Aragon test!!

For some reason it feels like its been a bloody long time since I last wrote a Blog for you guys, maybe it feels like that to me for a couple of reasons, 1 because it probably is and 2 because all I seem to have been doing just lately is be flat out training in order to be fully fit for the start of my test schedule.
Going back a little in some ways I guess I can count the accident we had back in January as a bit of a blessing because after it happened and set me back big time training wise I decided to join a gym in order to try to fast track myself back to a decent level of fitness and as its turned out that seems to have gone exactly to plan, I've been waking for the last three or four weeks at 5-45am four times a week, heading straight to the gym for 6-30, doing a warm up, some cardio work, some strength work, some core work then finishing that lot off with a session in the pool, that little lot gets me back home by just after 9am then it's an hour or so with the kids, breakfast, then off out cycling for two or three hours, it's been pretty intense I tell ya!!!!!!
Right enough about training, we recently got our testing schedule fully sorted and it's an equally intense affair starting with 2 days at Motorland Aragon for the CRT test alongside James Ellison on the PBM bike, Du Puniet etc followed directly by 2 days at Cartagena then straight onto a possible 2 days in Almeria, looks like its a good job I did make such an effort training wise, 6 days back to back on the bike after 5 months off, #Fullon!!!!!!
I have to admit I wasn't exactly feeling the fact that I was going to get to ride my new bike at a track i'd never seen before but that said sometimes it gives you the facility to just chip away with no preconceptions as to what's good or what's bad so turning up there to ride only to find hurricane Katrina was in town was a bit of a disaster, it's funny though because had I have taken a photo outside of the pit box it looked like the most beautiful sunny blue skied day but reality was it was bloody freezing, there was no track temperature whatsoever and the wind, well, that was just out of order, changes to the bike were completely unnecessary because it was the wind that decided if you made an apex and whether or not you managed to stay on track on the exit, needless to say we didn't get much running done at all, we started a tiny bit of work on the new electronics package which would appear is going to take a bit of work to refine properly on track but that was about all we were able to get done, fortunately the weather forecast for the following day was better with nowhere near as much wind and going by the fact I absolutely loved the track already I couldn't wait to get back there the following morning!!!!!
The following day it took what seemed forever for the track temperature to come up a bit, again a photo of the outside would've had you thinking that it was at least 30 degrees outside but trust me it wasn't, the track temperature finally got into double figures about 11 ish so we headed out for a look, without the wind the track was completely different and so so much fun, my first flying lap was 2 seconds quicker than I'd been the previous day so that'll give you an indication as to how bad the wind was!!!!!
We managed to work through a fair number of issues electronic's wise and to be honest that was fairly critical because until the engine was responding properly engine braking, overrun and connection wise there wasn't a lot of point doing too much chassis wise, that said from a chassis point of view whilst things weren't perfect we started right in the ballpark so electronics was where we needed to make the biggest steps..
We worked and worked throughout the day and funnily enough having spoken with James Ellison about what kind of lap times he was expecting or hoping to achieve on the Moto GP bike relatively speaking we were going pretty good, however as the day wore on I started getting faster and faster and faster and ended up with a lap time that we were extremely happy about, that's not pre season testing bullshit times either, that's real, don't get me wrong getting all excited about a lap time at a circuit that frankly has not a great deal of reference to anything in the UK might seem a little silly but we were FAST!!!!
It seems obvious to us as a team what's needed to improve the bike and I'm definitely starting to gel with the Kawasaki, a lot of people have asked how it compares to the Fireblade I rode last year and to be perfectly honest it's a very unfair comparison because now the bikes are less tuned so maybe 20-25 horsepower down and they have no electronic aids so the style of riding has to change a little, one thing I will say is that the team definitely know their stuff with the bike and for a first test I consider it a complete and utter success, I left Aragon in a very happy state of mind and really looked forward to getting out on track at Cartagena the next day even though it involved a 300 odd mile road trip in the hire car with Rat boy and Keith, that said the road that leaves Aragon and heads towards Valencia was like a mountain rally stage so that kept me highly amused for the first hour or so, Cartagena's another story though, one that I have to sit and type out a bit later, for now though I'm a very happy boy, big thanks to my team for all the hard work they put in to get us there and for the job done at the test, onwards and upwards or downwards as geographically the case is to Cartagena. Take it easy, Shakey #67