Surprise, surprise!!!!

Well, if i remember rightly the last time i dropped a Blog on you guys was precisely 1 week ago, how's that for progress, usually it's about 3 months between Blogs lol. I have to admit last week was pretty manic, as you know i've been rushing about all over the place trying to get myself healthy as this years championship is rapidly approaching, i got the Eurosport punditry done last sunday then spent 3 days on the run up to the Donington park official BSB test either training or in physio trying to sort my hand out, i was fairly confident on the run up to the test that my ankles would be fine on the bike, sure, they'd ache a bit as even without any physical exercise by the evening they swell up a bit so after riding a BSB bike with the stresses and strains that puts through your body well, i wasn't expecting to feel brand new on the way back home but as i said i knew they'd be ok whilst riding, the hand though, that was a whole different ball game. Unfortunately sunday evening the hand started swelling a bit and got a bit red and angry, Monday the skin broke a bit and Monday afternoon it started leaking a bit, great i thought, an infection, that's all i bloody need!!!! I went to the doctors and got it dressed in some special dressing to draw the infection out and got put on a course of antibiotics then had literally 2 days for that lot to get to work.

If i'm perfectly honest i was absolutely desperate to ride my bike at Donington, as you can probably imagine, my preseason testing had consisted of about 50 odd laps of Almeria in Spain ending upside down in the gravel trap before i even got to try a single one of 2015 components, far from an ideal build up, however i confess that i really wasn't to sure at all how the hand would be, i rode a road bike about a week before just to see how the hand felt and thought hmmm this is gonna be tricky on a Superbike but in the grand scheme of things a week is a long time for healing, my thoughts and feelings weren't helped much during all the media stuff we had to do at Donington, obviously we have to do lots of photos with and on the bike and doing the latter and trying to shift about on the bike whilst stationary i got a few little tweeks that felt like mini electric shocks, i kept them to myself obviously but it didn't exactly fill me with confidence and a big part of me kind of hoped that the weather might take a bit of a turn for the worse as we'd already agreed as a team that if the track was damp, wet or basically anything other than dry i'd sit this test out and wait till round 1.

Something kind of strange happened though, once all my media stuff was finished, unbeknown to me the 2nd Superbike session was on, i walked in to the garage and Paul (Bird) the team owner said, "Shakey, there's 10-15 minutes left, why don't you get your helmet on and do the last 2 or 3 laps to loosen yourself up a bit" now if i'm honest i thought hmmm, not so sure but nonetheless i got my helmet on, a larger pair of gloves on and walked out to my bike in pit lane with my crew chiefs words echoing in my head, "just 2 or 3 steady laps mate, see how your hand is", with that   headed out.

As you'll know if you were at Donington it was bloody freezing and really windy, i got going down Craner curves and thought to myself i daren't cruise or the tyres will get cold and i'll get flicked off the thing so i semi got going, the hand wasn't feeling too bad but as i crossed the start finish line i noticed my lap timer on my bike wasn't working so i had no idea how fast i was going, to be honest i had a steady ride around and immediately noticed i was catching people very quickly but i wasn't pushing at all, just riding and trying to blow the cobwebs out, i ended up getting just three flying laps which was perfect, the hand didn't seem to give me too much grief so that was positive but when i pulled in the box and one of my boys was shaking his head and clapping i thought bless them, they're happy i'm back, however, it wasn't that at all, in those 2-3 steady laps i was meant to do i went P1 lol!!!!

The final session of the day was an hour and a half long, almost immediately despite the real strong winds i went lots faster than i had in the first session, we done a few exits all on the same tyres to get up to speed more and tried a small things setting wise then a bit later on we tried the first of our new 2015 parts, to say that the bike was different is a bit of an understatement but at the same time you never just bolt something on a race bike an automatically go faster, it's always a small compromise of something or another, we chipped away trying to improve and got better and better but by that point the tyres were well and truly passed their best and way over race distance so for the last 15 minutes or so we put a new pair in but stayed with the harder rear rather than firing in a zero like the majority of the field in order to get a lap time in, i did improve though and improved enough to end the session P1, with the new components we need some time to get the best out of the bike but that session was definitely a good starting point!!

