In the beginning... and yes, it's a joke.

I guess that since this is my first ever blog post, I should start by telling you a little about myself. First off, I'm not actually a dog. I gave some consideration to a species swap operation, but in the end, the difficulty of sourcing canine-compatible cycling kit called a halt to the operation at the eleventh hour.

So I remain a human being with the mind of a dog and a badly wired one at that. Generally that's not helpful in life, but for my purposes, it's not such a bad thing. And here's why. I am, by my own admission, just an average, normal mountain biker, but my aim, is by this time next year, to be fit and fast enough to represent Great Britain at the 2012 Olympics.

That may sound ambitious, but I am faster than most of my mates already and I have some really quick tyres in the cupboard that my mate gave me, which I can get out for races and an old training plan by a professional coach who used to train some of Britain's top mountain bike racers.

And, to give myself a head start, I've had not one, but two rest days, which means I'm starting super fresh and super committed. I'm going to start off with some phosphate sprints and report back later, by the end of the week, I should be substantially faster. Just watch this space.