It's the end of the road at INEOS-Grenadiers for Ireland’s Eddie Dunbar as he moves onto pastures new after four full seasons at cycling’s most illustrious team.
The 26-year-old Corkman will officially join the Australian-registered Team Jayco AlUla on 1 January, having put pen to paper on a three-year deal back in August.
Bittersweet is the one-word synopsis of his time at INEOS (formerly Team Sky); incredible highs and crushing lows, scintillating performances and prolonged stretches of injury, and non-selection.
"It was a brilliant four years, I learnt a lot from the best riders in the world and when I joined, they were the best team in the world. I made some really good friends who I´ll stay in touch with and meet whenever I can.
"The staff were really good too, really nice to be around, so I'll definitely miss them," he said this week after landing back in Cork for Christmas.
"There were some highlights with getting to do my first Grand Tour at the Giro (Giro d´Italia) in 2019, the Tour de Suisse last year was good and winning two stage races as well this year made it a great year for me."
Indeed, between mid-April and mid-May, Dunbar notched up two memorable wins - his first since he turned pro. First at the five-day Settimana Internazionale Coppi e Bartali in Italy, followed by another five-day contest, the Tour of Hungary. Not Grand Tours or marquee races, but significant victories nonetheless.
With his contract due for renewal at the end of 2022, it was the perfect time to remind potential suitors of his talent.
Several showed an interest, but the one team that has always tracked him since he came out of the under-23 ranks was Team Jayco AlUla.
Though not as high-profile as INEOS-Grenadiers - and with a fraction of their budget, Dunbar didn't need much convincing.
"I needed that change, I needed to go and explore elsewhere and maybe race with a different mentality than what I have been doing the last years.
"You get used to the way one team works, every team races differently and has a different philosophy. There are different riders and different plans but I am booking forward to that challenge.
"Any time a contract year came up, they were always one of the first teams interested so it was lovely to get things done and dusted and build towards next year and give it a good crack."
What sweetened the deal was assurance from management that he would not only start the Giro d´Italia next May, but he would be the team's protected rider and General Classification hopeful.
In other words, it'll be all-for-Dunbar to see what he can do with a full team around him for support.
"That was one of the lowlights at INEOS; not doing more Grand Tours.
"I would have liked to have raced a few more. I think I might be behind a few of the other guys my age in that sense who have three or four under their belts and I still only have one.
"So there is still a bit of improvement on that side of things.
"I was told I'd have an opportunity to lead the Giro which was very exciting, It´s a massive goal of mine to put my head down and work towards that and it's great to be able to get up in the morning, knowing why you are getting up and knowing you have this goal you're building towards.
"It's going to be a great experience building up to perform in a GC race. It's a massive challenge but it's very clear I have the backing of the team. That´s always a confidence booster and it's up to me now to do the work, use the experience the team has and put that together with my own experience and see what happens."
By the time the New Year comes around, the former junior national road race champion will have done just over 37,000 kilometres in training and racing in 2022. That's just over 100 kilometres per day for every day of the year.
Such commitment would support his point about having to love the sport to excel at it.
"The best piece of advice I got since I turned pro (in September 2018) was just to enjoy it. It is easy to get carried away with cycling. I understand it's my job and I have to do it to the best of my ability but I always try to enjoy it as much as possible. The more you enjoy it the longer you´ll stay in it.
"Sometimes you can want it too much and you put yourself in a situation where you might take a risk you don't need to take and you might crash, or put stress on yourself and worry. That doesn't help at all.
"I've learnt you just have to be relaxed and chill out. It is what it is, you either have the legs or you don´t. You can get caught up in the whole training side of things, take that too seriously and by the time the race comes you've left all your legs in training and have nothing for the race.
"Finding the balance has been the biggest thing and I think I did that very well at the start of this year. I was really getting a good idea of what worked for me and what didn't."
Christmas is always a family affair for Dunbar. A week or so at home in Kanturk and a visit to his grandmother in the UK before heading back to his base in Monaco for a training camp and after that it's straight into racing.
"As of now I´ll start racing in February, and it´ll be pretty heavy racing up to mid-March.
"With the Giro in mind I'll probably do an altitude camp, come back and do a stage race like Tour of the Basque Country before the Giro and see if we need more training at altitude.
"The main thing is starting the season well and going into it in good condition. I've trained very well over the last few weeks, I have a bit of a rest period now over Christmas and then I'll build into February and March."
If he is to improve on his 22nd overall at his one and only Giro d´Italia, his time-trialling is where he has most room for improvement, not least because there are three individual time-trials to negotiate in May.
"In the last few years, the time-trial was something I was always quite okay at and a discipline I liked to do. But I haven't worked on it much or didn't do races with many time-trials, so the focus wasn't there.
"But I have already been working on that, getting some wind tunnel stuff done. It is something I need to keep working on but the work for that has already started which is very positive and there´s still plenty of time to get faster before May."
