Back in February when I wrote out my six month goals, one of them was to work smarter, not harder or longer. Today at Milan- San Remo was a perfect example of putting that into action.

This is the longest one-day race of the year and that played a major decision into how I organized my time and planned my approach. Additionally, it's probably the biggest single day for the team of the year. So my race aim was to maximize that potential and I managed to do it in the easiest way possible. To be honest, this was by far my easiest (and favorite) Milan-San Remo to date.

In the past, I drove the many hours from Milan to San Remo. After the race, I drove again to Nice. This meant I spent probably 6-7 hours in the car driving stressful Italian roads. I was exhausted by the end and far from the sharpest me.

This year, I split up duties and assigned tasks to other people. Basically, the thought was 'how can they support me from afar?' I simply left from the start and drove 30 minutes to a decent but basic airport hotel that had solid wifi. I was able to be productive from start to finish. No time was lost driving a car or fighting with Italian wifi and I feel I was able to achieve even more professionally.

Little pat on my back for thinking outside of the box and figuring out ways to be smarter. And now sleep. Super early tomorrow, I'm hopping on a plane for the USA.