After being in leathers and boots pretty much all day due to media and riding the best part of the day was taking my boots off, the ankles were a bit sore but at the same time it would appear they're fine on the bike and that's all that matters, i can't wait now for round 1, blow off some more cobwebs and get back to work, hope to see some of you guys there, take it easy, Shakey #67            

Getting you up to speed..

Hey guys and girls, i thought that whilst i'm sat on a flight i'd spend 20 mins or so bringing you up to speed on everything going on. Now, as you know from my last Blog things pre season wise haven't exactly gone to plan, in fact that's a bit of a b****y understatement, typically though i'm super positive, it's these little set backs that show you just how bad you want something and i can assure you with NO understatement whatsoever that i want more BSB titles so getting fixed and ready for round 1 at Donington park has been TOP TOP priority!!

It's funny really because spending all my time over the last two weeks either in a hyperbaric chamber or having laser and magnetic field therapy gives you lots of time to think and gather yourself, my progress recovery wise is going well, last Monday i got told by my physio that whilst my right ankle was massive, swollen and just about every colour in a rainbow and i wasn't walking so good at all that trying to walk and pushing off the ankle whilst walking would only help disperse the swelling although it'd be bloody sore, well, i had a session with him Monday afternoon and was staying up in Ipswich that night for back to back sessions the following morning so what did i do, go straight to a sports shop in the town, by some gym kit and get straight in the gym, that hour of cardio, 20 mins on the cross trainer, 20 mins on a bike and 20 minutes walking (hobbling) on the running machine on random steep hills program had me gritting my teeth muttering all sorts of swear words because of how much it was hurting but at the same time had me absolutely over the moon and so so happy to be back training that it was almost in a funny old way a bit emotional, sounds daft doesn't it but it's the truth!!

The next morning at the physio's one of the lady physio's in there was like "so what did you get up to last night, anything good?" i said good, i'm so happy, i brought some gym kit and hit the gym because i was told i needed to start to try to walk without such a limp and pushing off my ankle to help with the swelling!! she looked at me and gave me a wry smile and kind of shook her head and wondered off while the laser was doing it's thing lol!!!!! Full gas, it's the only way ;-)

Basically to bring you up to today all i've been doing is hitting the gym and pushing harder and harder, from a pain point of view on the hills fast walking things are getting much better, running's out of the question right now but on the cross trainer for instance i'm getting right back up towards maximum heart rate again so everything's going in the right direction.

I took out the Z1000 i have at home the other day, the one thing i haven't yet mentioned is my hand, that is getting better although perhaps a bit more delicate at the minute than the ankle, riding that bike was mega, it felt great to be back on a bike, but strange too, if i made my outside of my hand grip the bars it was almost like my big and index fingers went straight and vice versa, i plan to do a fair bit more riding on the road before Thursday which is the day of the official BSB test at Donington then the plan is if the track's dry and warm we'll have a go at riding and if it's damp/cold or wet i'll just do all the media stuff there and spend the extra week to 10 days getting stronger and fitter.

I really hope Donington is dry and decent to be honest, my PBM team have worked really hard over the winter with parts for our 2015 bike and i've not yet tried a single part as i crashed in Almeria boxing off our 2014 ideas, i know my team mates Stuart Easton and Hutchy both liked what they tried and said the bike was definitely improved so i can't wait to try it. 

I've been up in Glasgow since yesterday evening to open a new branch of a shop called Ride on, i went on behalf of Shoei and they really looked after me with a real nice hotel, a nice meal with Steve, Shoei's Scottish/Irish and Isle of Man sales guy and as for today at the shop well they were a great bunch and it was a real nice day weather wise, i was assured by a few guys that turned up today was their summer lol!!! there was a great turn out and a real nice bunch of guys and girls that turned up to see me so it was all good!!!

Once this flight lands i'm pretty much straight off to the hotel for Eurosport tomorrow, with the race being in Thailand it means another real early start, i think i've got to be at the studio at 4am so a big gym session tonight and an early night are the order of today, tomorrow afternoon with my family then Monday through to Wednesday full gas training and healing then Thursday (fingers crossed) get back on it!!

Right, that's me, you're all fully back up to speed so lets catch up again real soon, take it easy, Shakey#67 

That DEFINITELY wasn't in the script!!!

