At HTC-Columbia's training camp in Mallorca, Spain, on Wednesday, the men's squad spent the early part of the day working on improving their team time trialling skills.  The  HTC-Columbia riders split into two groups for the team time trialling sessions, which included all-out efforts over a fifteen kilometre circuit.  After the morning's time trialling sessions and changing back to their road bikes, the riders then split into three groups for training rides of between four and a half and five hours training.   

"It's the first of three tough days' training," said HTC-Columbia sports director Tristan Hoffman.  "The team time trial was the first time they've gone really deep, so we only did one hard climb afterwards. They've got two more big training days ahead of them and we want them to be fresh for tomorrow."

"For the team time trial, we put most of the Tour of Qatar guys together, but the two group were pretty much evenly matched, finishing within 25 seconds of each other. It looked good.  But today wasn't about having them really compete against each other, anyway.  It's more about getting the feel for that kind of racing again."

On Thursday the HTC-Columbia riders may head to Mallorca's higher mountains, "but that depends a bit on the weather," cautioned Hoffman.  "Today it was warm, which was perfect.  The guys are looking motivated and fit, and it feels like we're all heading in the right direction."