The big holidays, Christmas and New Year, are now behind us and I have left Sweden in sub-zero temperatures for Girona in Spain. I´m here for the first training camp with Endura Racing. We have been lucky with the weather so far and we’re getting good hours in the system.

We started up the camp last Thursday with a four hour session and it was my first ride for this year at the road, and the first time I was riding a Look bike. It works well together with the SRAM components; I´m more than happy with the feeling after two months of training at home at my hybrid and Ergometer. We have done five sessions so far around the area of Girona and it is starting to get comfy and feels right again.

There’s great climbs down here and we have been doing some famous ones already. Today we had company of Xavier Tondo (Movistar)…it was great to see him again after we met during my trial with the Cervélo TestTeam. He’s a great rider and a nice guy!

Xavier showed us the climb of Rococorba, just outside Banyoles, where riders like himself, Bradley Wiggins (Team Sky), David Millar (Garmin – Cervélo) are using this climb as their test-hill, and most likely many others with them.

It was a ten kilometre climb with some very steep sections; Xavier has the second best time with Bradley as the king of the hill with 28 minutes 40 seconds.

I feel very happy to be in Endura Racing; it’s a great team and the riders, managers and staff are all great guys and we get along well together! We’re going well together and it feels already like “home”. And on top of that I’m part of improving and innovating the Endura Equipe clothing range, already a high-end series, when I’ll be doing good races. I can’t be happier.

My first race will be San Luis (2.1) in Argentina, starting the 17th of January. This is an earlier start of the season than was planned but I have been offered Evan Oliphant´s place as he is ill. I’m very motivated and think it will be a good start to my season…it will be a hard start, but it’s great to breathe your lungs out as early as possible.

Thanks for reading!

Alex