I also spoke with your old trainer, Bobby Julich. He likened working with you to building a ship. At first there were a lot of pieces to put in place, but now that those pieces are in place you can float all alone.
There were a lot of things. Confidence was huge. Because I didn’t believe in myself, I didn’t think I was at the level of others, and I made mistakes. There were days in the mountains, for example, where I did everything perfectly, saved my energy, just everything. I would get to the bottom of the last climb feeling great. But because I didn’t feel like I could go with the big guys when they would go, I often attacked at the bottom to get a head start.
My best hope was that, when the big guys came up, maybe I could just hold on and get a place. But I would never actually wait until the crucial moment when things got really hard and the big guys would start pulling away. And the simple reason is that I didn’t believe in myself.
Bobby said, “Chris, listen, I can see your numbers. I can see that you are capable of being with those front guys and possibly even riding away from them with these numbers. You’ve got to settle down and believe in yourself and play the waiting game until the right moment in the race.”
But even with Bobby telling me that, I still didn’t believe. That was only when I got to the Vuelta in 2011 and was given the job to stay with Bradley [Wiggins]. Naturally with that job in mind I didn’t attack at the bottom of the climb. And I would get three-quarters of the way up the climb and be like, “Hey I actually feel good!”
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