I think we all know what the picture below means. Yes, despite my vain attempts to avoid it, I'm now bang up for the Etape again and I have a place.

Which means this blog will be getting a lick of paint, change of banner and the return of regular posting.

This time last year the most I had managed was a ride to Box Hill and back in about 4 hours and a total of about 80km for my longest ride. This year I've been out almost every Sunday since New Year on the Sunday 9am ride through the Surrey Hills with my club, London Dynamo clocking in 120km round trips each time. OK, the last 15km or so has been mostly me limping home in a primo banjaxed state but it all counts as it hurts less each time.

I assume that the limping home is down to the pace being sharpened by racers trying to find their form for the upcoming season. I had no form last year so I've got no comparison to make other than everything being considerably better. If I can get round next Sunday without cramp/blowing/exhaustion then I'll count that as progress.

February will see me trying to hook in a lap of Richmond Park on the way home to push my distance up to 130km comfortably and March to 140km for the Tour of Flanders at the start of April. Then it's a big push to get up to 170km for mid-May and the Beaume de Venise sportif (featuring Ventoux) before kicking on again to make up the 200km mark in July for the UK Etape and the main event.

As Rich, a fellow London Dynamo who rode last year's Etape and who I saw out on a sunday ride yesterday, pointed out.

I had been fretting that 196km is an awful long way to train for, even though it's only 10 more than last year. But as Rich spotted, after the final climb it's a downhill belt to the finish, meaning that in reality you are pretty much home and hosed at about 176km. so if you've made it to the top of the Peyresourde you've only really got to avoid falling off to finish.

This has raised my spirits infinitely as it means that getting to the finish might be vaguely enjoyable. After my experiences cramping on the descent of the Lautaret to Bourg D'Oisans, knowing that even if I got there in time I would still have to climb Alpe d'Huez, the knowledge that this time the final descent is to the finish makes it a much more welcome prospect.

I'm now comfortably doing the Sunday ride and I can feel the edge starting to come back. Once the weather improves I may even take the new bike out and start working on that.

Have finally bought a set of scales - cheap ones from Ikea - to see where I'm up to with my training regime. Once I got the blighted thing set up properly and it stopped telling me that I have put on 8kg I was quite happy.

Being told you have gone up to 84kg from 77kg after nearly 3 months of training and racing comes as a shock and disappointment. Being told you are down to somewhere between 72 and 74kg is far more exciting news. Last year I got down to between 71 and 73kg before the Etape so I'm well ahead of schedule now.

Dare I hope to get under 70kg this year or would that. as if there is such a thing, be too light? Obviously the lighter you tip in at, the less weight to carry up the hills. The result is an increase in the all-important power to weight ratio. I'd imagine that with consistent training it's hardly likely you aregoing to reach a point where you lose power as a result of weight loss but I suppose I'd better check.

The last few weeks I've been moving house and doing a bit of racing so I've been off the longer rides and doing a lot more of the short sharp stuff which builds up my thresholds and gets me used to riding fast and hard. I think it's valuable to mix up your training for the Etape as doing the same long rides over and over can get a bit wearing.

While they do build up that all important endurance over distance it's useful to remember that each of the climbs is going to require consistent power over at least an hour or three. The best way to train for that is by doing time trials and efforts which require you to be constantly pushing and riding hard, like criterium races.

Having been a bit lax about blogging on here what with the new job and the other cycling blog, I felt you were due an update. So here goes:

Weight: somewhere between 71 and 74 kg, depending on time of day, food consumption, water retention and the upward lift effect of the extractor fan in my bathroom. Additional allowance made for big pants, small pants or no pants.

Fitness: climbing round the Surrey Hills a fortnight ago I felt particularly strong and was belting up everything (or at least belting by my standards). Last weekend did the 140km Tour of Flanders and got round in about 6 hours with no adverse effects. Felt I could have gone on a good few km more but let my eating strategy go to pieces in the last 20km.

I think I need to start pushing out the distance a bit in training and adding laps of Richmond Park to the back of the usual ride on Sundays. I'm working this weekend so I'll be doing a solo ride on Monday. If it's good I'll head out through Surrey along a familiar route, alternatively I'll look to do a long session in Richmond Park.

