Wowza... Tired, Happy, Depressed, Stoked, Sad, Confused, and a few others that just don't always make sense these days!
These are some of the feelings I have after successfully completing my first attempt at the Pike Peak International Hill Climb. It was a Very difficult week with a ton of mental hurdles to get over!
So lets start from the beginning! Saturday the 21st I worked at Audi Denver till 5 and got home to meet up with my brother in law Craig and racer buddy Alan and start to get things setup for leaving Sunday morning.
Sunday morning we got the bikes loaded up and hit the road so we could get into tech as early as we could and possibly make a run up the mountain.
Tech went smooth other than they wanted more numbers on the bike so we were pleased with that.
Next up lets go up the mountain for a visit and to see what all this hill climb stuff is about!
One minute it is all good, the next we are getting rained, snowed, and hailed on... And I am gonna race a motorcycle up this with Michelin Pilot Cups on it... OK, sounds like a Brilliant idea!
Back down we had to go to our rookie meeting and riders meetings and look who I ran into:
Super cool to run into Guy Martin and it gets even better!
So we head to the campground and get setup and hit the hay, 2:30am comes around waaaayyyyyyy too damn early if you ask me...
Tuesday morning practice we were up at Devils Playground running to the top, I couldn't beleive the energy this place has with all of us racers getting up the mountain in the morning to go ride our motorcycles up it! Kind of an eye opener running on a mountain road at speed too, not for the faint of heart to say the least! Riders meeting comes and goes and then they blow the air horn to get us up for our sighting lap... I am nervous as hell, can't see more than 30 feet in front of me because it is still DARK and I am gonna get on the racebike with no lights, no tire warmers, and street take offs on it...
What can go wrong right? Luckily everything went well and the bike performed flawlessly, very pleased with the bike and all the prep work I had done started to pay off!
On the Guy Martin front his bike didn't make it to the top in his first run and they loaded the bike up and Guy had went to the front of the Uhaul and was not in good spirits. I asked one of his mechanics what was happening and he said the bike won't run, I started asking some specifics and he said to go chat Guy up and see what he says so I run up and knock on the window to Guy telling me not a good time mate and I started rambling off questions about the bike and the map and we started to get some ideas together! Shortly after I made a run up and told him to look at the mapping of the ecm and see about making some maps with less fuel by percentages before boost and see what this does.
My run was good and I come back down, park the bike, and go see what Guy has figured out. He is working on the mapping and then mentioned the bike ran ok in town and we started to figure out what changes they made to the bike... Pump fuel in town and race fuel up here... So we siphon his race fuel out and I run over some Shell 91 pump fuel over and boom... The bike runs better... Not perfect by any means but he makes his runs and it turns out to be a great day up on the mountain!
In the end the ECM was what seemed to be the problem but the bike ran and Guy won his class and I got to chat him and his mechanics up all week! Getting to hang out and get to know one of my heros of real road racing was a treat!
Back on topic, Tuesday went great with no issues other than the freezing temps and too damn early mornings! Wednesday we got to practice the middle 3rd of the mountain, I can say that this section is probably the scariest and toughest sections to ride with the least room for error... Part way through the day we had my buddy Glenn crash into a guardrail and stopped practice while we were up top waiting to come back down. Glenn actually came away in pretty good shape with only heavy bruising and a chipped bone or two so that was good! Now on the ride back down after Glenn got hauled away in the ambulance we were coming down around a right hand sweeper and one of the motard guys front brake locked up and his bike and himself went right over the edge! I came upon the aftermath below where the motard actually came down the side of the mountain and took out another rider on his way down and there was chaos! Never have I seen anything like it, the rider below had his GoPro going and caught it all on video:
Crazy right?
Here is a video of me going up the middle section on Project Supertwin:
The rest of the day was pretty uneventful, bike was running good and I was learning the course as quickly as I could! Such a Great time!!!
Will post up Thursday and Friday here shortly!
No comments:
Post a Comment