St Martin- 17th July 2011

I was hoping for my luck to change then as I traveled up with ‘mad’ Jack and Paddy for a TnT race in Dorset (I thnk!), anyway it was a couple of hours drive away so not too bad. Now I have done quite a few TnT events in my time and the majority of them do have a lot of fields in their courses, so I was expecting myself to ‘pin the little strimmer’ to near the end of it’s life trying to keep in front of the bigger bikes! Well, I wasn’t disappointed then was I, because that’s how turned out!

I did see a few other riders around the start area who’d also traveled to do the event, Simon Thomas, Rich Batstone, Gary ‘nothing gets in my way’ Mcoy, so had a quick natter and then back off to the van to get changed. The adult event was first followed by the youths race afterwards.
So to the start itself then and I got a crap one as the Gasser failed to fire into life! Well to me that means 1st kick, she did start after about 3 or 4, but my chance of being up there with the pack to the first corner was gone. So the course was a field, a small undulating kind of moto x track, then another field that was off camber, a jump that was in a field which led to a small wooded section with a climb, then guess what? Another field, another small wooded section (I mean small) and then about 3 more fields back to the start/finish area. The only really interesting part of the course was that all the champ/experts and vets experts had to go through a small extreme section consisting of a few tyres that were stood on end. There were about 4 or 5 of these and it did make you sit up and concentrate, I did then no problem every lap although some riders were finding them tough to get over and I did see a few riders go over the bars. Overall I reckon maybe a 4 mile lap at most.

One of the small wooded sections contained about the grand total of 10 tree roots, 2 of which were close together, and believe or not, riders were getting stuck on them which was causing choas! Couldn’t believe it, even my 3yr old could have rode over them on her push bike! Sods law it was then because as I went to pass a guy that was stuck on a tree route, his back wheel suddenly gripped which caused him to fall to one side just as I was level with him. I took evasive action and had nowhere to go but into the fence by the side of me. Sods law again then as I tried to carry on but realized my back wheel was caught up in a load of wire that had been ripped from the fence as I went into it. Thankfully a spectator came to my rescue and he helped me untangle the wire, still cost me a good 5 mins and that was disastrous seeing as it was only about 10 mins a lap. So effectively after losing half a lap which ain’t to clever when your in the Vets experts class against the bigger bikes on mostly a course which has a lot of fields, I got the bit between my teeth and went for it.

After doing the usual pit stop I was certainly ‘on’ it as I was trying to make up for lost time and with about 30 mins left I began to overtake a few riders in my class as they were tiring. Precisely 2hr and 38mins into the race when I was just coming round to lap scoring, my bike suddenly died on me! I kicked her and nothing, again and nothing, checked the usual sort of stuff but couldn’t find anything which might have caused the bike to die and not start again. So reluctantly I pushed the bike a couple of hundred yards back to the finish and gave my transponder in and rolled back down to the van. Another DNF!

I really don’t know what’s going on this year, 5 dnf’s, 2 ambulance visits, and a lot of broken pride! I once went from September 17th 2006 to February 1st 2009 , 45 enduro’s without a DNF, and now I’ve had 5 of the bloody things in 7 months. Lets hope that the 2nd half of the year brings me better luck then……………..

By the way, finally found out the cause of the engine dying, faulty kill switch.

Finishing psotion: DNF