Thursday 19 November 2015 15:56, UK
Hello and welcome along to my new column. Over the coming months I’ll be taking you through my experiences as a racer on both the road and the track as I bid to earn a place in Great Britain’s men’s team pursuit line-up for the Olympic Games in Rio next summer.
Like many athletes around the world and across all sorts of sports, that's the big goal for me at the moment: to represent my country on the very biggest stage.
I've been in and around the team pursuit squad for a few years and have managed to pick up a few medals, but now that we are at the start of the track cycling season leading into the Olympics, things are getting really serious and this is when I have to be the best I have ever been.
It's an exciting time and a really exciting team to be part of. In fact, a better description is "surreal". Each day I go to the velodrome and train alongside the likes of Sir Bradley Wiggins, who is one of the greatest cyclists of all time, and Ed Clancy, who is one of the greatest track cyclists of all time. Even Mark Cavendish has started knocking around the place.
People talk about how hard it is to win an Olympic medal but, to be honest, I think just getting into the four-man line-up in Rio is going to be the most difficult part. The competition is going to be so intense and the quality so high that whoever makes the cut is automatically going to have a great chance of winning a medal.
That's all a long way away, though. I need to focus on the immediate future first, and that's the European Track Championships in Switzerland, which start on Wednesday.
It's the first of just five major international meetings before Rio, so even though two of our main rivals in the team pursuit - Australia and New Zealand - are both obviously absent, it's important that we get things right.
For me personally, I'm just looking to continue the good form I've enjoyed on the road in recent weeks.
You might have spotted me at the Tour of Britain last month, where I finished third overall, and then I managed to carry that form over to finish fifth in the under-23 men's individual time trial at the UCI Road World Championships.
My main target for the week, though, was the under-23 men's road race, which took place on a course that suited me down to the ground. Back in 2014, I was in with a chance of winning but stuffed it up and ended up finishing 19th, so this year I was really fired up to make amends and everything seemed to be in my favour.
But, as can so easily happen in cycling, I crashed twice, got two mechanicals and any chances I had of winning swiftly went down the pan. It was heartbreaking and, for a day or so afterwards, I didn't know what to do with myself.
But, to be fair, I didn't get so much as a puncture at the Tour of Britain, so swings and roundabouts, I guess.
At least I'm fit and healthy for the track Euros, which can't be said for poor old Ed. He somehow managed to slip a disc in his back picking up a bag the other day. How do you manage to do that? It's a million to one.
We'll miss him in Switzerland, but we've still got a strong squad, so hopefully we can get the win, put in a good performance and then have Ed back for what is going to be a busy winter.
