Jen Crosby's Racing Blog

Wednesday December 06, 2006

Last ride of 2006...Brands Hatch trackday

I did doubt my sanity a little when I booked up a trackday on December 3rd, but given it was both a weekend and cheap, I figured there wasn't much to lose.

The weather the night before was absolutely dreadful - gale force winds and driving rain, so we decided to stay at home and drive up in the morning rather than have the joy of sleeping in the van at the circuit.  The drive up was mental - the rain was absolutely throwing it down and the wind was blowing the van all over the motorway!  I had my doubts as to whether I'd be riding much!  On arrival at Brands I pulled the van right into the garage to unload to avoid getting drenched, although somehow I did anyway.   We were there pretty early, giving me loads of time to warm up with a cuppa, and get my wheels swapped for the wets once again.

Steve P and Aaron turned up a little while later, and everyone was pretty miffed with the weather.  I couldn't see how they could possibly let us out on track!  Somehow though, by the time we'd signed on and sat through the briefing, the rain had stopped and it seemed that it would be ok to go out.  I needed to run my engine in after it's rebuild, so was only able to run it up to 11k rpm for the first session, so the fact that everyone was riding so tentatively on the wet track actually suited me pretty well.  As expected the worst part of the track was the bottom of paddock hill, where there was a huge slippery looking puddle on the right hadn side of the track, but it wasn't too hard to avoid thankfully.

We had another wet session, and I still had to restrict the revs and throttle, but it was pretty easy going in the group.  I was dying to give the bike a bit of stick though and start working a bit harder!  The rain had well and truly stopped now, and in fact the sun had even come out!   Coupled with the wind still being fairly strong the track was drying out pretty quick - looking good for a dry afternoon!

 And sure enough the lunch break provided the perfect oppurtunity to change back to the dry wheels - there was a dry line all the way around the track now, and no more rain clouds in sight.  I decided that I'd probably done enough running in and got my head down a bit better for the next session - much more fun!!  The group seemed to be reasonably steady - I was doing loads of overtaking, and not being overtaken much (always good for the ego )

Next session and Steve offered to come out and follow me, to give me a bit of instruction and feedback.  It was a great session!   Watching Steve when he was ahead of me was quite an eye opener - he turns the bike so late, and so quickly, and is a million times better than me on the brakes.  I had to work really hard to try and keep up (and I still couldn't really - but it was fun trying!).  I tried to replicate what he was doing into turns, and sometimes I seemed to hook it up, but certainly not consistently, and even when I felt I'd done a corner better, I wasn't always sure why!  As always, more practice required.  Thanks for giving up a session to help me out though Steve, you're a star

By the time the next session came round - the final one of the day - I decided I'd had enough.  The last session had been hard work, and the sun was getting very low in the sky making it hard to see when turning into Surtees and Clearways.  I'd had a good day though and wanted to end on a good note!  Greg seemed to have had a good day too - he's slowly started to get over the demons from the previous crash and get more comfortable on the bike again.

So that's it for the year - I can't believe the bike won't be out again until mid-January   I'm definitely really missing the racing, it feels like a big part of my life is missing!  Next date will be 21st Jan at Brands where I'll be instructing with Focused Events - should be a great chance to start getting my head back in gear ready for next season.

( Dec 06 2006, 03:37:26 PM GMT+00:00 )

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