final recap

What a race that was. We were able to put out GC guy, Andrew Talansky, who is having a breakout year on the final podium in 3rd place overall. Was a great feeling to help him out as best as I could. I felt like I was getting better as the week went on, or maybe it was just I was feeling a little less sore everyday from the wrecks. Speaking of those, I saw some of the gnarliest crashes I have ever seen in my life. To give you an idea, our stages on Saturday and Sunday went up climbs like I have never seen before in my life. We would be on a rolling valley road, take a quick turn and immediately begin gaining large amounts of elevation. Well, what goes up has to go down and we were hauling coming down the descents. On multiple occasions, riders appeared as if they would never walk away from a wreck. One specific descent had us riding a one lane mountain road through a tiny village and a rider from AG2R missed a turn and went straight into the wall of a house-from what I was told he was still out 10 minutes later and another rider was airlifted out after lying in a pool of his own blood. Even a teammate of mine witnessed a rider miss a turn and fly off a cliff. All in all, yes, we had wrecks on the team but they could have been much worse. We began clicking much better as a unit as the week went on and are now expecting much bigger things out of ourselves for the weeks ahead.

After the race yesterday, it was immediately into the car to head back up to Belgium, nothing like driving across a whole country in a night. Dragging a bit this morning, but nothing that a little Belgian coffee shop ride can't fix right?