It's good to have made my first target ride and felt I had something left in the tank to push harder if I need to. Next target is the SWRC Sportif through the Surrey Hills which is about 90 miles. Then the Beaumes de Venise Ventoux Sportif a couple of weeks later.

The detailed route for this year's Etape is now on the official site:

http://www.letapedutour.com/2007/ETDT/presentation/us/itineraire.htm

Pretty darned detailed I'd say. It's interesting to note that it seems there's far more allowance for the climbs than last year. There's two more climbs and two more hours in the schedule for a grand total of 7km more.

OK now the hard bit: the climbing starts pretty much as soon as you've got your legs warm and there's nowhere to hide your weaknesses. If it's not the climbing then you'll need to think about descending while feeding and trying to recover without seizing up, so you'll need to keep the pedals turning over.

You'll need to be mentally tough to work your way through the traffic on the first climb and not get dragged into chasing wheels you can hold as well as making sure you don't drift backwards. Tough to keep focused on everything from hydration to heartrate and to not start carrying too much kit you don't need.

Last year I spent ages worrying about beating the broom wagons. I now know that's entirely the wrong thing to be concerned with in training. If you train to scrape through, you could faile to scrape through, as happened to me last year. Instead I'm concentrating on being fit enough to enjoy it.

I'm still doing a diet of a long ride at the weekend and a crit race on Tuesday night plus a bit of commuting and 15-30km blasts across town/to visit friends. I'm going to start trying to put a third session in on Thursday to help build up the distance/threshold mix. At the moment I'm totalling in the region of over 200km a week on average which some people would say isn't enough. I'd say it adds up to about 10 hours at least and it's 10 quality hours of riding hard and pushing myself. I'm very conscious that I'm prone to overdoing it and that I recover relatively slowly so while it it less than some might do it feels about right for me.

Next weekend is my first big challenge distance-wise, the SWRC Sportive, 144km or so around Surrey and Hampshire. I'll hopefully be riding with a few clubmates so that should make it more bearable. I'm aiming to push myself and get round in around 6 hours, hopefully under.

One thing I need to avoid doing is changing my setup before the weekend - I'm switching pedal setup to Speedplay, when they arrive, in an attempt to deal with my hip flexor and hot foot trouble. After that I'll switch and see how it goes. I'm looking forward to it. I may even get some new shoes in pimp white in time for summer.

David predicted monsoon conditions for Sunday's SWRC sportif. Well, we got that and a whole lot more: mud, rain and wind as well as a 149km (92 mile) route that seemingly never let up with nearly 2,400m of ascent.

For me it was my first proper British sportif. By contrast with the big events I've done before (L'Etape, Tour of Flanders) this was a very local affair. The signing on point was a car park at our usual gateway to the Surrey Hills in Cobham and riders set off in small bunches of no more than 20. The route would take us out into Surrey and Sussex, as far as Kirdford, where one of my best friends used to live.

But first, the weather. We said it was going to rain, and rain it did. From about 20 minutes into the ride, progressively getting harder, until about 20 minutes before I got home. Not just showers but the sort of very British downpour that hits you like a bag of nails and leaves no inch of you dry. Putting on your rainjacket is futile because it still gets in somehow and you get drenched with sweat anyway. So it was a good thing I had come armed with full winter gear: overshoes, legwarmers, full-fingered gloves and cap.

Setting out together, the five of us (Paul, Sam, David, Steve, me) soon split up into our relative speeds. David kicked on down the road, Paul and Sam pushed on after the first hill and Steve and I settled down to our task of meeting our target time of six hours. We managed to catch Paul and Sam in between hills but they went away again over the next one. We paid for that effort later on.

As it was a small field event we were very much left to working as a pair due to the lack of similar paced groups to pick off. We got through to the first checkpoint in good time and got the rainjackets on before hoping that the second section would be a little less uphill. It wasn't, neither was the third, nor was the fourth.

Had it been a warm, sunny day it would have been a pittoresque blast through some lovely countryside but for us it was a case of keeping going to keep warm. The checkpoints were not chances for a rest but a brief respite while trying to avoid seizing up from cold. Bottles were filled quickly, timing cards marked and a slice of cake scoffed.

I stuck into the task with force, putting in some big efforts to keep things moving along, as did Steve. We had to endure two blokes who joined us and did no work for a stretch out in the depths of Sussex. I know this because the only way we could get them to come through was to slow and swing wide at the Half Moon pub in Kirdford, a place I know fairly well. Their pull on the front was slow and desultory and eventually they ducked out by making some vague excuse of needing a toilet stop. That's a bit rude in my book, given the conditions and nature of the ride.

