Kids, the moment has finally come, the first race of my career as a professional road cyclist.

The first race I entered was in Portugal, a beautiful country in Europe (And no, Europe is not a country). The race was the Volta ao Algarve, and my team had kind of high expectations from me, as I was one of their leaders in the race along with Steven Kruijswijk, who later became a great cyclist, but in 2012 he was still a youngster.

I was considered to be one of the best "hilly riders" in the peloton, so I was aiming for great results on the hilly stages. I also knew that I probably had no chance of winning the General Classification, because I was not great at Time-Trialing (you know me, I'm always late, I can't work against the clock...).

Today I only have time to tell you about my first ever stage in the peloton: Stage 1 of the 2012 Volta ao Algarve. It was a sunny day in Portugal, and we were ready to start. My legs were feeling alright, but I did not know what to expect. My positioning in the peloton was not great yet, so I missed my chance to attack today, as the breakaway has already formed before I reached the front of the pack (it's not that easy to maneuver around all those riders!). I told my team to take it easy, let the other teams do their work. But probably they were having the same thoughts, so with 40 kilometres to go (yeah, I know, they use the metric system... how stupid...) the gap between the escapees and the peloton was still over 4 minutes, so I knew we didn't have a chance to catch them. I tried to position myself for the sprint though, since I was expected to be the main sprinter of the team. It went alright, since I managed to finish on a nice 24th place, so I was 11th in the sprint of the main bunch.

Next time I will tell you about how the rest of this race went, and I will also tell you a little bit about how my season was looking, which races I was going to enter, which races were my big targets, etc. I can tell you, that my manager (I will tell you later who he was, maybe you will be surprised!) has done a great job negotiating, so I was granted quite a few leading opportunities!

Kids, you remember that race I told you about last time? The Volta ao Algarve. Well guess what, I won it.
On the second stage I took it easy and decided to observe the comptetition. I thought that my fitness is way above theirs, so next day I decided to give it a go. When I accelerated, the peloton could not even react, and I was gone. I caught the Breakaway of the Day quite easily, the were already pretty tired, thanks to their previous efforts. On a hill, I decided to continue on my own, as these guys were just way too slow for my liking.
From then, I had to ride alone. I knew that if I win this stage, I will have a big chance to win the race itself. So I did my best to maximalize the time gap between me and the peloton. And it worked quite well. The peloton crossed the line 7 minutes after I did, so I looked set to win the race. But there was 1 stage left that I feared: The Time-Trial.
There was this portuguese guy - I don't remember his name, he was not a great cyclist - who was not far behind me in the classification, and he could ride the TT bike quite well. So the day before the Time-Trial I decided not to eat my usual sandwich, and spent my evening perfecting my position on the bike.
As you know me, I do not like losing. So I decided not to do so. I felt really strong on the TT bike, and the Leader's Jersey really kept me motivated (this is still one of my favourite jerseys, I still wear it sometimes).
I crossed the line, and I knew I have won the race. Only later did I find out, that the portuguese kid only missed the victory by 2 seconds! What a shame, it could have been the biggest accomplishment in his career (later I have never even heard about him) , but for me, it was just the first win of many.
That's it for today, kids, next time I will tell you about my next race. Maybe some day I will get to the point, where I have finally met your mother, but there is still a long way ahead of us in the story...