What a fantastic day!
Hot, sunny, a cool breeze, racing a great bike – is there a better combination? For me this was round three of my first ever racing season in the endurance league I’d entered.
I finally had gotten my bike up to scratch in terms of having everything ready. All I needed to do was take the stand off for which I’d recently acquired a new stainless steel bolt. The previous two I had mangled and had to angle grind off! Yamaha make brilliant bikes but unfortunately their chief nut ‘n’ bolt engineer decided that bolts made from Lurpak were the best way forward for the company. Not so great when you’re constantly taking fairing off and on for racing.
Yes of course I should have a dedicated track bike - it makes more sense I realise - but quite simply I love THIS bike and I love the fact I can race it and still use on the road. I love being able to tell people I raced this bike around Silverstone if I’m out socially. It fullfills my vast requirement to be vain, of course.
The test day went quite nicely I thought, gradually improving in weak areas where I had done this track for the first time in March. Oulton Park is a fantastic course with so many variations and physically very challenging.
On the race day itself I felt awful after my first session. I took my helmet off and it was like someone had poured an incredible amount of water over my head. I felt disgusting and exhausted already. I’ve trained in the gym and done sports all my life, and for the last eight years I’ve been boxing, so I’m used to my body being able to cope with pretty much anything I throw at it. The last two races I felt I could go on forever even after 1.5 hours of racing. Yet this time it was awful – my quads were battered, my left tricep was incredibly sore, my lower back shagged, my upper back tight, my right achilles heel almost torn and severe blisters on my throttle hand.
After analysing the next day it seems I was a bit stupid and didn’t manage my sodium intake well enough, so although I was taking in a lot of fluids my body wasn’t holding onto it, hence feeling lethargic and generally fuc*ed.
Of course there had to be some drama to my race and this time it was quite a dangerous bit of drama. Somehow my oil filler cap came off, quite possibly from me not tightening enough when I gave the bike a last minute top up and then not securing correctly with the lockwire. I had a two piece lockwire thing going on and clearly didn’t do it right. By the time I was flagged off after 5 laps in qualifying, oil was everywhere - all over the back tyre and me. I think my guardian angel must have been working overtime to keep me upright. I was tempted to clean the tyre off with brake cleaner and continue to use it, but after being hammered by Dave and John (also in my team) for being a twat to even consider that, I decided to bin the tyre and spend £155 on a new one. That was painful because it was a brand new tyre. The general consensus was that once a tyre has been contaminated with oil it’s game over and you need to replace it. I therefore felt the pain of an extra £155 was better than any pain I might experience coming off my bike. Besides which, at least I didn’t blow up a £500,000 bike and cause two of my racing mates to crash as with a certain rider this GP weekend.
Additionally I lost both toe sliders on the day and ended up scraping my boots pretty badly, so that was annoying. They were due to be replaced anyway but that was an extra riding distraction I didn’t want.
I finished with a best time of 1m 55s in practice, consistent of around the 1m 58s mark in the race. Not as well I thought I might do but lots of lessons learned that day. With Justin – my partner on the day – doing 1m 55s on average we came 8th place in our class by the end.
And so the rookie learning curve continues…
In summary:
1.Oil filler caps are useful
2.Bin a tyre with oil on it no matter how new it is
3.Manage your mineral intake before and during your race
4.Take spare toe sliders – duct tape doesn’t work the same
Hopefully I’ll be at Anglesey but unfortunately as of today – Sun 18/7/10 – at 1pm my bike has been stolen. I’m completely and utterly gutted of course as that bike and me were going to do lots more racing. It happened so quickly that I’ll never know how they took it within the space of leaving it for 10mins outside of my house. Therefore I’ll be shopping for a new R6, and a new shark fin, and a quick action throttle, and an extreme racing chain and sprocket set…
Thanks to:
Aliya my supportive gf
Dana my sponsor
Andy, Martin and Dan for helping get the oil off my bike and running team 122
John Chambers
Dave, Justin and John in the 121/122 ride team
The marshals and race officials and those at HotTrax organising the event
Race safe and fast!
Sheraz
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