One of the easiest tracks to find! About a mile off one of the junctions of the M5.
Right, as I stated earlier on in the blog, this year I would be concentrating on the sportsman 2 stroke championship which in run by ORE, this being the 1st round of about 9 or 10 of them.
I wanted a fairly decent start to the championship to start the ball rolling for the rest of the rounds, and I wasn’t disappointed!
I’d arrived in good spirits as I’d had plenty of kip the night before (which makes a change), so if I things didn’t go to plan, I couldn’t blame it on being tired.
Off we went then on our sighting lap, the first half mile was going to be fast with a flat open field to race across, with a few twists and turns in it. Then came the bottle neck! A little ditch with a huge tree root running across the middle of it filled with water, only 1 bike wide, or 2 if you barged someone out of the way!
After this more fast sectons, a little bomb hole and a couple of rocky streams that we had to ride through (this caused another bottleneck) and a small jump near the end of the lap.
Got back and waited for the race to start.
Off we went, bloody hell! I led into the first corner, best start ever!
This came to nothing as I approached that first ditch, The clubman that had started before us were still queuing to get over it.
Never mind, better luck next time, I made it over and carried on.
Soon after this there was another long queue of about 20 bikes all waiting to get through one of the rocky streams, so from a good start, I really didn’t know where I was as everybody had caught up and we were all politely barging each other trying to get through.
Straight after the water crossings and up the bank, the ground had cut up badly making things slightly interesting as this was turning a bit ‘boggy’. I think because of my lightweight, I didn’t seem to have any problems with this.
A small wooded section followed, nothing to technical and I completed my first lap ok.
I felt better and better as the race went on, pitted at half way feeling good and couldn’t wait to get back out.
By now the 2 bottlenecks that had caused the queues on each lap had now been cut out which although made the laps slightly longer by going round them, seemed to be faster as we raced round more of an open track in the process.
Finished the race to find I’d been placed 2nd in the 2 strokes.
Finishing position: 5/48
Bike status: ok
Injuries: none
