I've been waiting for race season to get started, well, pretty much since it ended last year. In 2015, I had spent most of the year chasing bike set up and then working on improving myself. I raced one round with the bike fully set up, and that was the final round, with 2 big changes (exhaust and tune to go with it, and a quick shifter installed) that I hadn't even tested. So I was looking forward to the 2016 season and being able to get out there on a bike that I was happy - and familiar - with.
Over the winter, however, I also made a few other decisions, and started to lay out some longer term racing goals, with an eye on what I'd be doing in another 3 seasons. In order to reach those lofty goals (which may well exceed my talent), I was going to have to put in some serious improvements over the 2016 season. I knew the bike would be good, so that left me as the weak spot.
One of the things I knew I could control was my general fitness, so over the winter months I began to improve and and get my fluffy butt back to the gym despite how much it would suck (which it did). Other than that, there wasn't much to focus on besides firming up sponsorships and working to earn more monies to pay for the upcoming season. I was also pretty focused on moving my career forward the next step so that finances wouldn't be as much of an issue in 2016.
Eventually we were getting down to the wire. It was the week before we were to leave for Buttonwillow, and I was still ordering the last parts for my bike. I was down in the garage the night before we were to take off, putting on the final repair parts after a crash the end of last year. It all worked out though, the bike was ready, and I figured we'd have plenty of time to get down to Buttonwillow and put in some bicycle laps around the track to refresh minds and hopefully start to blow some dust off.
In short order Thursday morning we were packed up and ready to go, hitting the road in the early afternoon, beating traffic out of the bay area. Things were going well, stopped for a late lunch along the way, and back on the road. At some point, the truck started to make a funny noise, but only when I was pushing the speed, so since we had the poor thing loaded to the gills, figured I'd just back off a tad. Sound went away, and we carried on. Then, at some point, I asked the truck for a little more again and it chugged - pure protest. Uh-oh, not good. Backed off, cruised along a bit, tried again, same thing - not good. We pulled off the freeway to check things out. Couldn't find anything wrong, truck seemed fine at surface speeds, decided to give it another go. Didn't take long to find out we weren't going to get over 40mph without the truck protesting, so after passing a sign saying another 24 miles to the next gas, we decided to pull of the freeway at the very next exit and start a tow.
A fellow racer saw us and stopped, checked the truck with his code reader, nothing showed up. Gauges looked fine, but we were still dead in the water. Eventually the tow truck showed up, we loaded up, hitched the trailer to his truck and finally got back on the road for the 100 miles we had left.
We arrived at the track far later than we had planned - well after dark, but at least we were there. I found my garage, and started to get my pit set up for the Friday test day the following day. In the meantime, I was also beginning to hash out what might have been wrong with the truck and how to resolve it now that we were quite some distance from home.
The Friday test day went fine, and I felt like the bike was doing well. My times weren't very good, but I still had Saturday practice to go, so wasn't going to stress too much. Saturday dawned bright and clear with promise of perfect weather. In an awesome turn, my sponsorship with the Dainese D-Store got approved on Thursday, and a friend was willing to pick my stuff up and bring it to the track with her. SWEET!
Saturday practices went better and my times eventually started to drop ever so slowly. I headed out for my first race of the weekend, Clubman Middleweight, which I was looking at as my "throw away, get back into the groove" race. Right off the start things were a complete s#!t show, and I just backed off to let the guys go get their glory. It wasn't worth tossing my bike or getting taken out in the race I cared the least about. Someone had a bad crash the first lap, and the race got red flagged. Back to another re-start, which wasn't any better than the first one. I tried to convince my mind to get into "race" mode, but I simply couldn't seem to get out of "survive this" mode. I 'raced' a grand total of the last corner down to the line when someone tried to pass me going into the last corner but messed up their line in the process. My line was still good, and I knew I'd get the drive to keep them back there as I re-passed them, and so I did that much. I ended up finishing 20 out of 28, with rather embarrassing laptimes. But, I lived through the experience, so on to Sunday we charged!
