Jen Crosby's Racing Blog

Tuesday March 06, 2007

Lydden Test Day Report

After spending an evening at Toby and Ale's house on Friday night, the three of us set out for Lydden just after 6am.  It's a long old trek down there, but we made it in pretty good time, and found ourselves at Lydden with time for a tea and a spot of breakfast before having to get out on track.  It was very quiet as test days go, and thankfully we had no problem getting power for the tyre warmers and battery chargers;  we were just hoping that it stayed dry as we didn't have a gazebo to shelter in!  Despite it being absolutely freezing, the weather seemed like it was going to play ball, and we didn't get any rain throughout the day.

 I wasn't exactly nervous about testing, but I was concerned that I would need to put in some effort to try and at least *feel*  like I was riding half decently. The first session was pretty slow - for one the track was stone cold meaning the grip was fairly bad, but also I just wanted to ease myself in a little.  I pulled in from session one feeling ok, but I seemed to have forgotton how to use the brakes with anything other than a pathetic weedy and way-too-early effort.  So that was aim number one for session two - set the braking markers and move them forward each lap.  Brake hard!!

 The next couple of sessions were better, and I slowly wound up my speed and gradually got better on the brakes.  I was trying to get on the throttle harder through Chessons Drift, the long right hander, and trying to make sure my body position was half decent.   By the final session before lunch I was feeling much more confident, and I had a fantastic session having a good race with some of the other riders on track.  That session finally gave me a little re-taste of what it's like to race - that need to get ahead of the guy in front, or get back the rider who just overtook you.  I chased hard and made some good overtakes, and generally felt a lot better about the prospect of racing again!

After lunch the sidecars joined the parade, with them going out in the first session.  And sadly, one of them dumped oil all the way round Chessons Drift.  By now the sun was out, and I was really getting into it, but that oil really put me right off my stride!  It was reasonably avoidable, but it was just at the point where you want to get the power down  in the corner, and the oil's presence meant that had to be delayed slightly. I just couldn't seem to get my head round it very well for some reason.  I pulled in early from that session, having completed maybe 8 laps, and I did the same in the following session.  I think partly it was just that I wanted to finish on the high of my last session before lunch, but I was also pretty tired, and found myself losing concentration.  I really didn't want to be crashing the weekend before the first race!

I skipped the final session and started to pack up just as it started to rain...

All in all not a bad day, and it certainly gave me some much needed faith that I could actually still ride a bike.  Big thanks to Toby and Ale for putting me up for a couple of nights, and well done to Toby for a really successful day's testing - you looked great out there!

( Mar 06 2007, 08:29:55 PM GMT+00:00 )

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