Quick review of the two days for those that are interested in tuition days.
TL,DR; Low numbers, lots of space on track, 1 tutor (BSB Racer) per group, very relaxed.
In preparation I decided to fit the cast wheels back on the RR with their well bedded in ContiSportAttack2's rather than go with the forged Titax with Metzeler RR's due to the risk of rain in Wales.
I started out on Tuesday afternoon - headed up to a nice B&B in Bangor (Ashbrook) - 6hrs of M40, M6 Toll, M54, A5/55 - mainly dull, the 'highlight' being finding out the HID light had decided to not fire up after the final fuel stop - came out of the street lit part of the A55 into darkness lol - whoops.
Day 1 (Weds): So, this was the first event of the year from the James Whitham Team. And there were cobwebs that needed clearing, hopefully communication will get better for Croft. Briefing was the usual, with only ~34 people in attendance and 3 groups, you could pick and choose which group to be in. I chose the novice group, I wanted to breakdown what I was doing wrong and rebuild the confidence I was missing with better technique. The only other bikes that had ridden to the event were in it also. We had 9 in Novice. Steve Brogan the ex-BSB Superbiker. The 'Coastal' Anglesey track goes down the Corkscrew rather than using the inland hairpin. It's about a ~90sec lap (for me) so you cover the same corners a lot during the 7x20 minute sessions, when the session is over you go back in and debrief with your tutor. He floated around the first couple of sessions and made sure he picked up everyone and watched them. Then after that it was up to you to ask him to watch you and run with you, showing you lines and body position. I actually got him to work with me on my bike in the pits. Sitting on the bike and trying to get the body positions right. Bit by bit, I improved and felt the corner speed and confidence improving as I moved about the bike better. As the afternoon wore on I just realised that my fitness for quick laps is limited, especially where you've got flip-flop-flip which really needs quad strength - I must get to the gym to improve more on the bike. End of the day: technique improved, more comfortable in certain corners...body, f**ked.
Day 2 (Thurs): Lots of new faces, less people than I expected booked both days. Same as before, same tutor, iterative improvement, but I'd not really recovered physically. So whilst my pace was lower that ultimate, I just tried to keep re-doing the body position drills. Talking it over with the tutor. Having a second day was mainly of use to try to ram home the changes I needed to make to my riding. Having the same track, same conditions (glorious sunshine) let me concentrate and I feel that I got a lot of time to just understand the physics in play and how you adjust them with weight. There were still only 9 people on track with me, so space was easy to find and you could do really experiment without fear of someone bombing you.
Ride home: On Friday I took 10hrs to return to London, you can appreciate after these 4 days how broken I was upon getting home! The last three hours were a slog, on a wet M4. But before that I'd started by dropping through Snowdonia and toured some nice minor roads. The highlight of these was the B4391 from
Ffestiniog to Bala before going for the
A483 run from Newtown to Crossgates. I couldn't really hustle cause the roads were either damp or soaked even where there was no actual rainfall now. But it was good to enjoy some winding tarmac and test out my new found body position knowledge. I must go back and tour the rest/revisit some of these roads! But if I return to Anglesey I'm taking a Van, it's too much distance to be fresh the next day to make the most of the time on track.
Overall the JW days gave me huge amounts of track time and space on track, with a trainer who was very keen to pass on his advice. Worth the extra cost over a normal trackday...
