15th August 2003 - Cadwell Park

I really wasn't sure about riding at Cadwell this time. The previous visit was restricted to the short circuit so you miss out the rather scary and, in my opinion, rather dangerous woodland section. This time we were going to be using the full track and the last time I was there in the wet large branches were falling off the trees on to the racing line round a couple of the more sheltered corners. Still, the weather looked pretty good and I could certainly use the practice so I blagged space in Gary's awning (again!) and began to prepare the bike.

I missed the first session as it took a while to do some minor maintenance on the bike but made it out for the second to bed in some new brake pads and get a feel for the place. I was feeling fairly confident after the last visit but nothing seemed to flow this time. I had some new tyres fitted before the next session and spent some time scrubbing them in before gradually picking up my pace. I was a bit surprised to have Gary Morris come by rapidly and pull away from me as I had been much quicker than him in the last few races. I did manage to get my head down when a coupled of other came by and I decided that there was no way they were going to get away from me. The session was red flagged before the end when someone had run David Daws on to the grass and he was carted off to hospital with suspected concussion. Not good for my confidence at all.

I went out for the next session a bit more determined having had a think about the circuit and some of the places I was slow, Park corner in particular was a problem as was the Gooseneck but no change there. This time I managed to hang on to Gary when he came by but couldn't make any progress in catching him. We did manage to catch and pass a couple of guys so it wasn't all bad news. Relaxing after the session I felt a tickling under my arm and when i went to see what it was I felt a sudden stinging sensation. A wasp had crawled up the sleeve of my t-shirt and decided to take out it's frustration on me. Needless to say I wasn't planning on going out again for a while after that.

Gail Morris, Gary's wife, was more rather more prepared than me and produced some anti-sting creme which helped a lot. I'm naturally rather nervous about trying new products as I'm seriously allergic to a whole load of stuff but, in this case, I decided I'd rather have a reaction to the anti-sting creme than to the wasp sting itself. I sat around until I felt better despite missing several more practice sessions. David came back from hospital and pottered around packing up all his gear before heading off home. I did make it out for the final session and once again found I could hang with Gary but couldn't really get by him. I did get held up by one of the 400s though and was able to catch up the lost distance though so things were looking a bit more positive for race day.

I decided discretion was the better part of valour and missed the final session in order to get my bike scrutineered. Anything that lets me have a longer lie in in the morning has to be a good thing in my book!