Riding out to Richmond Park this morning, headphones in, head prepared for three laps (roughly an hour and fifteen minutes of riding), I wondered how many people's preparation for the Etape begins in the grey, damp, cool air of the British spring. Flecked with a heavy mist that would pass for rain elsewhere, I pedalled into the park and began my session.

Today's focus: climbing out of the saddle at a steady rate. The Francaise Des Jeux coach reckons that you should be able to do this for three to four minutes when you are in shape. I can ride out of the saddle easily enough, it's just doing it at a steady rate that I find difficult. The effort increases as I find my cadence and move more quickly, then the gradient increases and my legs resist.

In my head I thought about Ventoux and up the two rises that pass for hills I daydreamed of myself as Robert Millar, dancing his way to the summit, and of the horrible madness that Ventoux seems to summon to riders.

I dreamt on of rounding that corner in the shadow of that white obelisk that marks the summit, looking back down through the lunar landscape and rejoicing.

Then I remembered that it's a long way off, both physically and mentally.

Still, in 2007 my training didn't really get underway until January and only picked up in earnest once the weather started to improve in March and April.

There's a tendency among novices and experienced riders alike to perhaps do too much too early. Everyone respond differently to training but I do question why I would need to be able to do a 200km ride by April, as I've had suggested to me in the past.

What I've found is that allowing this panic to set in can lead to peaking too early. The attendant danger with this is that you end up in a long taper and are actually losing fitness by the time you come to the event.

One fairly frequent suggestion is a long taper of about 2 weeks before the event. As far as I can see, all that looks like is a 2 week layoff to get fat. Trust me, I've tried it and by comparison to riding and racing up to the week before it's a lousy method.

Really it's too early in this cycle to be worrying though.

ETAPE DU TOUR 2009: ROUTE RECCE

He also works with Cyclefilm who produce a Recon DVD for those of you who like to see what you're getting into. Here's a preview below:

L'ETAPE '09 - RECON DVD TRAILER from CYCLEFILM on Vimeo.

Full details on the official site: http://www.letapedutour.com

Here's the profile:

I'm definitely up for it at this stage. Mont Ventoux is probably one of the few climbs I've still got a burning ambition to do, having missed out on being able to go on the London Dynamo trip a couple of years ago due to work commitments.

And this time round I may be in much better shape and have a regular training partner.

Light colours are recommended, white if you are happy for it to be nowhere near as clean at the end as the start. They'll reflect the heat better. There's a wide array to choose from on the market in plain colours.

If the ride is as hot as it has been the last couple of years then it needs to be made from a lightweight material but one which holds its shape well and won't sag when the pockets are full as they will be.

Talking of pockets, it needs to have plenty of space in them and be accessible. Try a few on to find out which one works for you as almost every manufacturer positions them differently and some are more accessible than others, depending on your size and flexibility.

Traditionally three pockets is the style but there's a few out there now with two. I like three for the ease of segmentation it offers - solid food and money in one, clothing in the middle, gels and powders in the other.

Here's a few you might like to look at.

Rapha Lightweight Jersey - Top-end stuff from my favourite kit company. Ignore worrying about the price: it does the job.

Prendas Peugeot Retro Jersey - Yes it's a team kit but it's not a current one, therefore avoiding falling into the "wearing kit you haven't earned the right to wear" category. I like it, it's class and looks smart.

Castelli Superleggera Jersey - if it's a company good enough for Fausto Coppi, good enough for pretty much everyone else.

Do NOT under any circumstances wear any of the following: Maillot Jaune, Maillot a Pois, Maillot Blanc, World Champion, National Champion. I'll allow current pro team replica kits because I'm feeling generous and they're quite reasonably priced in general. If you ride for a club, you should wear your club kit.

They might have finished an Etape or two themselves by doing this but it is not the only and certainly not the best way to suceed. It's probably the best way to tire yourself out and to frustrate yourself with a lack of progress, being about as good a method of overtraining as can be imagined.

My advice is this: ride three times a week, doing three different types of ride.

• Intensity - 1 hour aiming to do around 32km/h pace on the flat
• Endurance - 3-5 hour club run of around 120-140km door-to-door
• Skills - 30 minutes to 1 hour practicing things like getting food out of pockets, taking off arm warmers/gilet, putting on clothing

And remember: we're only mid-April, the Etape is in July. That's still some time to go.

What I have been thinking of doing is making this blog more of an advice hotspot for my tips and advice from other riders on what works and what doesn't.

Feel free to send in your advice and I'll try and publish as much of it as I have time to.

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.

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.