Your man in the field reporting from the Midlands....
Saturday 26th March: Stan Jones Crit E12:
Not quite the quality field of last week but enough elites and 1sts to hurt the legs.
Objectives- have a few attacks, get the legs and lungs working and just warm up for tomorrows road race.
Today was an object lesson in never giving up until you have to however. To cut a long story short, attacking racing but very stop start. Threw my hand into the ring a few times but nothing stuck. With 6-7 laps to go two riders who I knew to be strong jumped away. Not seeing a reaction I jumped to get across. Spent a lap and a half chasing and was just about to make contact when I
saw the bunch lined out and about to make contact with me and the break. Thinking 'oh well' I slowed, fully expecting the riders to go round me and get onto the back wheels of the riders in front. However once they made contact with me they stopes chasing and I watched helplessly as the two risers in front powered away going on to win the race!! FFS!! (in the sprint I cocked up the last corner and finished no-where). Real shame, the result was there for the taking.
Sunday 27th March: Bill Jinks Memorial.
Really looking to put a result on the board for this event, 2/3/4 at just over 100km on a tiring cicruit, not unlike the Noel Jones but without a big hill in the middle. From the off I didn't feel 'great', (it's been a hard week, this is my 6th day in a row of hard training and racing) so knew I wasn't going to quite be flying. That said I was determined to have a race and got involved in many, many attacks for the first half of the race.
During a particularly grippy section of the race, a group of about 8 of us got away and a nice gap. I really thought that was the move but it was not to be, we were brought back about half a lap later. It was shortly after this that a soft ish move just sort of formed off the front of the bunch and HUNG there, at 20-30seconds for the rest of the race, but no-one was able to get across. By now I was getting quite tired but seemed to be going quite well. Approaching the finish I led the sprint out from 1km up a nasty kick and then a long drag to the line, winning the bunch sprint quite easily. Dunno what position I got though – top 10 certainly. Again the legs were good enough to warrant a win, but the head (tactics) let me down.
Some quality rest needed now though!!
As someone said I I should win the Pozzatto prize for the most stylish rider, which as you can imagine meant more to me than any race result. 8-)
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The Force is strong in this one...
The Force is strong in this one...
(Unless it's raining 
)