This was the first race of the new season. It had taken quite some time to prep the bike due to the last race last year where the engine went bang. This resulted in a complete rebuild. I had only run the new engine in for a couple of hours so my plan was to take it easy for about …….10 seconds!. The weather was pretty grim with on and off rain and sleet which was going to make the course testing. There was a good standard of riders who had entered. I would be competing against 25 other experts. On the riders briefing we were given the normal safety talk. I had to do 6 laps of which lap 4 was my tight time check of 46 mins. On every lap I was also to be timed on 2 special tests. A normal cross country test and also a motocross test which was the one I was looking forward to on my super quick Honda Cr 250.

I started at 10.07am alongside 3 other riders including an old friend John Lee who owns a bike dealership in Northampton. Lap 1 was fine and both special tests were good but I knew because of conditions they would get harder as the race went on. I had 58mins to do Lap 1. I came in with about 5mins to spare. I now knew it would was going to be very tight to make the 46min check on Lap 4. Laps 2 and 3 went by with no problems and I feel that my special test times were improving as I was learning the better lines. On lap 3 I had an interesting moment on the cross country test. I closed down on a slower rider who had failed to get up an extreme route which on this one was a steep climb up a muddy bank. Because he had fallen off I had no choice but to ride up an even steeper bank to the right of him. I made to climb ok but got a bit too much air time causing me to snap a few branches on a tree as I was falling. Thank god for bar protectors otherwise that one would have stung. Here it was Lap 4. For those of you who know about off road racing this is where you have to remove your brain, small as it is for me but remove it anyway and go for it. This is what I did. I made it in good time all the way up to the motocross test where to my horror there was a queue of riders waiting. I must have waited for at least 7mins. My test was ok but I knew I was going to be late on time so I really had to push hard. This is when it happened. I must have been flat out in 4th gear down a narrow forest path. My front wheel hit a tree stump and started to fall away. I was now just a passenger and unfortunately I then managed to find a poorly placed tree. I am sure it hadn’t been there the lap before. Yes it did sting and after I hit it I slid for sometime. I knew straight away I had bruised some ribs AGAIN and I could be out. On picking my bike up I noticed the damage. I had badly bent my bars. My gear lever was bent and also broken. I was pretty shaken up so I had to take it easy for a while. It also takes 20 to 30mins to get used the new shape of bars. I limped back to the pits where the bike was filled up and the chain was adjusted. I also had to do a quick repair to the gear lever because I was struggling to find gears. When I got to the time check I then knew I had dropped 3mins. You can’t make this time up so all I had to do was finish then. It was a painful end to the day but I did manage to finish without loosing anymore time penalties.

I needed help with getting the bike on and off the trailer due to my sore ribs. It was the following day where I noticed my rear wheel. This was in a poor state. All of the spokes had come loose and it was going to need another re lacing job. I really must have hit that tree hard. The provisional results show me in 9th place. This is really annoying because I should have made that time check. If I had of made that time check I would have come 3rd. Never mind that’s racing for you. At least I have gained some points towards the championship. Roll on the next round which is on the 14th March.

A quick thank you to Trevor Hughes who helped me in the pits. Gareth for the lift which as it panned out was a must.

Chris Howman