Hi! It was brilliant to win the 2008 British National Road Race Championships, but obviously disappointing to miss out on selection for the Beijing Olympics. Still, the Team GB cycling team did incredibly well out there and congratulations to them.

At the beginning of November, I was thrown in with the quick boys at the World Cup track meeting in Manchester and it could hardly have gone better. I was competing in the 4km men’s team pursuit with Steven Burke, Geraint Thomas and Ed Clancy and we caught Denmark in the final with two laps remaining. We also recorded the only sub-four-minute ride in qualifying, which was a first sub-four-minute for me in my career. To put things in some sort of perspective, Steven was only five years old when I was a member of the team that broke the British record in 1993 in a time of 4min 14sec! Hopefully I proved to the younger guys that there is a bit of life left in the old legs yet!

With the Halfords team having expanded, I am really looking forward to a good road season. In the meantime, have a top Christmas.

Cheers for now

Rob