Painfest!
By TMX Archives on 12th Apr 05
I don't believe in such a thing as luck and I certainly don't believe in the 'luck of the Irish'. I don't believe in such a thing as luck and I certainly don't believe in the 'luck of the Irish'. I went to Hawkstone Park at the beginning of last month with the intention of having three promising races and a good start to my blue season.All was looking okay in the first race until I landed hard in a hole in the famous Hawkstone whoops. In doing this I partially dislocated my right ankle - tearing a ligament and breaking a bone and generally causing a lot of trauma to the joint.Canada Heights was seven days later and all I could do to prepare for this was to work on improving my ankle. Every day I had physio and spent two hours a day in a hyper-baric oxygen chamber. This is a technique where you are breathing on pure medical oxygen which is proven to increase the rate of healing to an injury.I heavily taped my ankle for the racing at Canada Heights and struggled through the day. I thought the first race was hard and painful but that was nothing compared to the second. I crashed in a big way trying too hard and cartwheeled down the track. When I stopped cartwheeling I started to crawl off to the side of the track only to get nailed by a 450 Honda.Another two weeks spent trying to improve my ankle is all I could do and after getting more x-rays and an MRI scan the consultant made me wear an air cast boot.It's a trendy cast which enables you to bear weight and also remove it for physio. It's helped a lot and I felt much better by the time the second British championship round at Polesworth was on.Jamie Dobb organised a track close to him for me to ride on Saturday so Mikey my mechanic and I took the race bike there to give me a chance to try out my foot and loosen up for Sunday's race. I hadn't rode the bike in a few weeks and I actually enjoyed it more than I thought I would.The Polesworth races were okay apart from me crashing my brains out in the first race and wrecking my bike. I made a poor start and was extremely frustrated at this and was riding hard to move forward but I guess I was maybe riding too hard for the conditions seeing as I ended up on the floor.I had to ride my spare bike in the second moto and things went better this time as I held second place until the last lap where I couldn't keep Jussi behind me so I finished third.On Easter Monday I went to Brands Hatch to have a day at the British Superbike event. Quite a few Northern Irish guys ride in the series and I got to see how each of them perform at that level and I don't think they were too far off the pace for the first round.I travelled from there onto Belgium for some practice before the GP. This was my first day's practice since the week before Hawkstone and I was hoping to make good progress with my speed from now on seeing as my ankle injury seemed to be more under control. It rained on the day I went practising but for the GP at Zolder the sun was shining.There's a double jump at Zolder not far after the split rhythm section and on the fourth lap of first practice I was riding slowly at the edge of the track. Some over-excited Belgian idiot jumped the double but must have got a bit of whiskey throttle on take-off and launched off line and landed flat on my back! From then on I struggled with an extremely sore arm and shoulder. Incidentally, the same Belgian idiot did exactly the same thing to Jussi on the first lap of the first race - clever bloke!I qualified badly and had a poor choice of gate which of course resulted in a poor start. I came through the pack to 12th but found that after the race I was physically spent.I had another garbage start in moto two and really struggled to move forward in the pack. After 20 minutes of riding around embarrassed - and a few big near crashes - I realised that my time would be better spent off the track.Last month I wrote about getting hurt and how it affected my preparation for the start of the season. This month I'm writing about how I'm hurt and it's affected my racing.I just hope that you people who read this don't think I'm full of excuses and complaints and that I fill my column with negatives to justify below par results. Truthfully, I'm sick of feeling physical pain and getting bad starts. If I get away at the front I have the ability to stay there and that's my cunning plan - simple as that!