Simon Gerrans, one of the classiest riders in the peloton and the first Australian to win a stage in of each of the three Grand Tours, will be providing regular blogs for TeamSky.com throughout their debut season on the road. In this first instalment he tells us what he's been up to in the last few weeks and looks ahead to the new campaign:

December 30 2009

Team Sky's first get-together was towards the end of November and to be honest when I got my plane ticket I sort of wondered what we were going to do for a whole week in Manchester. Talking with the guys who are based out of there it didn't sound like it was going to be too friendly weather-wise for training. But we got there and had the week planned out for us and were actually really busy the whole time. Whether it was going to seminars, meeting teammates or getting photos and media stuff done, the week went really quickly and it was fantastic. And we got the first taste of what the team was really going to be about - it was well worth the trip.

I was really, really impressed with that first meeting and I think Team Sky is going to be a real revelation in cycling. I think it's going to be the biggest thing this sport has seen for quite some time; I feel they are going to take professional cycling to another level. Cycling in many ways is a very traditional sport and very fixed in its ways but I think Team Sky is going to be all about performance and the big goal of the team is going to be getting the best performance out of the riders. I think that's going to be the big, big difference.

Funny as it sounds, in plenty of professional teams it's all been about sticking with tradition and the way the teams have been run in the past. Whether it's been about promoting the sponsor or the bike you're riding, they've been the priorities in the past for certain teams. And, as much as we are clearly going to be concerned about the sponsors and the brands, the main objective of this team is to get the best performances out of the riders and to give every rider every opportunity of performing to the best of their ability; that's going to be the big difference.

I was in a new team last year with Cervélo and they got a great group of riders together and had some success straight away. That built up plenty of momentum and we had a great season and I think Team Sky is going to be more than capable of doing something similar.

Since our team meetings over in Manchester I've come back to Melbourne and started training and I've really put the first month of riding together for the season so far. Obviously after having a period of time off through October and November I've got a lot of work to do - and still have a lot of work to do - but I feel like I'm in pretty good shape already after a month's riding.

It's about 40 degrees at the moment so we're going out and getting scorched every day at training - I guess it's a bit different to the conditions a lot of my teammates have been having over in Britain!

The Tour Down Under starts off the new season but not for me - I'm flying over for the team launch and then going to the training camp in Valencia. I've just found that by skipping the road racing here in Australia in January - and this is racing I love to do and have had some success in - I was much, much better in the spring for it. I found that I really benefitted from getting an extra month of training in, getting over to Europe that little bit earlier and spending some time in training camp and seeing my teammates.

And specifically I was better at the Ardennes Classics which are a big, big goal of mine in 2010 so I really want to give myself every opportunity to perform well there. And, unfortunately, if that means missing some racing in Australia in the coming weeks, then so be it. I also want to be in good shape for Paris-Nice [in March] and to perform well there but the really big goals are the Ardennes races in the last part of April. I had some good performances there last year and I'll go back with bigger and bolder aspirations this time.

Before then it's Paris-Nice and I've never really tried to compete for the GC in a race like Paris-Nice before. I've had some success in week-long stage races, more so in Australia, so this is going to be a little bit of a new experience for me but it's something I'd like to work towards over the next few years. So I'll be finding my feet there a little bit but this year will be my first real go at it and we'll see how we get on.

I've pretty much got my programme for most of the season, barring any problems. After the Classics I plan to have close to a month away from racing when I'll go back and do some similar type of work to what I'm doing at the moment - base training which will then set the foundations for the European summer.

And then throughout June I'll do some shorter stage races and some training camps to learn a few of the roads for the Tour de France and then hopefully I'll be lining up in Rotterdam for the start of the Tour. It's a big, big goal of mine - and whether it's going for stage wins or helping Wiggo go for the overall I'll be really, really keen to be back there again.