop-dead gorgeous one, should have no need to broaden her appeal by stripping off for next Sunday's Observer Sports Magazine."

Cycling Weekly seems to in some way endorse this view saying that:

"It's just that it's hard to imagine the editor of OSM pitching the idea of a nude shoot with Chris Hoy or Bradley Wiggins or many other male athletes. "

The comment piece ends with "... there is a nagging regret that female sports stars are still being asked to strip off".

Which would all be a fair comment to make but for one thing: the shot is a very, very obvious homage to a very,very well known cycling image which also features a world class athlete, at the top of the sport of cycling, naked on a Trek bike.

Are we really expected to believe that both Lionel Birnie and Richard Williams wrote their articles and got them past the editor's desk without anyone even so much as raising a hand to point out that the image is in every way a visual tribute to

Annie Leibovitz's iconic portrait of Lance Armstrong

which was done for Vanity Fair and which echoes her most iconic image of a naked John Lennon next to Yoko Ono.

A Google image search for "Leibovitz Armstrong Portrait" puts the two images right next to each other. Would it have been so difficult for these two writers to have spotted the connection between the Pendleton portrait and Armstrong's and seen the significance of the visual message being conveyed?

If either Lionel or Richard would care to respond I am happy to publish their response as right of reply.

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.

It's not quite "dans les et cetera" or "in the bunch", it's much less dignified than that. It says you were outside the points but not quite so far back as to be a straggler. It says "You really shouldn't bother contesting this result because it doesn't matter". It is the ultimate in failing to make it count.

I can tell you exactly where my race fell apart: lap six, on the back straight when i got a twinge of cramp in my left calf. I haven't had cramp for bloody ages so goodness knows why it appeared on Sunday. Up to then I was feeling pretty good and riding fairly well, perhaps a few places further back than I would have liked but well enough positioned to move through in the final two laps.

Coming off the final bend I got a bit boxed but was in the lead group at least and ready to kick up a gear. When I did, there was nothing there. I tried to dig a bit deeper but got nothing back, so decided there was no point sprinting when it would gain me nothing and rolled over the line.

It wasn't a bad start to the season but it left me feeling a bit frustrated. Not as frustrated as watching Warrick Spence effortlessly ghosting through the bunch. He's so classy it hurts to watch when you are as lumpy a rider as I am. If you get a chance this year to see him racing make sure you stand facing the exit from a corner with a view through it. What you'll see when he comes through is someone who makes cornering look beautiful.

Anyway my lungs are still recovering from the freezing cold conditions which never suit me so I might do a little riding tomorrow before work if I feel up to it. I really might have to consider getting a trainer, probably the Tacx Flow, as I'm really not getting out on the bike enough.

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.