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Since my last post I have spent the majority of my time racing in Europe. This month-and-a-half campaign was very successful for the team and proved that all of the hard work we put in during the winter and beginning of the season was really paying off.

We began racing at the Olympias Tour in Holland. The race couldn’t have started much better then it did for the team with Taylor Phinney winning the prologue over teammates Jesse Sergent in second and Alex Dowsett in fourth. We also put four more riders in the Top 20. Racing in Holland is notorious for wind and crashes and many of the same roads caused havoc at the Giro just a week earlier. Needless to say, we had a big job ahead of us to keep Taylor safe and defend the race lead, but that’s what we did. The five days following the prologue were some of the most stressful I’ve ever experienced in a race. We overcame losing two teammates, crashes, crosswinds and the 230 km “Mini Amstel Gold” they put us through the second last day. I don’t know if I’ve ever been so glad a race was over, but all of us were extremely proud of what we accomplished. We finished the six-day race with first and third on GC, Best Young Rider, first team GC and four stage wins. Not a bad start to the month. Next on the docket was a week in Bruges to recover from the race and prepare for our next one: U23 Paris-Roubaix.

Paris-Roubaix is a legendary race and, even though the espoir version is only 170 km, compared to the pro’s 260km, we ride over most of the same cobble sections the pros do. As the defending champions, we put pressure on ourselves, but were expected to control the race. After riding the front until the first cobble section at 50 km in, I was making my way back to the front of the group when I was caught in a crash. It was nothing serious and I picked my self up, checked my bike over and got going with a push from my mechanic. Unfortunately, 100 m later, I was on the ground again. The neutral service car had come across the road to help another crash victim and stopped right in front of me, I had nowhere to go except into his rear bumper. I was fuming to put it lightly and after checking myself and bike over (again) I was off leaving the driver with some choice words. I turned the pedals in anger but within seconds I was completely alone as the few cars left behind me sped off to service their riders. Up ahead, the race was on and I knew that I wasn’t getting back. The rest of my day was spent in the broom wagon with 12 other dirty, bloody, sweaty racers and no updates on the race unfolding minutes in front of us. In the parking lot of the famed Roubaix velodrome, I found the rest of my teammates and was happy to hear we had won the race for the second year in a row.

My next two weeks were spent training in Girona, Spain with my teammates and some of the many pros that call it home. After hearing all the hype from riders like Christian Meier, who lives in Girona, I was excited to see what it was all about. It definitely lived up to my expectations with some of the best riding I’ve done surrounding a pretty awesome city. After Spain, the bad luck at the races was upon me again. My last race in Europe, Thuringen Rundfahrt, was cut short when I was hit with a bout of the flu. 

This one trip was a season in a nutshell. There was training, racing, crashes, lows and definitely lots of highs. For the most part it was a success and will set me up well for the last part of my season. After the month and a half away it is definitely nice to be home, but it’s going to be a quick turn around as I head back across the pond in August.