David Tait - Bashall Eves 2005

Recycling.co.uk - Bashall Eaves

Sunday 18th September 2005

This was the last road race of the season for Mark Jones, Ian Edwards and myself, and it turned out to the be toughest. Having been used to tearing around pan flat Cheshire courses all summer, the Bashall Eaves long circuit, with hills and that, was a bit of a shock to the system.

The 34JW race completed 4 laps of the 18km circuit, which included one major climb of about 2 km, and a number of short, steep strength sapping climbs with very little real flat in between.

Lap 1 was fairly neutral, with everyone staying together. It was damp early on, and the long sweeping descents were a bit hairy in a big bunch. I descend like my wife, so I was at the back most of the first lap. Through the start / finish area at the end of lap one, we were soon at the foot of the climb for the second time. What happened next is what I think they call a "grim sort out". A couple of juniors moved to the front and really increased the pace. They took 3 others with then, forming a break of 5. The rest of the race just disintegrated into a number of smaller groups. I put in a vomit inducing effort to make the second group, which totalled about 10 riders or so. We worked pretty well for the remainder of the 2nd lap, but at the 2 to go board the leaders had a gap of 30 seconds.

Lap 3 pretty much set the scene for the remainder of the race. A good handful of my group stopped working, leaving only 4 others and myself doing any work. By the bell, the lead group's advantage had grown to over a minute. Thankfully one of them cracked and came back to us (then out the back), and another flatted (bad luck) so we were now racing for 4th and not 6th. A couple of efforts to shake off the hangers on didn't work, and on the run in to the finish area we were still a decent group so finishing outside the points was still a possibility. We all went hard from the yellow flag, I took 3rd in the sprint, and 6th overall.

Ian had a sideways moment on lap 1 and called it a day early, Mark didn't make it back following the sort out.

Tom Diggle of Kuota / Biemme won in just under 2 hours. In the E12 race, fresh from sowing up the Premier Calendar, Rob Sharman fancied a little leg stretcher before riding the worlds next weekend, and won in a canter.

Thanks to David Tait for this report

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