We pushed on until the final section where we knew we'd face Combe Bottom. A regular feature of Sunday rides, we'd already descended its 25% gradient on the way out. Now we faced the long slog back up it after 130km of hard riding. It was a whole new world of hurt for me. Steve and I were zigzagging the whole width of the road just to get up it. I had to get off halfway up because I thought I was going to fall off.

Steve kicked on after it and I tried to conserve a bit in the final kilometres, knowing I still had to get back home, another hour and a half of riding. We both made it to the finish at Ripley in around our target time, a few minutes over more but not much.

Refulled with a cup of coffee and a ham roll we set of back to Cobham for Steve to pick up his car and me to work my way back to London. Out of nowhere my right knee started to give me trouble meaning that the journey back was gentle in pace, in fact almost a very long warm down at well below what I would usually ride at.

Checking the computer when I got in it gives me 204.61km from door to door, done in 8:42 on the bike and at an average of 23.4km or so. I left the house at 7am and got home at 5pm, a long day in the saddle for pretty much all of that.

One thing it does tell me is that I can ride at a reasonable pace over a distance equivalent to the two big events I'm targetting, the UK and French Etape rides. Allowing for riding in bigger bunches and better weather I would have gone under the 6 hour marker comfortably I reckon. Now the challenge is to keep on building on this effort.

A little over five weeks to go and the enrves are setting in. The doubts start to pop up and nag away before I manage to shut them up for a while. Being a dreadful worrier, it's never long before they come back.

The most common of them is whether 34/26 is going to be low enough to get me round. I've looked at Sheldon Brown's gear calculator and, no matter how many times I check all the possible variations, a 27 would only result in about 0.3kmh difference. Compared to last year's setup, when I was pushing a 30/27 as my lowest gear, it's 2kmh more at a good cadence and about 1kmh at a 40rpm grind.

Am I that 2kmh fitter than last year? I certainly think so. I've not found myself struggling to push my lowest gear so far in training and I've done a lot more quality training rather than a lot of volume. I've been racing on Tuesday nights and long rides on Sundays with Saturday sessions when I can manage them. I've made it manageable and have had a much better base level, having started building up in January rather than only starting in earnest in March.

My bike handling is better but my climbing is still downright average compared to the standard I would like to be. That, however, is still much better than last year not just in terms of how fast I can go but how long I can go before I hit my limit. Plus I've improved my drills for eating and drinking so I'm avoiding getting into energy deficit so often.

Now comes the tough bit - trying to avoid injury and other disaster between now and then. I had hoped to be a 3rd cat by now and to ride the Guildford critierium race the week before. As my colleague (and a pretty handy racer himself) Phil Sheehan pointed out, that would be foolhardy in the extreme. I am however going to keep on doing races up until the UK Etape on 1st July. Then it'll be a gentle tapering down until the big day itself.

Now is there anything else I could do with for the bike? Well I wouldn't mind getting my hands on a pair of Mavic Ksyrium ES wheels. Perhaps I might persuade myself to unleash the credit card for a small spree in the next week or two...

My second big tester, the Highclere Sportif didn't go half as well as I had hoped. It didn't go disastrously though, which is a crumb of comfort. Read my fuller report here:

One hell of a day at Highclere

Maybe I was having a bit of an off day or went off too quick. Still, excuses won't do at this stage and the time is indicative of me spending a long day in the saddle in the Pyrenees.

On the plus side I didn't experience any trouble riding for that long other than the usual sensation of tying up in the last few km and enduring a couple of patches where things were going badly.

My knee has, touch wood, stopped troubling me for the moment but I haven't been able to get out on a long ride since due to work. I was working the weekend just past and as I'm racing tomorrow didn't fancy a long one today as I'm feeling a bit run down from theeffects of 7 days straight work.

As I'm racing (albeit briefly) on Saturday at the Smithfield Nocturne and working next Sunday I'm struggling for long rides. At this stage it's not crucial and perhaps I should concentrate on a bit of intensity work. So Saturday morning I'll do a Park Ride and try and push it a bit then do a couple more laps after a coffee.

