Matt De Canio of the Linda McCartney Pro Cycling Team has astonished his teammates by putting in one of the most ridiculously hard training camps in cycling history. The insane American spent a week at Nic and Jan Flanagan's famous Pyrenean retreat of Roquefort near Massat, racking up some serious kilometreage and breaking all their records for cycling feats in the process.

"We've had a lot of people staying with us here over the last nine years: pros, amateurs, long distance tourists, fun riders… nobody as crazy as this guy though," laughed Nic Flanagan. "He actually rode over fourteen cols in one day!"

Yes, it's true. In a mammoth ten-hour session last Thursday, Matt covered fourteen separate mountain passes, surpassing anything that Nic has come across in the mountains. "We've had our fair share of nutters, but this boy takes the biscuit. The Col de Peguere is so steep I have trouble getting over there on my mountain bike, and when they tried to route the Tour up it many years ago, there was a riders' revolt. When he got back, he was so full of adrenaline he was bouncing off the walls. We couldn't get him to go to bed until half past midnight."

The hilarious punchline to all this macho tomfoolery is that Matt was using the camp as preparation for his next race, the Tour of Denmark. For those readers unfamiliar with Hans Christian Andersen's homeland, it's flatter than Lincolnshire after a good ironing.

Matt remains unmoved:

"Ok, so the highest point in the race might be a railway bridge, but I want to be first over it!"

In between rides, Matt kept himself motivated by watching Lance Armstrong destroy the field at the Tour de France on Eurosport.

"My coach, Chris Carmichael, works with Lance too, and he is always pushing his riders to use a faster pedalling action. It works real good for Lance, so maybe it'll work for me some day."

For those of you who enjoy a good pore over a map of an evening, here is the route covered by the man who likes to be known as "Bad" Matt De Canio (good lord…)