Tom Pidcock sets out to tick off another box at Arctic Race of Norway: "It will be ideal for us to test the legs"

Tom Pidcock has not raced (at least on road) for over a month now, but this situation won't last too long. A four-day Norwegian 2.Pro race Arctic Race of Norway will take off next Thursday and if not unforeseen events take place, the Q36.5 Pro Cycling star should fly to Norway with the rest of his team. For the 26-year-old Brit it'll be a racing return to the Scandinavian country after 8 long years. In 2017, he became junior time trial world champion in Bergen...

"I think whenever you're going into a Grand Tour then it's good to test the legs beforehand on the road," Pidcock's coach Kurt Bogaerts explained to Cycling Weekly. "It's really energising for Tom to go to different places and do races that he hasn't done before."

"This is a race we are yet to do, which is also why we were also keen to do the AlUla Tour earlier this year, we also never did Ruta del Sol. We had heard a lot about the Arctic Race, we heard it was a nice race and so I think it will be ideal for us to test the legs there."

"We had three options with the team - we could do the Tour de l'Ain, the Vuelta a Burgos or the Arctic Race. We chose the last one with Tom and it will be a really good opener, a good test for us ahead of this next block of racing."

"We were very pleased with second. I think in general Tom has had a really consistent season so far and with the Giro he was really good after such an intense block of racing early on," Bogaerts added. "He was super competitive which was exactly as we had hoped for. He had done a lot of racing up until the Giro finished, which I was really pleased with."

Pidcock also found some time to cherish his love - mountain bikes. "We then did the off-road stuff and that was a really good change mid-season; taking the European champions jersey on the mountain bike has given him a lot of faith and belief for the rest of the year now."

With a successful conclusion to the first half of his season, Pidcock will now aim to continue on a high for the rest of the spring with Vuelta a Espana and XCO World Championships as big targets towards the end of summer. "Hopefully for the second part of the season we can now continue that form from early on and carry on to achieve our goals," Bogaerts said.

"Tom has really worked himself back up again physically during the break after the Giro. We've certainly noticed that in a few checks that we’ve done where we've seen it in the numbers that he has produced too - the best check though is always in race of course. We know that mountain biking is a really strong discipline for him so keeping on top of that area is important for both him and us. It's actually always a really good check point and gives us a lot of belief for what’s coming up."