Redlands Classic, California 1 – 6 April 2003

Prologue 5.6km

I woke up for today’s prologue with a few nerves.  Not only because of the race ahead of me but because I my Salsa was being built before race start and I was hoping it would fit me properly.  The bottom bracket of my TCR zero Giant had jammed during the Solano Classic and I had ridden the final stage on a neutral bike.  As soon as this happened I made arrangements to have the Salsa delivered to me at the race prologue. (Thanks to Ian Prime, from San Diego who drove to Redlands to deliver it to me).

So I met Ian at 8.30am at the race start and our mechanic Chad Contreras set to work.  I had all my measurements from the Cycle Fit kit that John had done for me in Melbourne.  In addition to Chad who worked tirelessly all week on my bike to do setup adjustments, I would like to thank a number of other people that helped contribute to the building of my Salsa.  John from Mavic neutral support lent me a rear wheel for the duration of the race as I didn’t have a campy compatible hub converter for my Kyzrium.  T Mobile helped out with head stem spacers, Josh Kerr lent me his 12mm bright red profile head stem (and told me it is good to sprint with – I agree with him!!). Dave and Mike at Sierra Nevada gave me cabling to recable the bike in order to fit a longer head stem on, while Mike of Amoroso gave me a wheel magnet.  I am so grateful to all of you, because otherwise I would have been on a neutral bike again or without a bike at all.

I won’t dwell on the prologue but after getting on the Salsa only 40 minutes before my start I knew the set-up wasn’t quite right.  I rode a terrible prologue, and later realised my seat was too low and I needed to get 4cm further back behind the bottom bracket.  Also I hadn’t ridden on campy running gear before so I was very unfamiliar with changing gears.  That night I put an urgent order into Dave at Salsa who rapidly shipped out some longer head stems and a seat post shim for me so I could use a seat post with a setback.

Our goal for Redlands

On the ride home from the prologue, I was chatting to my teammate Joan and told her that I was planning to win the green Sprint Jersey.  My Australian coach, John Beasley had told me not to be surprised with my results this year and so I had decided the green jersey would be a good goal.

Joan, who has raced at Redlands many times before, gently warned me that Redlands is one of the toughest stage races in the US.  She told me about the steep climbs, mentioned dozens of world-class riders who would be racing and suggested that I don’t be too ambitious with myself.  However, with a good team behind me and a lot of determination we did win that green jersey.  Here’s how it happened.