Other developments are that I've gone and bought some new wheels, a pair of Fulcrum Racing 1s in silver. I know it's a bit extravagant but I promise no more after this. I'm thinking of sticking my pair of 25mm Michelin Pro Race 2 tyres on on them instead of buying ever more tyres. They're Service Course ones and roll pretty well. the 25mm has a bit of a tight clearance under the fork but should smooth out the ride and give me a bit more in the corners. If not I'll do a bit of swapping as I've got to swap the casette anyway.

As for weight, I seem to be working down a bit and I'm now hovering around 71-73kg rather than 74-75kg. This is good, so more pasta, greens and salad and stay off the takeaway for a few weeks.

Next big one is the UK Cyclosportif on 1st July. See you down the front with the big blue London Dynamo train.

Rapha's typically detailed and well illustrated guide to the Etape is now up:

http://www.rapha.cc/index.php?page=300

Well worth reading to get a sense of what lies ahead. There's plenty of video floating about the web as well which I'll try and collate when I get time.

Firstly let me apologise for my lack of writing on this blog over the last few months. I've come to the conclusion that writing two blogs is probably a bit more than I have time for.

My last distance test before the Etape was the London to Canterbury sportif which clocked in at 203km. My plan was to go out fast and ride up near my threshold to simulate the power output required for the Etape. Given the relatively flat and fast course this seemed the most sensible way to attack it. You can read my report on it here:

London-Canterbury Sportif: fun and fast

Admittedly it was a bit slower than I had hoped for but that was down to time wasted at stops and helping people with punctures. When I got into the groove I was really flying and I'm feeling reasonable happy with my form going into the big one.

This year's setup is slightly different to last year. I'm riding a compact 50/34 with a 12/27 cassette instead of a triple 52/42/30 with 12/27. The frame is a Merckx aluminium rather than a Giant alu/carbon composite and my position has been tweaked so that my position is now much better and less painful.

Should I have gone out and tried the route? Possibly, but where's the challenge and excitement on the day if it's familiar? I'm not going to win the damned thing but I am going to enjoy it.

I'll be blogging it by phone if I have time/flickr works. It'll be a bit experimental so I can't guarantee anything.

If you are riding, remember to enjoy the experience. Some people forget this isn't about being a pro, it's about enjoying riding your bike.

Looking at various forecasts it looks like we could be in for a plus 30C day on Monday. Which means keeping hydrated and not overheating is going to be an issue. If you haven't packed some already, energy drinks with electrolytes could be a useful thing to make sure you have.

Last year I found myself cramping on the Lautaret due to getting depleted on that side of things. This year, with the tougher course etc, they are going to be just as important.

But don't forget the wind/rain jacket for descending as it can get a bit fresh when the sweat is being chilled at 65km/h.

You can read one of my reports on this year's event on 606 here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/606/A24909889

I'll be adding more colourful bits on here as well. There's so many wonderful memories that I want to get down somewhere before they fade. I have never been so glad as when I saw the flamme rouge and rolled to the finish. Hopefully the photos will be about soon as then you'll get to see just how much some of it hurt.

1. The bloke with one leg. No prosthesis, just the one leg. Pedalling away merrily up the climbs, in his Credit Mutuel-sponsored kit, and telling his mate not to got too hard. His mate's reply was that he'd only catch him later because he descended "like a madman". He certainly did from what I saw as I tried to follow him down one of the mountains.

2. Melted asphalt like black treacle. Smeared all over the Port de Bales road on the way up, sticking me to the road, making a mess of my front tyre to the point that it wouldn't roll properly at low speed.

3. My front wheel rubbing. It was fine before I went out to France but as soon as I assembled the bike there were problems that I thought were fixed until the start. I might have gone a bit quicker without the drag it caused and my front fork might be in a better state still.

4. The descent of Port de Bales. Narrow at the top with no barriers on the corners. Because what you really need as you hurtle into a corner at speed is the knowledge that if it goes tits up there's only the horizon to stop your fall down the mountain.

5. Time disappearing in the turn of a pedal stroke. Minutes to drag the bike a matter of a few hundred metres. Climbing so slowly I was barely moving.

6. The cowbells. Either being rung old-skool style by roadside fans or clanking on yer actual cows. The latter went from being "soothing alpine sounds" to "death march to the summit" over the course of at least two of the climbs.