I feel at home in Astana

We all get along really well, we are a great bunch of riders. We got to know each other at the first get-together camp but here we are forging our friendship on the bike because we ride in pairs that are often changed around. The routine is almost every day the same; we start with breakfast, then we hit the roads at around half past ten and we come back to the hotel usually at around five o’clock. After that, I take a massage, eat dinner and finally, I go to bed. The weather is still nice even though today it was pretty cloudy but the temperature was hovering around 14 degrees. At first, we rode all together in one group but today we split into two groups. One was made up of the young riders and the other one of the older riders. They put me in the one with old guns that had some extra training load on the agenda. The main reason why we split was that everyone had a chance to pull longer at the front because I think that physically we are more or less on the same level. For the first time I tried out my time-trial bike and I have a great feeling about it. I did some intervals and we should do a time-trial test on Friday, so I am curious what it will be like. The experts from Specialized have adjusted my bike position significantly and now I feel much more relaxed on the bike. I believe it will help me to regain my time-trial qualities and I won’t fall behind the best ones in the GC like I have in the past two years.