Ok, I think after my final session with the shrink I can talk about this now.
It was a dreadful weekend. It's a long way to go, it took us 4 hours, plus the packing beforehand and the unpacking when you get there. It took us 90 minutes to put up my new awning in the rain for the first time, but that was one of the highlights of the weekend - at least I know it works and we can put it up in half the time next meeting. It rained most of the time and the wind was force 5 at times, blowing all the tents around. We went for the Friday testing day as I've never been before. It's quite a good little track, although I could hardly say that as I never really got to give it a good go. I fell on Friday, lowsided tipping it into a left hander after the end of the session, so I wasn't even going quickly, I don't know why I went down, but there were about a dozen people went down at the same bit. I walked the circuit later and there is a bump just off the line and if I wasn't on the pace, I would have maybe been off line and not concentrating. On the other hand, with so many others going down, who knows. When you crash and it's your fault and you can see why, that's one thing, but not knowing why confuses you and zaps your confidence for going in hard next time, as you constantly think the front is going to slip away at any moment. We're running on second hand tyres as we can't afford to buy new and as I didn't trust the slicks we had on, we decided to dump them - they looked ok but they'd probably been heated and cooled too much and lost their grip. Damage to the left of the bike and to my little finger, but nothing too bad.
We did get some good laps in towards the end when it dried out a bit and I managed a 1.07, not bad after only about 20 laps, so I was feeling a bit better, but still had some way to go to get on the pace.
Saturday was race day and my first race of the season - really nervous and excited, but in no way was I ready as my head was just not right after yesterday. I was feeling like I didn't want to crash again, which is not a good thing to feel for racing.
We'd had the slicks, inters and wets on and off constantly due to the weather, poor Monty was knackered, especially after spending hours fixing the bike the previous day. Eventually we decided to change onto the inters for the first race. They were second hand again and they looked pretty crappy, but they were all we had. One of the CB500 guys said we should chuck them, but it was race time and it was damp. As we only have two sets of wheels, we had to take the slicks off to get the inters on, so I ran to the tyre guy and got him to do it double quick time, then literally ran back and Monty put the wheels on as I did the warmers, only about 10 minutes to go so I wanted as much heat in the tyres as possible. I'm panicking now. There's a bit of rain threatening and the track is damp/dry line -who knows what the feck tyres to put on. 10 seconds later and it's time to get out there. There are loads of strokers going past our tent and we still have the warmers on, I'm really getting agitated now. Off come the warmers and stands and I push Monty up the paddock to bump start the little beastie and it's straight into the holding area. Once round and I form up on the grid. (I'd qualified last, but that's another story - I missed the first few dry laps of the qualifying session and I did my qualifying on slicks in the wet - everyone else did two flying laps and came in - I did 6 slow laps in the increasing rain and gave up - oh dear)
Anyway, I got a reasonable start and gallantly held onto my last position as we all piled into the hairpin. Right, right, left all in a line, no problem, I was already thinking that the next five in front of me were holding me up, so I was feeling ok, tipped it into the fast right hander and it went down even faster, begger
I was really mad, I wish it had been on camera, as I walked back over to the bike and kicked the tyre. I then sat in the rain and cold for ten laps watching everyone else racing and then waited another 10 minutes for the recovery truck, got bundled into it with two other bikes. The run back to the paddock in the truck is more dangerous than racing - the back is open and nothing is strapped in, just you standing holding your bike.
None of us could understand why I'd gone down and I'd completely lost my confidence, sense of humour and will to carry on - frankly, if I could have left I would have. I actually sat on that banking watching everyone thinking "that's it, I've had enough, I'm not cut out to be a racer".
About an hour later, we were still mistified at what happenned when someone said 'what tyre pressures are you running?'. We checked the cold front tyre to find 41, not the 29 we thought was in there. We'd not checked the tyre pressure after the tyre man fitted them - he has to fit above the pressure to make them stick or something, anyway, at least we knew why I went down, with the warmers on, they were probably up near 50 and rock hard, ah well.
Problem was I'd broken bits of the bike again and we had to spend another £250 on bits and Monty spent 8 hours non stop fixing the bike. Gutted. We decided not to trust some of the second hand tyres and I shelled out another £330 for some new rubber.
First race on Sunday was wet and horrible, so it was on with the new wets, (I've never ridden on wets before, so this was going to be a challenge). We'd been running back and forward looking at the track to see what tyres to go for and I'd spotted a few boys changing to wets, so that was the wise choice, only when I got into the holding area, EVERONE was on inters and one guy on slicks. FECK IT. The track had a dry line all the way round.
I was not about to bin the bike for a third time or waste £200 of brand new wets, so I tootled around in last place, avoided getting lapped and brought the bike and the tyres home in one piece.
By this stage I'd completely lost all will to carry on and we decided to call it a day before the final race.
Long silent car journey home. Long week at work.
On a brighter note I did Cadwell on my 748 yesterday and started to get back into it, but I was still lacking in confidence tipping into corners thinking the front is going to go at any moment.
Mallory on the 11th of this month, so we'll see how we get on. Still not sure if I can push someone else's pride and joy to the limit. Monty has decided the fairing is shagged, so there's another £150 to spend.
We won't get much change out of £1000 for the weekend when we add everything up...bang goes another family holiday...relations in the Bunting household are stretched to the limit I'm afraid....and the cat was killed on the road yesterday. Woe is me!!!
WeeJohnyB
