Felt really horrible this morning with a sore throat, headache and a bit of a temperature but I still managed to drag my arse out of bed at 5am and get ready pack the car and get to Trow by 6am to get my lift to Peckham.
We got to Peckham in time to dump our stuff off at the gazebo and then get in the pens for practice. Practice was a bit of a nightmare but I managed to get 3 laps in and 4 gates so I had pretty much figured out the track so I was happy that I would be good for the racing to start.
I then went back to the gazebo and chilled out for the motos.
My First moto went really well and I was in the mix from the start and managed to finish 4th out of 6 so on pace to scrape an A final if I kept up the same kind of positions. Unfortunately when I got back to the gazebo and checked my result I found that they had me down as a DNS so I had to go to the office and let them know that I had finished 4th and I found out that there was an issue with my transponder battery! We decided to wait and see how it behaved for the next moto.
My second Moto was way harder and I finished 6th and managed to mess up the 1st and 3rd straights big time which was annoying as I had them really smooth and fast in the first moto! My transponder worked this time and I got a gate time of 2.845 and a lap time of 44.992 so I was a fair bit off of the pace again 🙁 (about 6 seconds over the lap).
My third moto went about as well as my second moto as I was in gate 8 and messed up the first straight again and ended up in 6th again so I missed out on the A final by 3 places which is disappointing but it was mainly due to harder motos as one of the guys that I beat in my first moto qualified for the A final in 8th position due to having 2 easier motos but that the way the chips fall sometime! My Transponder also only showed by hill time so it worked a bit but I had to again let the cabin know where I finished to get my true gate selection in the B final.
In the B final I had 3rd pick and got gate 3 as the 2 riders before me picked gates 1 and 2. We were the first final so had to wait a while on the hill which was OK as it calmed the nerves but it was a bit difficult to stay focused. When the cadence started the beep came really quickly but I still managed to get a good snap and was the first to the 1st jump but messed up the jump again so lost the lead and I was not able to get it back! Pretty happy with the way that I rode and I got a really good clean manual on the 1st jump on the second straight which was way faster and got me a lead on the guys behind me that they couldn’t make up. I was also able to put in 100% effort for the whole track for 4 out of the 4 moto’s so I have to be happy with that!
Unfortunately my transponder didn’t work at the line again so I didn’t get a lap time again. I did beat my fastest recorded gate time in the final to get a time of 2.768 which is a positive sign. If I had have been in the A final my gate time would have meant that I would have had the 4th fastest gate so not too bad!
Estimating my lap times for moto 1 and the final by comparing the times to the person in front of me and behind me I think I did a 42 ish lap on my first lap and a high 43 second lap in the final so a best case scenario I am 4 seconds off of the winners pace!
I am super glad that I raced today as I now know what I need to do to improve for the national. I basically need to practice pull up manuals, pump manuals and work on my track fitness. The fitness that I need to improve is basically my leg endurance especially on the 4th straights as my legs start to fade after the 3rd berm so I have to hang on and dig deep on the last straight!
For the next 2 weeks I am going to do sprints early in the morning and also get 2 days in the gym to try and build up some leg strength/ endurance. I will also try and get at least one day doing full speed laps as well a day doing full speed pump laps and a couple of days working on my manuals on all the straights at Bath. At the weekend I will try and ride a track with a triple as the first jump to tray and get used to doing pull-up manual, pump manuals on them to try and get used to doing them.