Well i think it's pretty fair to say that most of you will have already read about what happened here in Almeria yesterday, the final session of the day, doing a bit of a longer consistent lap time run i had a BIG off throttle highside very similar to the one i had back at Silverstone in 2013, it's funny, well, far from funny but when you have those kind of crashes that you really weren't expecting you always seem to get more hurt than when you perhaps wind it on taking liberties with no traction control and send yourself to the moon, but, anyway i had a crash and unfortunately it was a big one and even more unfortunately i've broken my left hand which resulted in an operation last night to fix it, long and the short of it is one of my knuckles disappeared down into my hand and broke it, good news is though as there's no point in dwelling on it i was operated on and with some screws and plates (a meccano set lol) it's all been put back together so i'm already on the mend.

So then to the bad news, today i had quite a lot of stuff to get through in order to box off our 2014 ideas, i got literally 95% through all of that hence the steady ish lap times then i went and flicked myself so now all my 2015 work is well and truly on the back burner.

Getting back to the operation fortunately it was performed under local anaesthetic so i didn't feel sick once it was completed but on the same token it's nearly bloody 3-30am and i cant sleep at all, i'm wide awake so god knows what medication they gave me hence the reason for sitting here in bed typing this.

The doctor has said i need a month to heal up and be right which takes me exactly to the first round but i'm planning on heading back to the UK tomorrow now to jump in a hyperbaric chamber and get the bones lasered etc so i'm hoping that'll increase healing time considerably, i've supposedly got to keep this cast on for 2-3 weeks but i'll see what my guy in the UK says and do absolutely everything i possibly can to be ready for the Donington park test in 3 weeks, fingers, well not on my left hand crossed guys and girls, take it easy, Shakey#67 

That was close!!!!!

I've got to say, i'm feeling pretty full of myself right this minute, i'm sat on a flight out to Spain for the next round of testing for this season, it's funny in a way, it literally feels like i never got the chance to go home, i guess in some ways i didn't because no sooner was i back from the last Almeria test we jumped in the car and headed down to our house in Spain for just under 2 weeks, then we got back to the UK late last Friday, i headed pretty much straight up to a Mac Tools function at Silverstone Saturday evening, back home early hours Sunday, spent the day with the kids on Sunday then today, Monday i'm back on a flight to Spain again, why though am i feeling pretty full of myself, well let's just say this trip nearly got off to a very  bad start, about 8-30am i went online to check in for my flight and whilst the website accepted my advanced passenger info etc it wouldn't let me pick a seat or actually check in, simply saying collect at check in desk, well, moving on, i went to said check in desk only to be told by the lady in orange, sorry sir, that flight's overbooked and because you didn't check in online you can't actually fly today, you'll have to be A, re routed or B get the next flight whenever that is, NOT GOOD!!!! Long story short then, after the same conversation with the customer services guy i managed to get myself on the flight despite him also being adamant i couldn't fly too, at best i could only be a reserve if somebody doesn't show, the long and the short of it was after being told "don't worry there could be up to €250 in compensation" i explained that wouldn't go very far towards the probable €15-20,000 my team would want in compensation after booking tests, paying to send trucks and staff etc, as i said, long story short i'm on the flight, it's all good!!!    

This test is going to be pretty interesting for me, whilst we don't have our "full on" 2015 bike as such there's been a lot of hard work done since the lat tests and going straight back to the track where we tried all of the prototype stuff will give us a definite answer and direction going forward, then, on an even more positive note we get to back to back the new stuff at two more tracks, Cartagena and Guadix, the latter from memory being far more like a BSB type of track even though it's probably been about 8 years or so since i was last there!!!

I'm going to try, i promise to update you guys after all three of the tests so for now i'm gonna kick back and look forward to riding tomorrow, talk to you soon, take it easy, Shakey#67

Lucky boy!!!!!!

