You started the season with a stage win in Australia. Was it a good winter's training?
Really good. I shut down last season in early October, as I knew I was doing the Tour Down Under. In November, those of us going to Australia had a two-week training camp, riding 30-hour weeks. I came off that big endurance block well, and then did some track races at Grenchen [in Switzerland] in December. The plan was to copy a similar build-up to what I did with Quick-Step a few years ago: a big overload training camp into an intense track block. It worked well again.
