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Fasttrax Recap

It was a good weekend overall. The four of us got down to Nelson on Friday and were ready to go Saturday morning. We did five practice sessions before the race, with my dad and Doug throwing a variety of suspension changes at the bike. We also tried a harder Pirelli front tire, which worked well on initial try out. Times continued to drop in each session, even with the large degree of varying speed in our practice group. Fasttrax had new students who were taking the race school in our group, so you can imagine the speed difference out on the track between racers turning laps and students learning what racing is all about.

The race went well. Treating it as practice, we did three solid stints throughout the race (about 18-22 laps each) which was good. It was 85 and warm, so I'd be lying if I didn't say I wasn't a little tired by the last stint, but I'd have been dead before the race even started if it wasn't for those spin classes. I got down into low 1:10's, which isn't spectacular, but for my first time around the track this year I was happy with it. As Darren had indicated in some words of advice before the race, we avoided getting involved in any incidents and just turned in a lot of laps (over 100 by the time the day was done), which I needed. There were a couple crashes and one red flag that had us down for 20 minutes or so, but overall it was a good day for most everyone.

We again found out some things that did and didn't work with the bike – both in geometry and in general suspension setup. With my dad not racing, the notes we're keeping are much more detailed and I'm really confident they are going to pay off as the season starts. After taking in a number of sources of input on bike setup over the winter, we started with a clean sheet of paper at Grattan and carried what we learned there over to Nelson. In a sense, we've worked a bit back to where we were, but now know what works really does work - and also what doesn't work. And we can look back at this data throughout the year and make more accurate changes when the need arises. All good stuff. The best part is with my dad, Doug (and Garry) focusing on setup and the bike, I can focus more on riding and not trying to help solve suspension issues. Make the rider ride, as Doug would say. Works for me. I've got plenty of that to work on.

This upcoming weekend will be the first race weekend of the season and I know the few spots I need to improve on to get back to the times I've done before. I also think we found a new front tire to run, which should be a good thing .. we'll see how Friday practice goes ..

Cheers,

- eddie

Monday, April 27th, 2009 | POSTED AT: 7:56 AM
FILED UNDER: General