Larry Walbus describes his first season with AG2R La Mondiale as "mediocre," but despite a rough few months at the beginning, the second half of the season was enough to make him optimistic about 2020.

Warbus only signed a one-year contract with the French team after the sudden collapse of Aqua Bleu Sport last fall, but did well enough to earn another 12-month contract.

In fact, it was just after the Giro d'Italia, which he described as the "rock bottom" of his season, that talk of a contract extension came up.

"I went into the race feeling good, I was super strong for the first nine days, and I don't know what happened," Warbus told Cycling News at the AG2R pre-season get-together.

"I was maybe a little heavier than usual. It was a combination of things. I wasn't riding well, just struggling and trying to function in a foreign language at the same time. The Grand Tour is already very fatiguing, so I was just exhausted in the last week."

The language barrier proved to be much higher than it had been 12 months earlier, when he arrived at his first training camp in high spirits after an intensive French course in Nice. Getting to know new teammates in a relaxed environment was a far cry from communicating effectively under the pressures of elite sport.

"I could speak French reasonably well, but it took me a while to learn to speak it comfortably.

"I didn't realize how much mental fatigue would affect me. I never thought I would be training and racing so hard and then having to think so hard all day to communicate."

Another reason Walbas struggled in the first half of the season was that he made major changes to his training, increasing volume instead of intensity and incorporating low-carbohydrate rides.

"Me and my coach thought we'd mix it up. We wanted to try something like that, but it didn't work as well as we could have tried, cutting back on training time and increasing intensity, and halfway through the year, we decided to put it back on."

In August, after a month off in July, Warbasse's season finally kicked into gear. It happened in an unexpected way.

"I got into Bink Bank at the last minute, which is not my normal style of racing. Ollie (Naessen) won the final stage and finished second overall.

Warbus then helped Benoit Cosnefrois win the Tour du Limousin, finished 13th overall in the Tour of Britain, and finished the season in GP Begheri, Tre Valli Varesine, and Il Lombardia.

"The last race of the year was definitely my best form yet.

"It was a long year--I raced for 82 days--but I think I was in the best shape mentally and physically at the end. In a way, it was frustrating. I wanted to race more. I would have liked to have raced in that shape at a different time."

Warbasse, however, hopes that sooner or later, come January, he will be able to pick up where he left off.

His 2020 campaign begins with the Tour Down Under in Australia, and he is eyeing a return to the Giro d'Italia, although this time with considerably more responsibility, as team leader Romain Bardet has targeted the Italian Grand Tour.

"Being Romain's helper, riding in different terrains, was one of the things I was able to do because I came to this team. 'I've known him for a long time, and he has an apartment just outside Nice, so we train together sometimes. I've known him for a long time, he has an apartment outside Nice, and we train together from time to time. 0]

The overarching ambition, however, is to replicate what he did between August and October.

"I want to run at my potential, the level I'm capable of running at," Warbus said. [If I can maintain where I was at the end of last year, that would be huge for me. My work, my life, my food, everything was a sustainable lifestyle. If I can continue that, 2020 will be a really good year. I want it to be the best year ever."