I spent this past winter training in Chicago with the Tour in mind. Despite the bitter cold, my labor paid off at Paris-Nice and Pays-Basque. I was ready for the Giro d’Italia, but that is where everything came to a screeching halt.

Image Christian Vande Velde. Credit... Graham Watson

A crash during Stage 3, on May 11, left me with seven broken bones (five vertebrae, a rib and a hairline fracture to my pelvis). Even more so, it left me with doubt and fear for my future. I will never forget lying in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, staring at the ceiling  which was painted to look like the sky  and trying to assess my injuries. I was struggling to figure out what my future would hold and what kind of job I could get if I couldn’t ride a bike anymore. It was terrifying.

Fast forward from the back of the ambulance to getting cabin fever while recovering at home in Girona, Spain. I spent a lot of time driving my family nuts while questioning myself, trying to answer the news media’s questions that I didn’t know the answers to, and watching my peers race on the roads of Italy. The same roads I should have been on with them.

Then came my first days back on the bike  I had to be picked up and dropped off because I couldn’t even ride up and down the driveway of my own house. It was a humbling experience for a professional cyclist, to say the least. Those first days were excruciating  mentally and physically  but my family and the team were incredibly supportive. Each day, I felt a little better. Finally, I was ready to try my first race  the Tour de Suisse. There, I found myself on the ground again in another crash, this time in a high-speed tunnel. I got back on and finished that race, which led me here, to Monaco.

On Saturday, I crossed myself at the start line of the Tour de France, a race that a few weeks ago, I didn’t even know that I would be able to do. It went well. I didn’t know how my body would react and I was scared to push myself on the uphills and the downhills for fear of overextending myself or crashing. But I overcame those fears, and I had a thousand times more confidence going to sleep Saturday night than I did when I woke up Saturday. I can look forward to the next days and weeks with more belief in myself.