A fair few kilometres have passed under the wheels of my bright yellow Principia racer since my last diary. A fair few litres of lactic acid have been produced by my weather beaten legs. Enough facial contortions to at least earn me a place in the semi-finals of the all-Cheshire gurning champs have been pulled, with a few prize beauties even being beamed around the world to unsuspecting viewers of Eurosport. These last couple of sentences I think point toward the fact that pro bike racing is tough - but I'm having the time of my life and enjoying every minute of it.

Last time I'd just finished The Tour Down Under. The Tour de Langkawi was the next stop and as you probably know by now I rode pretty well there (as did the whole team) managing 4th on G.C. That race was raced hard each day and by the end I was drained and ended up catching a nasty throat infection. This kept me off the bike for a while. As a result I was creeping for the first four weeks or so of 'euro racing'. With the standard of racing so high if you aren't 100% or approaching it you just get blasted. OK, you may be able to hang in on the flat for a bit, but on the climbs, as Yatesy would put it, you are either 'toast' or 'history'. I don't mind admitting it but I was both of these metaphors on several occasions.

Tirreno-Adriactico was a race that was particularly unforgiving for me. On almost every climb I was shelled. For five days I was chasing back on through the convoy, getting on, getting popped and doing it all over again. My body was obviously saying 'Oi! Matt, ease off son!'. I hate stopping races but on the 5th stage I came to the conclusion that enough was enough and retired. By this time I'd picked up another cold as well. I flew back to England, had a week to rest up and see my wife, Andrea, then flew straight to the next race.

Slowly, but with a comforting steadiness, my form has been improving from race to race. As I write this (with four hours to go to my prologue start in the Tour of Romandie ) I have already completed approaching 40 days of racing. That is only a bit under my total for last year!

The last two races have seen me get back in amongst the action. In Paris Camembert I was away for about 40km in a good move with Jez Hunt and a few others. It's such a great feeling to be blasting along at 50km an hour with the TV motorbikes swerving around you and the yellow Mavic neutral service following behind. When you finally get caught and the next move goes you've just got to hope you don't get blasted. The start of that race was so fast and in crosswinds that I could hardly eat my race food. We ended up averaging 45km hour for 209km. I finished ok but was completely drained.

You know when things are back on track when you can really suffer and take it out of yourself. I was away again in G.P. Gippingen in Switzerland, this time on my own for around 30km. I went away chasing Mountains points but just missed out with the mountains going to eventual winner Steffan Weiseman of Telekom. Again, it was a great buzz and good publicity for the team.

Well, I've made no effort to disguise my desire to ride a major 'Tour'. That long standing wish is now an imminent actuality, only Romandie and another week stand in the way. I am excited, nervous and a host of other adjectives. I'm also honoured and I want to seize this chance. I certainly feel I'm ready, we've had a great program of races and the support given by everybody in the team has been superb. As I've said before on these cyber pages,' the ball is now in my court'. All being well, see you on Eurosport somewhere in Italy. Cheers. Ciao. Salut. Matt.