After three solid off-season training camps, the entire High Road team is now racing, having initiated the season on four fronts: in California, in Portugal, in Italy and France. After being away from the races for the longest period since I was thirteen - seven months - I was happy to get the first race under my belt in Laigueglia, Italy.

Racing in Italy is an experience I look forward to and a contrast to most other countries due to its culture and rich cycling history. The food, especially and obviously the pasta, is always good, the coffee is generally good, the hotels are clean, the countryside scenic, the people enthusiastic, animated cycling fanatics and the races formulaic as they simply start slowly and get increasingly fast until the peloton is traveling at unreasonable speeds on small roads with obstacles, such as dustbins and cars, to avoid. I like racing in Italy for most of those reasons and was nervously excited as I was pinning my numbers on while sitting in a hotel room that looked out on to the Mediterranean.

The race was, as expected, fast, hard and unrelenting in the final hours. Italian cyclists race well with their teammates and the peloton moves faster as a result of the mass cooperation between riders and teams. Riders work in breakaways until they’re empty and domestiques completely sacrifice themselves for their leaders. As the climbs were the major difficulties of the course, most teams fought to be at the front in order to place their leaders in good position for the ascents.

At the back of the peloton there were splits and bottlenecks on the small roads, so unless the leader was well placed he had no chance at victory. As everybody is racing to put their leader in front the speed naturally increases to the point where it felt as though we were heading towards the finish line - there was desperation in the group and riders took risks diving up the side and through gaps that barely exist to make it to the front before the beginning of the climb.

Universally, in most major bike races, the same desperation can be heard in the director’s voice over the radio as he knows the climb is coming and splits in the group are imminent; he warns the riders, scolds the riders, yells at the riders, to get to the front, and in position. Over the radio, he counts down the kilometers until the climb begins, until the climb is over and then, when we get to the top, tells us to stay in front for the dangerous descent as splits in the peloton and crashes going downhill can be equally damaging to the team. Racing would be far safer, more dynamic and interesting if radios were banned as the director now tugs the reins on his horses telling them when to go, turn, stop and eat.

I survived the race, although I struggled, which was expected as I am still lacking the rhythm of the races in my legs. It will come. I was happy to cross the line, to climb in the bus, to sit back as the soigneurs washed my legs and face off and, above all, to be racing again. It had been too long. As we drove together in the bus to our next race, Haut Var, we chatted about the day’s events, joked, ate our buffalo mozzarella and proscuitto sandwiches and kept our legs up and off the ground to let them recover. The simple moments are some of the best.

Haut Var (the name of the French Department or region) is a hilly one-day race in one of the most picturesque areas of France. I chatted with my wife Dede on the phone as we drove to the hotel, a small chateau on top of a colline, and she told me she had raced in the Var often—and had often suffered on the bike there as well. The roads are sinuous, small and relentlessly undulating. The climbs are never too long but obviously the descents aren’t long either, so recovery is limited to a half-dozen minutes of descending and accelerating out of corners.

Racing in France is completely different to Italy. Haut Var is the first of the French Cup races so the French teams were motivated to attack early and often to show their sponsors’ names on television and to gain national recognition. The races have a staccato rhythm to them as riders attack, chase each other, and then stop working once they realize that every team is represented in the break - and then it all starts over again once they are consumed by the peloton. More sensibly, the Italian pelotons let a break go, and then ride a steady speed behind which eventually devours the weakened breakaway in the final. The Italian teams, although rivals, often cooperate when they have common interests which keeps the peloton moving quickly and compactly; the French, bitter rivals to the end, rarely do which also adds to the differences in rhythm of the peloton.

Sunday’s Haut Var was, overall, a good experience for me and I gained some speed and race endurance. The race was tough - especially as we already had 190 km of racing in our legs on Saturday. In the next weeks my race program will intensify; I will be in the mountains of GP Lugano, the bergs of West Flanders, and hills of Coppi-Bartali, in Italy. The contrasts in races, environments and pelotons will again be significant.

The team, High Road, continues to win. After dominating the Tour Down Under, George Hincapie snagged a needed stage victory on the last day of the Tour of California and on the same day an ocean away, Bernard Eisel won the last stage of the Tour of Algarve. The team is beginning to gain the momentum it needs going into the heart of its spring campaign.