Yellow top and helmet? Thought I was due for a bit of change!
It was an early start as I set off to pick up Phil (Harris) along the way for our 3 ½ hour journey up to Salisbury to do the TnT event.
The weather wasn’t looking too kind down this way as I drove through torrential rain on the A38 and then some of the way on the A303, but thankfully it cleared and the sun came out.
The weather wasn’t looking too kind down this way as I drove through torrential rain on the A38 and then some of the way on the A303, but thankfully it cleared and the sun came out.
(pics by Brewbs & Debbie Tucker)
Phil decided to have a kip in the van along the way, and when he woke up, I thought I’d do the same and try and grab a bit of shut eye so I wasn’t too ‘cream crackerd’ before racing, so he took over driving. I ‘d only been a kip for about 10 mins when bloody nora the mobile rang and woke me up! Typical that, just when you don’t want your girlfriend to ring ya, she bloody well does. I wish I wouldn’t have left that soppy ‘see you later’ note for her now on the side as she was returning the compliment, (good job she knew I didn’t mean it)!!!
Anyway, couldn’t get back to sleep after that, so me and Phil started chatting like pair of old women totally oblivious to where we were actually going. It was when we went past Stonehenge that I suddenly thought, where the f**k are we, what we doing here? Like a pair of headless chickens we’d gone miles out of our way, so we had to turn back and take another route, in the end we finally arrived at Kings hill, it had taken us over 4 hours. All we could do was laugh about it, good job we had plenty of time in hand otherwise I think the air would have turned blue with some colorful language!
After a bacon roll which Phil had kindly donated to me, it was off to sign on and get the bike checked. I bumped into Richard Batstone who I’d haven’t seen for a while, good to see him back racing after a lay off. Also had a chat with Paul Ford, Rob Ellick, Mark, Rich, Debbie Tucker and Jason Duggan. Got back to the van and met up with Jack (twentyman) who’d also traveled up from our neck of the woods with his boy Paddy.
After missing out on the sighting lap it was down to the start to wait for the flag to drop. A full entry, so every class had some decent racing to fight amongst themselves to get a result.
Off we went when, not a bad start and in the top 10 as we meandered our way round a flat field laid out in moto x fashion to sort everybody out before entering the woods. There were 3 hard routes to have a go at if you fancied saving a bit of time, so instead of usually avoiding them, I’d thought I’d have a go at all 3. The 1st was an extremely short sharp hill, in fact it was so steep there was no way that you could even walk up the bloody thing! I give it go, but as I got near to the top, the bike flipped out on me and I was sent tumbling back down again with the bike stuck half way down in some bushes. Oh dear (well, words to that effect) I thought, 1st lap and I’m gonna lose time already! It took me a good few minutes to drag the bike back down out of the bushes and get going again, and I could see that most of the clubman were going past.
After another short stint of easy woods and a couple of tracks that went round the outside of a few fields, then it was onto another hard route option which was a muddy water crossing. Speaking to Mark Tucker earlier who’d done the sighting lap, he told me to go to the right or left of it as there was a big hole in the middle, so what do I do? Like a prat I didn’t think and promptly got stuck in a big muddy hole because I ended up going in the middle of it! I pinned it and hoped for the best, but the back wheel just dug in deeper and deeper. I was just at the stage when you think to yourself that you’ve got to get off and try and heave the bike out when I gave it one last go, bingo! The little gasser shunted it’s way out and up the slimy muddy bank I went and onto safety, relief or what!
Of course it was more time wasted and this was only the 1st lap, not good.
The 3rd hard route wasn’t a problem, just a steep hill and not as bad as the first one, so I had no trouble on that one at all.
Part of the course involved traveling along a small river, I reckon a couple hundred yards long, not once, but twice on the same lap, good job there wasn’t much rain before hand as me thinks that it could have caused some problems. As it was, it wasn’t too deep and you only got your feet wet.
Some of the tracks that we went around the outside of the fields were very stony and following another rider sometimes became a nightmare as small rocks were just being thrown up in your face all the time as you were trying to find a line to overtake. Due to this and with poor vision, I once overcooked it on a long fast straight and promptly shot through the track tape ending up in the middle of a field, whoops!
A cracking part of the course I thought was 3 log jumps one after the other, get those wrong and you were over the bars no problem. A small flat moto x style section finished off the lap. The wooded sections weren’t a problem at all, just nice flowing trails really and I reckon the whole thing being 5-6 miles in length and quite a fast lap I thought.
So after an eventful 1st lap (and now looking through the lap data) and with my ’off’ and getting stuck as well, I was down to 20th. I knew things to could only get better and they did as I got into a rhythm and started to ride well again. I did the hard routes (apart from that 1st extreme hill) on every lap and sailed through them no with problems.
I pitted after about 2 hours, good job I did as the tank was nearly bone dry (thank god I didn’t run out of fuel again), changed my goggles, then back out I went.
No real drama to report although I just missed out on a coming together with another rider as we both played ‘chicken’ trying to out brake each other at the end of a fast straight going into a corner.
Got held up a few times behind riders in the woods, but that’s understandable as sometimes there was just nowhere to pull in and let you pass, and with it being a full entry, you’re simply not going to get a clear track for 3 hours or more are you? Still, nowhere near as bad at the Midwest mcc races!
I went onto finish but annoyingly missed out on another lap by 2 mins, just goes to show, a few mins of wasted time early on in the race has a knock on effect.
At the end of the race when I got back to the van I found Phil’s bike already in the back with all his gear packed away and he was nowhere in sight. I just thought he might have gone for another burger or was watching the racing somwhere, but with 10 mins or more gone by and with no sign of him, I though it’ll best to give him a ring. I had an answerphone message from him to say that he’d retired from mechanical failure and also that Jack Twentyman had been involved in a big ‘off’ on one of those log jumps and he was driving him to hospital!
In the end Jack being as ‘tough as old boots’ just wanted to get home so it was best that Phil drove him back just in case, so I was left with a 3 ½ hour drive all on my Todd.
Turns out that Jack’s ok and is just a bit bruised and sore.
Overall I’m pleased to have got a decent enough finish seeing as I was so far down after the 1st lap.
Finishing position: 8/30 (clubman 2st)
Plans for May:
10th Midwest mcc
17th Croydon mcc
23rd South reading mcc
25th Exmoor enduro club
