One by one the team stepped on to the bus, sweat pouring from their faces, their jerseys wide-open, radio earpieces hanging from their salt-encrusted helmet straps, road dirt and carbon brake dust on their faces, veins pulsing on their sweat soaked arms and legs. As helmets were buckled and seats found, each said in his own way, with his own accent, “That was the best lead-out I have ever been a part of.”

We had just finished the first road stage of the Volta Ciclista a Catalunya, a weeklong race that opens up the late spring campaign of stage races leading into the Tour de France. Catalunya is the first race that riders use as a building block towards their Tour de France form. There are mountain stages, undulating stages, a time trial and field sprints: a complete race. It is a race that is not too hard but hard enough to build strength without digging too deep too early, which is detrimental to a rider’s form come July. The calendar for a Tour rider is usually followed by either the Dauphiné Libéré or the Tour de Suisse, two races that are harder than Catalunya as they take place on courses that provide the next step in fitness-building with higher mountains, longer time trials and tougher, longer days on the bike.

As we sat on the bus, still in our clothes, the sweat continuing to pour off our bodies as our heart rates continued at race speeds due to the effort, the emotion and the heat, we soaked up the race, each telling our own story of the day, the final kilometers and the sprint. It was the perfect lead-out, each man riding to his limits on the front of the peloton to keep it in a single line, and to place our sprinter in the ideal spot for the final charge.

Despite the effort, Bernhard Eisel, our sprinter, was narrowly beaten in the last meters by an on-form and flying Thor Hushvold. A second place was still a good result, but more than anything else it brought the team together. An effort together, on the front, for one goal, does just that: builds the team and bonds the riders. These are the stories the results don’t tell.

Banyoles, the finishing town, is a place we ride through weekly while training. It is a picturesque little town at the foothills of the Pyrénées, on a small lake (Banyoles was the rowing venue for the 1992 Olympics), and for us, the North American residents of Girona, the closest we come to racing at home during the season. The stage had taken us over all the roads and climbs that we train on, and 30km before the finish we raced straight through Girona, past the point where I drop my son Liam off for school and around the playground we visit each day after school.

After the race George Hincapie, a 14-year Girona resident, said he felt goosebumps as we tore through town. “I did as well,” I shot back, “I guess, this is how the Belgians feel during every race they ride up there all spring.”

As we chatted, my son stepped aboard the team bus and sat beside me as I cleaned the grime off of my face. He sat quietly, watched the team attentively, listened and munched on one of the PowerBars that was left in my pocket from the race. He was happy to be with the boys on the bus.

The boys that had sat around him on that bus had helped the team win more races than any other team in professional cycling this year. And we seemed to be doing it quietly, popping off victories here and there, consistently and with diversity, in sprints, time trials and in the hills. That success in a large part was due to exactly what we could feel in the bus that afternoon: camaraderie.

The staff and riders are the most cohesive group I have worked and ridden with since the start of my career over a decade ago, and I know many of the other veterans (it is hard to type “veteran” as I still feel like a teenager at times) would echo my opinion. The team has been through tough moments in the last year and a half, which likely brought us closer together on many levels. A few years ago, I was on a team where the dinnertime conversation was limited and mundane, despite the fact that we were performing well with the best team in the peloton; in retrospect I don’t think those nine guys came close to achieving what we should have with our potential due to the fractures and jealousy that split the team.

As Liam sat on the bus, I couldn’t help but think we weren’t much different than a bunch of schoolkids having a good time together, joking and picking on each other. Those moments make all the difference in the success of the team in a sport where good morale and motivated teammates can take you far.

Good racing is unpredictable and Catalunya was one of the most hard-fought, exciting races we have done this year. The lead changed hands almost daily, and the racing was relentless and fast with only half a minute separating the first 10.

On the final stage, the GC changed again. Under torrential rain, dense fog, and black skies we charged into downtown Barcelona, the fields splintering due to the high speed on wet roads, the race leader and his team fighting desperately to real in a breakaway of a dozen or so riders that hung out in front of us with a gap small enough that they were in sight but too large to bridge. The race was chaotic, the rain blinding, and at times it seemed nobody really knew what was going on, who was leading or even who won, until we were showered and the times were calculated.

During the race, my legs were the best they had been all year. I felt power in them and could move around in the bunch and attack with ease but despite all this I wasn’t able to achieve the goal: a stage win. Breakaways are almost always at the mercy of the peloton; a cohesive team leading peloton has the horsepower to close the gap on any group smaller than 10. Once the gap is close enough, under two minutes, the rest of the wolves in the pack can smell the food and charge towards the line. So, if a team decides to hold a breakaway on a short leash, the break will be caught, if not, they have a chance at making it to the line for the victory.

I had the legs to make it, but the leading team, AG2r, rode stupidly on the front — riding too fast and never giving us much of a lead — and in the end lost their leader’s jersey as a result. My old teammate, Benoit Joachim, came up to me at dinner that night, congratulated me on a good fight, and said, “During efforts like that you realize how hard it is to win a Pro Tour race, and also how much luck you need.”