Sunday morning again dawned clear and bright with promise of another great day of racing. My first race of the day was 750 Production. I started to pick up the pace, and noticed right away that last year's improvements on holding my position at the start had stuck with me. I wasn't backing off through the first couple corners like I had most of the prior year, which was a very good thing. The race went relatively smoothly, with nothing too stressful, although I was still going slow even for me. I finished 11 out of 13.
Next up was 600 Production, another huge grid with the vast majority of the Clubman Mid group tossed in. We launched, and things were definitely a little hairy the first couple corners. There was one rider in particular who was being extremely sketchy on his passes, being quite willing to run other riders right off the track in order to get his pass (several people where complaining about it). I survived through that and put my head down to race, having lots of bikes to battle with throughout the race. I finished in 14 out of 25, a major improvement over the 2015 season where I was mostly a back marker.
I had a short break and then it was time to head out for my final two races which were back to back. With a full tank of gas, I headed out for Formula 1, one of my favorite races by the end of last year. Another huge grid, but I was feeling good and ready to go. The first 1/2 a lap was a lot of traffic as we all jostled for position, but eventually things spread out. On the very last lap I had came up on a rider who ended up being WAY slower than I expected. I checked up and then set up to pass on the outside going into Riverside only to have them swoop over across my line at the last second. This happened a couple times, and by now all my momentum was gone. Two other riders who were smarter about their passes basically split the two of us and kept on rolling. I got around this rider going into the Lost Hills, but by then the other two were too far gone to catch back up to, although I was narrowing the gap. Dammit. That put me in 15 out of 19.
With no time to rest I finished my cool down lap then jumped onto the grid for my Legacy Middleweight class, one of the smaller classes I'd be running. I still wasn't happy with my laptimes, and I felt like I was still blowing a lot of winter-riding dust off, and NOT happy that it wasn't going away faster. The Legacy grid took off, and again, I had plenty of riders I was getting to battle with. While these were my best laptimes of the day, they were still only what I had been doing at the end of last year, and everyone else seemed to be picking up speed a lot faster. I ended up near the back finishing 7 of 8.
That wrapped up my racing for the weekend. I was not happy with my performance, however, not coming close to my expectations for myself. Doing what I had already done wasn't going to get me to my goals, nor was it what I expected to see out of myself.
There were some good takeaways though.
1) First off, all the fitness work (cardio especially) paid of BIG time, as I wasn't feeling anywhere near as gassed as I had every other round I've ever raced. I still needed to do a lot of work in the upper body strength department, but I was feeling better than I had before.
2) While my laptimes were no better than before, I walked away with very clear places I could make up time and HOW I could make up some time. Last time I had felt like I was doing all I could, this time I saw the weak areas and knew how to fix it the next chance I get. Plus, I can take those things and start applying it to the next track NOW.
3) There were no crashes, and the bike and I went home in the same number of pieces we arrived in.
4) I feel WAY more prepared for the remainder of this year than I did last year.
My friends still had another race that afternoon (600 Superbike), and since I had walked away feeling as good as I had, decided that starting at the next round, I'd go throw my chips into that race as well and add it to my schedule. The more seat time and race time the better if I can physically handle it!
Eventually it was time to pack up and start getting ready to head home. Of course, my truck issues, which had been weighing on my mind all weekend, were now a reality that could no longer be ignored. One friend agreed to haul the trailer, and we loaded the vast majority of our heavier stuff into my friend's 3/4 ton pick up, leaving not much in my truck. Once all our stuff was in we got on the road and headed out. We weren't too far into the trip when the truck started to protest yet again. Ugh. That was about our dinner stop, and after discussing it a bit, we all came to the conclusion that it seemed like the cat was the likely culprit and it was time to drill it out. Thankfully I had packed my drill and spare battery, so we drilled a bunch of holes and dug around in there. Apparently a bunch of crap fell out of the front part of the cat, which definitely pointed to that being the issue.
We headed back out on the road, and once the truck had a chance to blow that stuff out, it seemed to be driving fine. We got tot he split where my friend with the trailer could go the shorter way home, and since the truck had been fine, took the trailer back and headed on home. We had no further issues and made it home without incident (albeit slightly louder). Stuff got unpacked and put away, and finally a quick shower before falling into bed.
