Tejay Van Garderen will begin the longest, and most prestigious, road cycling race of his burgeoning career tonight in Seville, Spain.

Starting with a team time trial at 10 p.m., Van Garderen will be riding alongside the likes of HTC-Columbia teammate and five-time Tour de France 2010 stage winner Mark Cavendish in the 75th edition of the Vuelta a Espana.

Like the Tour de France, the Vuelta is the third of the major grand tours - three-week stage races - in Italy, France and Spain.

"The longest stage race I've done to this day is 10 days. And the Vuelta that's 21 days," said Van Garderen, who started racing in Bozeman, after finishing second to 2010 Tour de France winner Alberto Contador at the Criterium du Dauphine in France earlier this summer. "Once I get past 10 days I have no idea how my body is going to respond or what's going to happen.

"(My) number one priority is finishing the race."

With only two days off to rest between the start in Seville and the other 20 stages before the Sept. 19th finish in Madrid, the constant racing is grueling, to say the least.

"The Vuelta will be a learning process for Tejay," HTC-Columbia team manager Rolf Aldag said to Cyclingnews. "We have to be careful with a young rider like him ... Of course he wants to show himself, but it's a grand tour, it's three weeks of racing and we don't want to kill him."

Van Garderen will have a minimum of team responsibilities. HTC-Columbia's primary hopes are vested in Cavendish.

"I'll try not to lose time and try to ride hard in GC (overall standings)," Van Garderen said of his basic approach. "And then maybe one day I'll crack, maybe one day I'll have an awesome day."

Following some time off after the Dauphine in June, Van Garderen climbed back into the saddle to race the classic San Sebastian, a one-day event in the Basque part of Spain. He finished 64th, almost 10 minutes off Luis Leon Sanchez's winning time of 5 hours, 47 minutes, 13 seconds. Van Garderen followed that rather run-of-the-mill result with a fourth-place finish at the Tour de L'Ain. He was seven seconds behind Team RadioShack's Haimar Zubeldia, and earned the best young rider's jersey.

"I wish I could say with all confidence that I'm ready to go," Van Garderen wrote on his blog for cyclingnews.com, "but I have no idea what it really takes, having never done one of these before."

Sean Forbes can be reached at sforbes@dailychronicle.com.

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