3 seconds

Practice went really well last night. Unfortunately Cooper had some trouble with the chain on his bike so he decided to leave it behind and just come and do some coaching.

Just a quick side note... I mentioned in a previous post that we had changed the jetting and my bike was running much, much better. When I shared my settings on an Internet forum some goon was adamant that my bike was way to lean. Well last night at practice whilst Coops was warming my bike up, some guy came over and complimented on how good the bike sounded. His son raced and he seemed like he knew a thing or two so it felt really good to hear him say that.

Coops brought the stop watch along for the very first time so we could start gauging speed and improvement over the session and in the future.

My first session out felt really good. I felt faster and smoother than I had ever been at Peakdale. After a few timed laps I came in and was averaging about 1:37 a lap. We talked over a few things and I went back out, trying to concentrate on the 3 things I had said in my previous post.

The next session didn't feel as fast as it could have been mostly due to me not being in the right gear coming out of corners. I think this happened because I was entering the corners with more speed and in a higher gear. I came in and the stopwatch said 1:36 average.

Coops said that if I could get 1:34 average then that would be a massive improvement. I knew that this was definitely possible if I made sure I was in the right gear coming out of the corners. I went out and did exactly that. I noticed the front wheel coming up a lot more whilst exiting the corners. This was a sure sign that I was accelerating harder than I ever had before. After a good session I came back in and got a big thumbs up from coach cooper. I managed to get the 1:34 average.

The last session was cancelled due to another rider having a big crash on the hill but I was stoked with my 3 second improvement and was happy to go home.