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I did 3 races on Sat. and it was alot of fun. Cold, but still a good time. I had come up with the intention of doing fri. practice, but the wind and cold changed my mind and I decided to save my tires and just watch. I went out for practice on sat. morning and froze my hands while I tried to shake off the cob webs. I was riding on my new suspension/geometry setup, but never really went fast enough to notice any difference from stock. I just did a bunch of laps and tried to get back up to speed, but all the talk about cold tires put me in self-preservation mode so I never even dragged my knee. I slowly started to feel like I was getting faster, but in reality I was doing times similar to my 1st ever weekend racing last April.
Races:
I did am. gtu, hwss, and mwgp. Got a crappy start in gtu because the starter didn't do his usual, "wave the flag before the 1 board is all the way over"... instead there was a slight delay so it threw me off. I was in 5th or 6th for the 1st lap or 2, but got passed by Brett and another guy which put me in 8th. I held on to that position till the end to finish 8th out of 11 finishers.
HWSS was the highlight of the weekend for me as far as the fun factor goes... I got a good start, ran as high as 3rd or 4th for a lap, then got passed by a couple. I was running in 7th ahead of Justin right till the end where he must have gotten a better drive onto the straight to snatch the checkered by a few bike lengths. I swore in my helmet as I crossed the finish line, but it's a lot of fun when the racing is close. I took another 8th out of 11 riders.
MWGP was wierd, and I got killed on the start. Basically I fell right to the back of the pack and stayed there the whole race, pulling off my slowest laps of the day. Mainly I think I just didn't want to crash w/all the spectators watching! I finished 12th, or "DFL".
Overall the weather just got to me psychologically and blew my plan to come out swingin' for the 1st round of the season. All the races were cut down by a few laps due to what Eric said was "tire temps were actually losing heat w/each lap"... It was awesome to get back on the track, and I had a ton of fun racing, but did times in the high 20's all day. The good was that there isn't a huge gap in time to the front runners, so this should make for some exciting racing as the weather warms up and we can all push it a little harder. I'll see if I can get into the top 5 for next weekend!