Taylor Phinney finished in 49th place at Paris-Roubaix. The BMC rider has a new appreciation for how difficult it is just finish such a monument. He arrived at the velodrome 19 minutes behind the winner, Matthew Hayman (Orica GreenEDGE Cycling Team).

"I definitely have more of an appreciation for how hard it is just to finish this race. I was able to handle the positioning better in the first half of this race than I was a couple of years ago, and also able to fight and take some risks, which was something I wasn’t sure if I would be able to do or not. I didn’t know if I’d be scared or skittish so, yeah, it feels like a positive building day as I go forward", he told Cyclingnews. "These races are pretty wild, all the Classics were really hard this year from the start."

He was happy to be present at the start of Paris-Roubaix after a horrendous crash almost two years ago. He fractured his left leg in a high-speed crash on a descent at the US national championships in May 2014. After a long recovery process, he started racing again last summer. "I felt like the lights went out a little bit, maybe I wasn’t able to eat as much as I wanted to in the beginning but I definitely felt the left side starting to shut down and it took a while for that to kind of come back, but by then I was already off of the back and I was just in the groups behind, just trying to make it to the finish basically."

"It feels pretty good," Phinney added. "I’m pretty happy to be done with the race. It’s just such a brutal… I don’t know if I was more naïve when I was younger, before the crash, but I definitely felt like it was a lot heavier an effort than years prior. But I've still got some more to do", he added. "I guess I could be… I’m happy that I made it here, I’m happy that I didn’t have any problems, I didn’t crash and now looking forward to going back home and getting in the gym and look forward to racing in the US and racing the Tour of California."

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