I guess it's pretty fair to say I'm a pretty lucky boy right now, I mean as it stands, yesterday and today in the first week of February I've just completed my first two day test of 2015, it's not very often in BSB that you get the chance to get out this early in the year but you see the thing is this, far from resting on our laurels after a great 2014 my PBM team have been working incredibly hard back at base to give me a package with which I'll have the best possible chance of defending my title and the work they've been doing needed testing, you see the results of this test gave the guys the feedback they needed in order to go out and get proper parts made, sure, they could have just had the proper bits made at a fairly big expense and hoped they were good but that's not how they roll, instead we rocked up at Almeria with a loads of ideas and hybrid parts to gain the correct information required before doing the time and money consuming bit of getting them made, hence the reason it was so important to get out early in order to give ourselves the required lead times to have the correct parts fabricated ready for the next set of tests.

I was feeling all a bit hard done by the other week when after booking flights, hotels and track time at Aragon alongside the WSB boys the team decided to cancel 3 days before we were due to leave as believe it or not the forecast was snow and cold, it turned out to be exactly the right call though as a couple of the WSB boys never turned a single lap!!

With Almeria booked we flew out Wednesday evening ready to test Thursday/Friday with a whole load of Moto 2 and 3 boys, this was going to be interesting lol!!!

Thursday the weather wasn't overly kind to us to be honest, pretty strong winds and cold temperatures both ambient and track wise limited the number of laps we did however it was great to get out an blow out the cobwebs and as soon as I got going a bit we started working through some of the stuff we needed to try and with Friday's forecast looking slightly better we completed 40 odd laps and ticked a few boxes.

Friday the weather was better, it was still pretty fresh first thing meaning we once again didn't get on track until around 11-30 but with much less wind things very quickly started coming together, I had a number of parts and settings to work for and having been on the Kawasaki now for a while it was really interesting trying new parts and feeling their effect on the bike, we found some stuff that I really think is going to help us this year and have feedback for various people that means they can fabricate parts accordingly, in the end I got pretty close to my best time from last year too despite the far cooler and far greener for want of a better word track conditions so all in all it was a real good test, the other positive was that Stuart my team mate confirmed my feedback when he got to try a few of the options available too.

The great thing now is we have about 3 weeks before we're back out again and from a performance point of view we should be in an even better position by then plus have the new parts or at least some of them to test so now all I have to do is continue training hard and wait for what I'm sure will seem like an eternity before I can get back out to play again, tell you something, I can't wait!!! Take it easy guys and girls and catch up again real soon, Shakey #67 

Bringing you up to speed!!!

I guess right now it would be daft to sit here on route to Penrith and try to say lets do a bit of a catch up Blog shall we, i mean lets be honest, i haven’t Blogged since round 5 which is far from acceptable and where on earth would i start, round 6 i hear you say.. flippin’ hell i struggle to remember what was going on yesterday let alone 5-6 months ago lol so here’s how we’re gonna play it..

As you all know the outcome of the 2014 British Superbike Championship was pretty good for me, however, whilst at the time history was made with me being the 1st person to ever win 4 BSB titles the fact that Kiyo couldn’t race me in those final three races kinds knocked the edge off of things a little, for me personally as well as for plenty of race fans out there, i found it pretty difficult at the time to deal with, i wanted that head to head showdown with Kiyo more than anyone but upon reflection i never asked the guy to crash did i? For sure he was unlucky and so were the fans to a certain degree but i worked so hard all year long, despite all manners of media and journalism criticising me a little at times for my lean spell wins wise mid season reality is when i wasn’t winning i was third at worst apart from one 5th place and 2 crashes so a total of 10 wins and 23 total podiums of which only 3 i think were 3rd’s was far from terrible!!!!

That’s all in the past now though, 2014’s title was special, to me, you may well say why was?, well the way i see it, straight after Brands hatch i was so so busy media wise, going here there and everywhere that by the time i actually got the chance to sit down and reflect on the whole thing i’d almost made my mind up what i wanted to do for 2015 and from that point in i was only looking forwards, not backwards!!!
Quite a lot happened after the season finished regarding opportunities for next season and there really were some exciting things that had me real close to contemplating a change, however it’s my belief that if you’re not 100% certain in a decision then you shouldn’t make it, that and the fact that the PBM team and i have worked together now for the past 3 seasons and taken 2 titles and a very close 2nd place made it a bit of a no brainer in the end so i’m staying at home for another season and absolutely cannot wait to get back out riding again, i know the team and Birdy are super motivated to get the absolute max out of the bike for next season, with other manufacturer’s coming in with all new bikes we’re certainly going to have to work hard but then that’s exactly what this game’s about, team work, the guys working hard, me training hard, testing cleverly, giving the correct feed back and moving forwards together, i’m really looking forward to it.

