Thirty one seconds is a long time at a mountain bike world cup – as Grant Ferguson will tell you.

It separated him from third place at the opening round of the series, or winning outright at round two.

He had hoped for a better second half of the 2015 season and a third consecutive British championship put a momentary smile back on an understatedly competitive face.

But at last week’s European championships there was more agony as Ferguson finished just twenty seconds away from first place.

“It was the same gap the whole race,” he lamented.

“From one point of view it’s nice to be on the podium but when you are second and you are so close, all you are thinking about are the few things that could have gone differently.”

For Ferguson however, there’s little time to dwell on the ever-increasing list of near-misses as he prepares to race for a third consecutive weekend - this time at round four of the world cup in Mont Sainte Anne, Canada.

Despite a tough travel schedule that he’s quick to shrug off as part of the job, Ferguson is looking forward to another high profile race - and there’s plenty more where that came from.

After Mont Sainte Anne, Ferguson travels to Windham for another world cup, before a weekend off, followed by the final round of the series and then the world championships. In all, he will have raced six out of seven weeks.

In his usual modest style, he compares the schedule to competing locally as a youth.

“Back then, I’d race Wednesday, Thursday; then Saturday and Sunday. I always enjoyed doing that” Ferguson nonchalantly said.

“These races are bigger, but it’s still just bike racing so I’m not worrying about it too much, just focusing on doing the little things right.

“If you take things too seriously then it’s just going to catch up with you.”

But have no doubt that when the race is on, Ferguson will be taking it seriously. Already, he has assessed where he made mistakes earlier in the season – and more importantly he still believes he can win.

“Different people have different strengths – you’ve got to decide how you race it and I went out pretty hard in both of them and maybe I paid a bit for that.

“Now I’ve adapted the tactics a little bit and I’m looking forward to these ones, to see how they go. The last couple of weeks have gone a bit better.

“This is the busiest time, there are a lot of races in a row and they’re all big races which I’m excited to do. To predict how I’d go – I don’t know – there’s a world championship at the end of it which I’ll be targeting but each race I’ll be doing my best.”

Grant Ferguson is part of British Cycling’s Olympic Podium Programme and competes at round four of the UCI Mountain Bike World Cup cross-country on Sunday 2 August. You can follow his race from 3:00pm BST on live timing. Reports and results will be posted on Twitter and the British Cycling website.