More suspension changes, more laps and more tablets. TT 2022 is going pretty well, all things considered.
I was hoping I’d wake up this morning feeling as fresh as a daisy but unfortunately that wasn’t to be. The penicillin that I’ve been on since yesterday lunchtime obviously needs a bit more time to work, because this morning I felt as rough as eggs. My throat was killing me and to add insult to injury, me neck and chin was all swollen up, which made me look as though I’d put on about three stone. Proper minging.
Anyway, I popped a load of ibuprofen to try and get the swelling down, paracetamol to numb the pain a and more penicillin to sort the infection. Once the concoction of meds kicked in started feeling a lot better, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel exhausted all day.
The sensible thing to do might have been to knock tonight’s sessions on the head, but doing the sensible thing isn’t really what I’m known for. So I didn’t. Besides, we’d made some changes to both bikes and I wanted to see what they were like.
First of all I took the FlyaSpitfire.com Kawasaki out for a couple of laps, and if I’m being honest, the changes that we made didn’t really make a massive amount of difference; so the bike still felt good. But I didn’t feel especially fresh. My first lap, was 122.9mph, but my second lap was a lot slower. I was absolutely fucked, and could barely hold onto the thing – so rather than trying my nuts off and getting myself into a tangle (that I wasn’t strong enough to get myself out of), I just backed the pace off and rolled round, practicing hitting all my apexes and stuff.
After a couple of laps on the big bike, and a ten minute rest in the pits, I took the Surf Bar Hull Triumph out for a lap. The plan was to do one lap, just to see if the changes we’d made were any good, but unfortunately, we’d not tightened the clip-ons up enough and they were shifting round the forks, in the sections where you’re really fighting the bike from left to right. I had to stop a couple of times to straighten them up, and I wasn’t able to ride the bike the way I wanted to… so I’m still not sure if the changes we made were any good!
But we’ve got another practice tomorrow so hopefully by then, the penicillin will have kicked the tonsillitis into touch, and I’ll feel a bit stronger on the bike.
What I need now is a good nights sleep… so that’s exactly what I’m about to do.
Sweet dreams.