All in all, the weekend worked out, but I still expected more out of myself. But, since the bike is doing great, I'm physically better off, and we're ready for the next round, it's time to focus on what I can improve on, and how to do it so I don't have another repeat at the next one!
Over the winter, however, I also made a few other decisions, and started to lay out some longer term racing goals, with an eye on what I'd be doing in another 3 seasons. In order to reach those lofty goals (which may well exceed my talent), I was going to have to put in some serious improvements over the 2016 season. I knew the bike would be good, so that left me as the weak spot.
One of the things I knew I could control was my general fitness, so over the winter months I began to improve and and get my fluffy butt back to the gym despite how much it would suck (which it did). Other than that, there wasn't much to focus on besides firming up sponsorships and working to earn more monies to pay for the upcoming season. I was also pretty focused on moving my career forward the next step so that finances wouldn't be as much of an issue in 2016.
Eventually we were getting down to the wire. It was the week before we were to leave for Buttonwillow, and I was still ordering the last parts for my bike. I was down in the garage the night before we were to take off, putting on the final repair parts after a crash the end of last year. It all worked out though, the bike was ready, and I figured we'd have plenty of time to get down to Buttonwillow and put in some bicycle laps around the track to refresh minds and hopefully start to blow some dust off.
In short order Thursday morning we were packed up and ready to go, hitting the road in the early afternoon, beating traffic out of the bay area. Things were going well, stopped for a late lunch along the way, and back on the road. At some point, the truck started to make a funny noise, but only when I was pushing the speed, so since we had the poor thing loaded to the gills, figured I'd just back off a tad. Sound went away, and we carried on. Then, at some point, I asked the truck for a little more again and it chugged - pure protest. Uh-oh, not good. Backed off, cruised along a bit, tried again, same thing - not good. We pulled off the freeway to check things out. Couldn't find anything wrong, truck seemed fine at surface speeds, decided to give it another go. Didn't take long to find out we weren't going to get over 40mph without the truck protesting, so after passing a sign saying another 24 miles to the next gas, we decided to pull of the freeway at the very next exit and start a tow.
 |
| UGH |
A fellow racer saw us and stopped, checked the truck with his code reader, nothing showed up. Gauges looked fine, but we were still dead in the water. Eventually the tow truck showed up, we loaded up, hitched the trailer to his truck and finally got back on the road for the 100 miles we had left.
We arrived at the track far later than we had planned - well after dark, but at least we were there. I found my garage, and started to get my pit set up for the Friday test day the following day. In the meantime, I was also beginning to hash out what might have been wrong with the truck and how to resolve it now that we were quite some distance from home.
The Friday test day went fine, and I felt like the bike was doing well. My times weren't very good, but I still had Saturday practice to go, so wasn't going to stress too much. Saturday dawned bright and clear with promise of perfect weather. In an awesome turn, my sponsorship with the Dainese D-Store got approved on Thursday, and a friend was willing to pick my stuff up and bring it to the track with her. SWEET!
Saturday practices went better and my times eventually started to drop ever so slowly. I headed out for my first race of the weekend, Clubman Middleweight, which I was looking at as my "throw away, get back into the groove" race. Right off the start things were a complete s#!t show, and I just backed off to let the guys go get their glory. It wasn't worth tossing my bike or getting taken out in the race I cared the least about. Someone had a bad crash the first lap, and the race got red flagged. Back to another re-start, which wasn't any better than the first one. I tried to convince my mind to get into "race" mode, but I simply couldn't seem to get out of "survive this" mode. I 'raced' a grand total of the last corner down to the line when someone tried to pass me going into the last corner but messed up their line in the process. My line was still good, and I knew I'd get the drive to keep them back there as I re-passed them, and so I did that much. I ended up finishing 20 out of 28, with rather embarrassing laptimes. But, I lived through the experience, so on to Sunday we charged!
Sunday morning again dawned clear and bright with promise of another great day of racing. My first race of the day was 750 Production. I started to pick up the pace, and noticed right away that last year's improvements on holding my position at the start had stuck with me. I wasn't backing off through the first couple corners like I had most of the prior year, which was a very good thing. The race went relatively smoothly, with nothing too stressful, although I was still going slow even for me. I finished 11 out of 13.
