Cyclingnews: Coming out of the Dauphiné, how was your form?
Dan Martin: It was a hard week of racing. I remember last year when I did it and it took me a few days to recover so I've made sure that I've taken it easy for a few days. I had a really good block of training coming into the race and it was basically a race every day this year at the Dauphiné with the GC going off almost every day and then the final three hard days in the mountains. That helped my fitness, of course, but in the days after I just needed to make sure that it had been soaked in properly before building up again for the Tour.
CN: From just a results point of view though you must be really pleased with how you did?
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DM: I was more than happy. Going into the race we had this tentative objective of aiming for a top ten with myself and a stage win for the team. We came away with two of us in the top six, me on the podium and two second places on stages. It was a really successful week for the team and obviously the form was a lot better than I expected. It was a strange race, though, in a sense, but everyone was in the same boat, because with the third week of the Tour being so difficult we were all a bit lacking our top end. But on a personal note I was feeling better than I've ever felt on the climbs.
CN: It appeared like you were more composed than ever before in a stage race. Would that be a fair reflection?
DM: I also felt a lot calmer in the heat of the moment and I made sure that I wasn't panicking. I stayed calm and knew that I could come back to the front group if I was dropped. Coming to a new team, it's given me a new perspective and when it comes to racing I feel a lot more relaxed. From the very first stage there was zero pressure and the team just wanted us to go out there, race our bikes and have fun. Also, I've been training in Andorra now for a year and I think we're starting to see that change in my ability almost. I've almost changed my physique and we started to see that at the Vuelta last year when I was climbing at the front and high up in GC before I crashed out. It's simply a case of climbing more. Having lived in Girona for so many years I realised that I actually lacked climbing. The short and punchy climbs that I have been good on in the past, that's what I was training on but once I moved to the mountains and concentrated on longer climbs I started to revert back to my amateur days when I was training more on long climbs. I'm a kilo lighter than last year, two lighter than how I was at the Tour last year and that's from spending hours and hours going up mountains.
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