One thing that i’ve been on with for way too long now is a new website, i’m not using that as an excuse for not Blogging, what i am saying is that there was supposed to be an all new site early on last season and i kept thinking i’ll Blog when the new site’s live, well, the rest is history and now i’m sat here rather embarrassed that it’s taken so long to get that site going but hey ho, hopefully we’re not far off now.

I don’t know how many of you went to the Motorcycle Live show, i went up on the first saturday but had a pretty manic schedule so i never really got the chance to look at anything, a couple of my personal bikes were up there on display which was pretty cool, one of them seems to be spending more time going from show to show than it does getting ridden lol!!!

As we speak i’m sat on a train up to Penrith, i’m off up to see the team and back home again tomorrow, we met up just before Motorcycle Live so it’ll be interesting to see what plans have been made since then going forward.

I’m really looking forwards to getting away soon, a week in the Czech Republic then straight away again after that too, this year for some reason feels like it’s been about the longest one i’ve ever lived lol, i guess at least it was a good one lol, catch up with you soon guys and girls, Shakey #67  

Brands hatch round 5 2014

To say i was looking forward to getting to Brands hatch for round 5 of the championship is a bit of an understatement, ironically i’d spent a bit of time there on the run up to the event doing an MSV track day on the monday then starting the 241 mile bicycle ride i did with a lap of Brands the tuesday before the event!!

I have to confess to having a bit of a secret about going to the GP circuit for this round, there was a lap time that i’d set myself as a target for the weekend, i never mentioned it to anyone and as i’ve said a million times before i’m not overly fussed about Pole Position’s but the lap time i had in my head, with the new 17” Pirelli tyres i thought would be doable..

I also have a confession, for no unknown reason whatsoever despite the fact we had our better engine in my bike felt like a ZX3 not a ZX10, there was no reason, it just didn’t seem to pull at all, i did 3 or 4 flying laps in the 1.28’s CONSIDERABLY off of my target time and pulled straight back in to the pits to say to the boys what on earth is up with this thing, they checked all the data and couldn’t really see anything and straight away i thought bloody hell this is gonna be a long weekend then!!!

I ended that session in 2nd which was ok but i was far from happy overall with our performance..

The boys did some work after studying the rest of the data from the 1st session and we improved marginally for free practice 2 to the tune of half a second a lap but again, power or the feeling of a massive lack of it was doing me no favours whatsoever..

Overnight the boys made some more changes including the engine but the final free practice session was wet to start then semi dried up, i did a few laps but as it got less and less wet i saw little or no point in destroying a pair of wets so i sat in the box and watched the rest of the session as the boys were still nearly 3 seconds a lap off the pace even right at the end of the session.

Obviously the mornings condition’s never gave us the chance to continue to improve the bike so we ended up doing just that throughout the qualifying sessions, i ended Q1 safe enough around a quarter of a second off where we needed to be but i was trying to fix the bike rather than driving myself mad about a lap time, Q2 again we never really had anything and things weren’t looking especially good, i just couldn’t find the feeling i was looking for from the bike and was really struggling still to push harder, we got through to Q3 though so i had to try to make that count regardless!!!!!!

I completely and utterly threw caution to the wind in Q3, i pushed to my absolute max and somehow managed to do enough to take Pole Position,don’t even bother questioning how because i don’t really know myself, i was far from expecting it i can assure you and as for my secret lap time, well, no where near it, to be fair everyone’s including my Pole time had been pretty crap all weekend which was strange, sure the ambient and the track temperature were high but blimey, i fell well over a second short of my target time, very strange…

We made some more changes in overnight ready for morning warm up and got out with a plan of banging in as many laps as possible in the 15 minutes in order to get a feel for what the bike was going to be like but bearing in mind the slightly cooler morning temperatures we went out on the harder rear tyre, after just a few laps though i decided to come in and try the softer option too as i figured covering all bases at this point was critical, we were far from happy really so needed to make the best of whatever was thrown at us, i ended the session 4th and a quarter of a second off so i knew we’d be there or thereabouts we’d just have to wait to see what mother nature had in store for us..