Next up was 600 Production, another huge grid with the vast majority of the Clubman Mid group tossed in. We launched, and things were definitely a little hairy the first couple corners. There was one rider in particular who was being extremely sketchy on his passes, being quite willing to run other riders right off the track in order to get his pass (several people where complaining about it). I survived through that and put my head down to race, having lots of bikes to battle with throughout the race. I finished in 14 out of 25, a major improvement over the 2015 season where I was mostly a back marker.
I had a short break and then it was time to head out for my final two races which were back to back. With a full tank of gas, I headed out for Formula 1, one of my favorite races by the end of last year. Another huge grid, but I was feeling good and ready to go. The first 1/2 a lap was a lot of traffic as we all jostled for position, but eventually things spread out. On the very last lap I had came up on a rider who ended up being WAY slower than I expected. I checked up and then set up to pass on the outside going into Riverside only to have them swoop over across my line at the last second. This happened a couple times, and by now all my momentum was gone. Two other riders who were smarter about their passes basically split the two of us and kept on rolling. I got around this rider going into the Lost Hills, but by then the other two were too far gone to catch back up to, although I was narrowing the gap. Dammit. That put me in 15 out of 19.
With no time to rest I finished my cool down lap then jumped onto the grid for my Legacy Middleweight class, one of the smaller classes I'd be running. I still wasn't happy with my laptimes, and I felt like I was still blowing a lot of winter-riding dust off, and NOT happy that it wasn't going away faster. The Legacy grid took off, and again, I had plenty of riders I was getting to battle with. While these were my best laptimes of the day, they were still only what I had been doing at the end of last year, and everyone else seemed to be picking up speed a lot faster. I ended up near the back finishing 7 of 8.
That wrapped up my racing for the weekend. I was not happy with my performance, however, not coming close to my expectations for myself. Doing what I had already done wasn't going to get me to my goals, nor was it what I expected to see out of myself.
There were some good takeaways though.
1) First off, all the fitness work (cardio especially) paid of BIG time, as I wasn't feeling anywhere near as gassed as I had every other round I've ever raced. I still needed to do a lot of work in the upper body strength department, but I was feeling better than I had before.
2) While my laptimes were no better than before, I walked away with very clear places I could make up time and HOW I could make up some time. Last time I had felt like I was doing all I could, this time I saw the weak areas and knew how to fix it the next chance I get. Plus, I can take those things and start applying it to the next track NOW.
3) There were no crashes, and the bike and I went home in the same number of pieces we arrived in.
4) I feel WAY more prepared for the remainder of this year than I did last year.
My friends still had another race that afternoon (600 Superbike), and since I had walked away feeling as good as I had, decided that starting at the next round, I'd go throw my chips into that race as well and add it to my schedule. The more seat time and race time the better if I can physically handle it!
Eventually it was time to pack up and start getting ready to head home. Of course, my truck issues, which had been weighing on my mind all weekend, were now a reality that could no longer be ignored. One friend agreed to haul the trailer, and we loaded the vast majority of our heavier stuff into my friend's 3/4 ton pick up, leaving not much in my truck. Once all our stuff was in we got on the road and headed out. We weren't too far into the trip when the truck started to protest yet again. Ugh. That was about our dinner stop, and after discussing it a bit, we all came to the conclusion that it seemed like the cat was the likely culprit and it was time to drill it out. Thankfully I had packed my drill and spare battery, so we drilled a bunch of holes and dug around in there. Apparently a bunch of crap fell out of the front part of the cat, which definitely pointed to that being the issue.
We headed back out on the road, and once the truck had a chance to blow that stuff out, it seemed to be driving fine. We got tot he split where my friend with the trailer could go the shorter way home, and since the truck had been fine, took the trailer back and headed on home. We had no further issues and made it home without incident (albeit slightly louder). Stuff got unpacked and put away, and finally a quick shower before falling into bed.
All in all, the weekend worked out, but I still expected more out of myself. But, since the bike is doing great, I'm physically better off, and we're ready for the next round, it's time to focus on what I can improve on, and how to do it so I don't have another repeat at the next one!
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