Nature Valley Grand Prix, Minnesota Team Rona stayed with the Falks, long time family friends of mine in Middleton, Wisconsin, en route to Virginia in northern Wisconsin, for the first two stages of the Nature Valley Grand Prix.  After fuelling up on pasta, salad, grilled chicken and salmon we were ready to race hard and see if we could put […]

Montreal World Cup, Montreal The Montreal World Cup was Team Rona’s most important race for the season.  Rona is a Canadian based hardware store with an emphasis on Do-it-yourself projects.  Rona’s headquarters are based in Quebec and with many of Rona’s senior management on the race course it was the perfect opportunity for us to perform.  I believe we had […]

THE FLÈCHE WALLONNE Huy, Belgium, April 21, 2004 French national Sonia Huguet (Équipe de France) won the women’s Flèche Wallonne, beating German Hanke Kupfernagel (Vlaanderen-T-Interim Univega) and Lithuanian Edita Pucinskaite (Michela Fanini) by 9 and 18 seconds, respectively.  RONA’s Geneviève Jeanson was the highest finisher for our team, placing 30th, 44 seconds behind the winner. At the 16km mark, Ina Teutenberg (Team […]

Joe Martin Stage Race – Fayetteville, Arkansas – May 2004 After a 2 hour car drive, we arrived in Fayetteville and settled in with my host family from last year, the Dickenson family.  With heavy rain that I am sure exceeded Australia’s annual rainfall, we decided to turn the legs over on wind trainers in Chip’s garage.  After dinner, Andrea […]

Milan, Italy, April 25, 2004 Team Rona flew from Belgium to Milan the day after the Fleche Wallonne World Cup.  Alessandro Colnago was at the airport to meet us and took us to our hotel right by the Colnago office and factory.  We spent the next 4 days training, eating pizza and visiting the many wonderful villages and sites around […]

Fitchburg-longsjo Classic 2004 The Rona team stayed with two amazing host families, Paul and Dawn Piccolomini and Barbara and Ed Mazzaferro, in Leominster, Massachusetts.  Their fridge and pantry were loaded with food whilst the basement was stocked with cool drinks.  They welcomed us into their homes, cooked and fussed over us and really just totally spoilt us during our stay. […]

Stage 5 – North Boulder Park Criterium With only a 45 minute criterium remaining, we were confident we were able to defend the yellow jersey.  was technical with 9 corners, hilly and in the end, unfairly I took over the lead towards the end of the 2nd lap and strung it out through the start/finish line.  On the gradual incline […]

Stage 4 – Horse Tooth Road Race – 4 laps x 25km Today’s stage was only 10 minutes from Katrina’s house in Fort Collins so it was great not to have to drive an hour up to

Stage 2 – Drake Road Race – 55 miles I still wasn’t adjusted to the altitude and awoke to the familiar headache I’d had yesterday.  Just walking around, my legs felt like I had already 100 miles. Today’s stage, starting and finishing in Estes Parks, consisted of xxxxxft of climbing.  I enjoyed the first 2km’s that was flat and then […]

Colorado Cyclist Classic 2004 I had mixed emotions as I flew into Denver for my last race of the season.  I was part of a composite team sponsored by Rio Grande, a Mexican restaurant chain in Colorado, which naturally offered us free burrito’s and margarita’s for every stage win – I couldn’t wait to start racing!  The 5 riders on […]