Rider blog: Leopold Konig

In the first of our 2016 series our Czech climbing star previews the year ahead.

Hello everyone! It's exciting to be starting the 2016 season out here in Mallorca. Before my first race let me bring you up to date with my off-season and how we got to this point.

2015 was my longest season to date and I finished racing quite late at Abu Dhabi. There isn't a lot of time over the off-season but I tried to take it a little bit differently to previous years and spent all of my time back in the Czech Republic. At that point in the year I'd had enough of travelling so I just wanted to spend the time as close to my family as possible, as well as exploring the beauty of my own country. I spent one week in a spa at my favourite resort in the mountains. The team had a couple of days in London all together and then that was it - straight back into training!

Last year I'd set two goals for myself and one of those was to improve my Grand Tour GC position which I managed to do at the Giro. The other goal was to win the Tour de France alongside Chris Froome which we also managed to do. I'm more than happy with how the season went.

My ride at the Giro gave me a lot of confidence, especially to be able to start your first three Grand Tours and get better each time. And not just moving up from position 100 - but from position nine to seven to six. For me it's promising for the future and hopefully I can improve even more. The goals are clear - I just hope to be able to have this improvement every year.

It's been a learning process for the last 12 months with my new coach Tim Kerrison. I think we've a good idea about what we can do better and where to improve this year. There are some points we're looking at - not to go into specifics - but I'm confident we can make another step up.

At training camp the time goes fast. You're just focusing on training and recuperation. Spending December and January in Mallorca we had good food and all the facilities that we needed. It's a really nice hotel with nice staff and that's important.

I find that every training camp I focus on different things - whether it's a book or studying something. I don't know where it comes from but I never feel like I have enough time at camp. For sure some guys sit around and they get really bored when they aren't training. They don't know what to do with the time but that's not the case for me. I could do with more time if anything.

But now it's time to race. My first events are in Mallorca, which is also where I started out last year. I'm doing the two hilly races (Trofeo Andratx and Trofeo Serra de Tramuntana). It's a good place to get the season started and to see where the form is - and from there I will go on to Valencia and see how the legs are in a stage race.

Thanks everyone. Catch up with you soon!