Sunday began with the 34J road race at High Easter. The Eagle had four riders in this race, Adam Dawson, James Sale, Dave Farrow and Simon Hewins.
Once again Adam, our reporter in the peloton take up the action "It was rather frustrating. I was hoping that the might and power of Hewins or Farrow would be able to come through and break the raw power of the peleton. Dave came up and had a chat with me as I was monitoring James and breakaway potentials. Dave decided that this was not his race and he was content with getting round... as for Simon, well you will have to ask him as I didn't even see him! The real excitement was the learning in James. We worked well focusing on certain key players from East London Velo. James was nearly away with 'Rob?'(Rob Windsor of the ELV, 2nd cat to the Eagle?) a few times yet paid for a brief thought of should he or shouldn't he. Suddenly he was off but never quite made it the 3 bike lengths on to the wheel of the key protagonist. James and, eventually, Rob were brought back by some stupid attacking from within the Velo squad.
Come the final, infamous, left turn off the main cuircut to the finish, the peleton was tense and anxious to get to the line and have the race over with. I had marked out the API team and the fresher James was following the wheel of the Velo sprinter. Coming into the final 400 metres James pulled up beside the Velo rider and, as I am told, 'touched' handlebars. This 'touch' resulted in the Velo rider going down (his lack of bike handling and being next to the dirt) and taking over half the pack with him! That said all the Eagle few over the line - upright! Unfortunately for James it was a case of being a little too close to the action as one of the bikes that went down caught and buckled his back wheel redering him useless in the final 300metres. Suddenly it was down to me and my little legs we shot from the chasing down of breakaways and blocking moves. I took off in hope of victory and realised that finishing was more realistic objective. The pins had blown a gasket along the way and little was left in the tank. 16th was all I was good for.
Lots of learning and valuable knowledge for the Eagle team prior to the Eagle road race. I am excited about that one".
James looked back philosophically, "The RR was okay, I tried many times to get away, and it just didn’t happen for me. It was going to come down to a sprint and Adam had advised me on what to do, it was just a case of implementing it! Then the crash (which was not my fault!) Chris Baldwin has spoken with Darren from ELV since, and he puts no blame on me. I am disappointed because I was in a very good position and now looking at the results, I possibly could have had a top 5".
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