Race one at least ended up being dry, dry but much cooler than the first day which we figured made the harder rear tyre the way forward, i got a good start and lead initially, i could see and hear James Ellison was right on my tail though and figured there was zero point in trying to drop the pack but giving it 100% as i simply wasn’t going to get away, after about 12 laps though a challenge came from elsewhere, Kiyo came passed, initially i thought i must have been sleeping or something because he came past me so fast on the brakes into Paddock that i thought there was no way he’d get it stopped but he did, we ended up having a great battle over the remaining fee laps and i had a good feeling that although he’d passed me i thought i had enough to pass him back before the last turn then it’d be a drag race to the line, i got a great run on him through and out of Stirlings the penultimate corner but he blocked ever so slightly my run on the exit causing me to roll the throttle a millimetre or so, i knew the pass was on but that roll cast a tiny bit of doubt, i got alongside him approaching Clearways but it would’ve been a massive lunge rather than a clean pass due to the roll so i turned tight and drove as hard as i could to the line but Kiyo out dragged me and beat me by a tenth of a second so i was a bit gutted but a 2nd’s 20 points and 3 podium credits so no massive drama really..

We sat down after the race to go through the data to try to formulate a plan for race two after learning what we’d learnt during race one then i left the guys to go for my usual lunch, power nap and chill out before race 2, the weather was closing in thick and fast though so we were desperately hoping it would remain dry, having got the fastest lap in race one i was once again on Pole Position and i can assure you the view up towards turn one was like the scene out of a film set, angry looking big black clouds everywhere, it didn’t look pretty at all!!!

As the lights went out i once again got a great start, it was almost as if we all just wanted to get the race done and were in a real hurry because of it!!, James Ellison came past and lead for a lap or two but his pace was comfortable to follow so i figured i’d give it a few laps there, keep a good close eye on the weather, hope we made at least 2/3rds race distance in the mean time then get back to the front in case the race got stopped but that all went to pieces when James ran real hot into Westfield, he missed the apex by about a metre and i thought this is a good chance to outdrive  him down the hill which i focused on, i noticed way out wide though he was still way out wide then as i was getting the run on him on the inside i thought uh oh, he’s gonna run out of track.. the next thing i know he went down big time but immediately his bike dug in and started bouncing, now at that point it has to be said you make a split second decision because that’s all you've got and if you get lucky you avoid that bouncing bike and if you get unlucky, well cast your minds back to 2006 with Tom Sykes and the late Karl Bomber Harris, i made my choice and it looked initially like it was wrong, in what seemed like slow motion i thought oh nooooooo, this is gonna be massive, James’s bike flicked up, hit my bike and smashed my fingers but unbelievably and through far more luck than judgement i stayed on the bike and continued on my way, shortly after however the race was red flagged, mother nature was determined to play her part wasn’t she!!!!

We had a good shower of rain after the race was stopped, it looked like lots more would be coming too, we had to restart the final start with wet settings, for the first time all weekend i actually hoped to not lead into turn one and have to lead in the properly sketchy conditions but as the lights we out that’s exactly what happened, i lead for a bit then a few guys came past, Kiyo being one of them so i kept pushing and eventually passed him back, Josh Waters came through and looked on rails so i thought i’m not even gonna bother trying to chase you lol, then i got involved in a bit of a battle with Richard Cooper and Keith Farmer, the thing was those two at the time were battling for a podium they’d never had and were knocking each other wide all over the places, i actually rode there thinking blimey you two keep this up and i’ll have an easy second, eventually however, Tommy Bridewell past me and i ended up crossing the finish line in 5th, sure it wasn’t a podium credit finish but i beat my main rivals and stayed upright, exactly what we needed.

Coming away from my home race having not won was a bit of a bitter pill to swallow but at the end of the day i got beaten by a 10th of a second in the first race ad was feeling good for the 2nd race, unfortunately that ended up getting stopped and in the iffy conditions my results over the two races meant i accumulated the most points over the course of the weekend and was awarded with the Monster Energy King of Brands trophy which i’m really chuffed with!!! Another track i love coming up next, the wickedly fast tarmac motocross track that is Thruxton, i can’t wait, hope to see some of you guys there, take it easy, Shakey #67