Tomorrow Alexander Kristoff will be back in action after the classics when he lines up at the start of his home race, the Tour of Norway.

I had one week rest with some TV shows in Norway and then back to training," he told his Katusha team about his break after Paris-Roubaix. "I’ve been training a lot, actually, long base training rides with my teammate Sven Erik Bystrøm and the local team from home. I’ve done the base training for the Tour and the rest of the season. Then these last few weeks we did more intensive training to get into shape for the race.

"You don’t want to be in too good of shape when you don’t have races. When I take one week off I am 4-5 kilos heavier. I don’t know why but if I take time off and do nothing, I immediately gain 4 kilos and I can feel my shape go down immediately, too. Then I start training again to build back up for the Tour. This is my first race back and I’m excited to race again. In training I felt like I am back to where I should be – not at my top level but at a good level.

"It’s always great, of course. [to have time with the family]. They were with me when I won Flanders but then home when I won Scheldeprijs and then on to Roubaix. I’ve had one month now with my family and it’s always a great time. You can breathe out and have some weekends at home. I had not been home on a weekend since Qatar so it was many months. We could do some normal things like a family does – take a walk or go to the beach."

Kristoff is ambitious for his home race.

"I will try to focus on winning a stage or two," he said. "Today it is snowing in the mountains, so if we don’t have to do the mountains, I could try to win the overall. But we have one really big mountain with a summit finish so I think for the overall we will be better with Sven or Egor Silin. 

"I’ve never done the climbs. The climb on stage 4 may be even harder than the one on stage 3. The climb for stage 3 is longer but you have a downhill to finish, but stage 4 is uphill finish.  The last 2 km will be quite hard for me.

"I think [the favourite is] maybe Lars Petter [Nordhaug] from Sky who won in Yorkshire so he’s in good shape and he’s Norwegian, but Sky only have five guys here so there could be trouble to control. Trek Factory has also brought a strong team with some good climbers in Mollema and Frank Schleck as preparation for the Tour, but you don’t want to be in top shape this far from the Tour, so we’ll see."