Race

I’m stood on top of a hill, the sleety rain is coming in sideways, again, Jupiler beer is flowing freely, black-yellow-red flags snap damply in the wind and the same pattern is painted on the tarmac and people’s cheeks, but only where it hasn’t been washed off by the days regular showers, in both cases, the Bold Rooster is more common than the Flanders Lion, and I’ve just been given a drunken hug by Philippe Gilbert’s god-daughter, she’s even shown me her ID card to show they share the same surname and confirm some sort of provenance.

As you head out of Ypres towards Menen, stop and look at the inside of the gate. There are 54,896 names inscribed there, each a Commonwealth soldier whose body was never found or identified after World War One. There wasn’t enough room to fit all the names, so the remainder are elsewhere.

It's fast, frantic, spectator friendly and damn good fun. Cyclo-cross - or cross, cyclo-x and CX - is a sport that takes modified road bikes off road in races that typically last for 60 minutes and includes obstacles where you need to dismount and run with the bike over your shoulder.

The American songwriter Cole Porter wrote of loving "Paris in the winter, when it drizzles," but it's still autumn and there was little chance of Tour de France organisers ASO allowing the ever-blackening storm clouds caused by the Lance Armstrong affair to rain on the parade as they unveiled the route of next year's 100th edition of the race on Wednesday.

Nestled in a shallow valley in the countryside near Ipswich, Somersham is typical of many English villages. There are the coloured thatched cottages often found in this area, a pub, a cricket pitch and fairly new village hall built on the outskirts. The village still retains a sleepy feel, where a steadier pace of life clings on despite the rush all around.

Cyclo-cross is one of the most exciting and accessible branches of cycle sport, but there are some key skills that can make it tricky to master. I've taken part in a few 'cross races but would describe myself as a rookie. I haven't mastered the strange business of dismounting and remounting for the obstacles. At least, not with any style or panache.

As we stood by the roadside or sat in front of our televisions watching Jonathan Tiernan-Locke win the Tour of Britain on home turf, how many of us thought about the organisation which allows the race to take place safely? How long it takes to plan, and what those involved do? One aspect of this is how to make normally busy roads safe to race on.

Thirty-six photographers; 140 or more photographs; three races in all - the men's road race and time trial, and the women's road race. Thank you all for your images of the Olympic Games for the Road.cc and The Collarbone crowdsourced collection.

Tomorrow sees the start of the 67th edition of the Vuelta, and if the bookmakers are correct, the general classifciation will come down to a straight fight between Alberton Contador, back from his doping ban, and Chris Froome, runner-up last year and again in the Tour de France and leading Team Sky in a Grand Tour for the first time.

While you've been enjoying the track cycling, we've been tirelessly working to curate the Road.cc and Collarbone Olympics photo challenge.

OK, that's not strictly true, but we have received some really nice entries. For the full low-down on what we're proposing, check here, but essentially, we're crowdsourcing a photo collection showing the Olympics cycle races through the general public's lenses.