After pedalling the last metres in his final professional race, Cadel Evans' plan was to spend all of about 17 hours off his bike.

In sporting retirement, some things will be instantly and forever different for Australia's greatest-ever cyclist.

Other things won't change any time soon.

Come Monday morning, the first day of his new life, Evans would rise and ride. No break from convention there. But unlike any two-wheeled journey the 2011 Tour de France champion has made in the past two decades, this time he would have licence to hit the road with no greater ambition than the average cyclist. Without needing to meticulously monitor his wattage or cadence, Evans would be free to revel in a most simple pleasure: riding for sheer enjoyment.

The soon to be 37 year old's list of sporting achievements goes far beyond the honour that tops the list. That is, being the first, and still only, Australian to win one of the world's most famous sporting events, a victory Evans savoured on Paris's glorious Champs-Elysees.

His racing career concluded on Sunday in more humble surrounds – a sun-drenched but rain-sodden Geelong foreshore – and yet the circumstances were auspicious all the same.  A part-time Barwon Heads resident, Evans hand-picked a new one-day event for his swansong – a 174-kilometre race that wound through Victoria's spectacular Bellarine Peninsula, drew healthy crowds, eight World Tour teams and was named the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road race.

Winning the inaugural edition would have been the stuff of fairytales, and while Evans was with the nine pace-setters until the very last dash, he finished fifth behind Belgian winner Gianni Meersman and Australian runner-up Simon Clarke.

The first thing Evans did after slowing down was backtrack to low-five the many fans who had draped themselves over the course barricades. Next, he found his son, Robel, and embraced him.

The emotion hadn't subsided much about an hour later.

Asked how he imagined he'd feel when he next got on the bike, Evans said: "I don't know what to expect, actually … not having intervals and a training program. These last few weeks I've been as motivated as ever."

Evans will return to Europe (his home away from home is in the tiny border town of Stabio, Switzerland) on Saturday.

"I would like to see him go a bit easier on himself," his Australian manager, Jason Bakker, said before his most high-profile client's last lap.

"I'd like to see him just take the foot off the pedal a bit."

For a man wired like Evans, going slower may prove harder than getting faster.

But as the champion knows only too well, practice makes perfect. And surely, for him, there would be no finer way to start  than with with a no-goals Monday morning ride through some of his favourite terrain.