In between dodging floods, putting in some hard laps and checking out his cool new riding duds, our Down Under Wonder’s been getting involved in a spot of second-hand van sales…
It’s been a tough month over here, for Queensland in particular. I’m from Queensland over here for people not up to date with their geography. Queensland is kinda in the middle of the East Coast and called the Sunshine State! Not this month however…
After banging on to everyone back home about how great the weather is and feeling very righteous in my decision to move to Australia, I kinda got handed a raw deal when Mother Nature unloaded a stupid amount of water from the clouds. I’ve never been part of any natural disasters in my lifetime and I wouldn’t really call the floods that happened over here a huge natural disaster in terms of the movies we watch. But on a scale of one to 10 from the way I look at things I’d say it was about a five or six maybe? Maybe because I wasn’t directly affected by the floods but my friends from Toowoomba all said it was pretty scary and from seeing some of the damage driving back and forth to Toowoomba after it had died down you could see how the water completely ripped the river banks apart.
There was some proper concern that all the dams we have would burst and then we would have really been in the s**t! All the water would have run down towards the Brisbane river and it woulda been a lot worse than it was. So as much as the TV dramatises everything it was a pretty big deal and there were a lot of unfortunate people affected by the floods. It’s defo something I haven’t seen before with my own eyes but for me it was pretty exciting! I’ve always been fascinated by the weather and storms etc so it was exciting and a bit nerve racking to be apart of something like that but not as scary as the TV makes out! Harriet’s dad was over just before the floods came and he had to endure a week of solid rain which wasn’t ideal. Anyways, enough about the weather – Jesus, that’s what people talk about when there’s nothing to talk about…
So, onto things of interest. When the weather went away it was back to riding and I was getting proper excited about it. I was having flashbacks to last year when I was cutting out 40-minute motos in the extreme heat and it started to float my boat a little bit. Last year I spent a lot of time at my mate’s farm riding his deep sand track. It was amazing getting out there and leaving the world behind. So I wanted to make sure I headed back out that way to get the laps in with my good mate Keith Amor who came over to stay just as Harriet’s dad was leaving.
Keith is an old friend from home who I’m sure I’ve mentioned before and we always get together for a winter training session in preparation for the season. This year he is riding for Honda doing the world endurance championships and all the major road races in Ireland so we both have our goals to reach and we have been working hard on and off the track.
Riding at Matt’s house is the perfect way to build up on bike fitness. It’s over a two-minute lap time around the deep, flowing sand track out in the middle of nowhere! It’s fun and peaceful being away from the city and Matt’s mum always cooks me the best homemade food! Anyways, we started off on 20-minute motos to break ourselves in and were already up to 35 minutes by the end of the week. Not pushing things too hard but still riding a good pace. I had a good flow going every moto and the bike was working perfect!
I always love getting on a new bike when I start riding and we’ve already got a great set-up with help from Pro Circuit and my mechanic Ian. The bike is just a pleasure to ride and the laps are coming to me nicely at the moment. The heat some days is crazy but you feel such an improvement after each day that it just makes you want to do more!
After being in the gym for the last two months it’s a very different feeling waking up in the morning after gruelling motos and feeling completely toned from head to toe, not just in my shoulders or abs from whatever gym exercise I have been doing. Motocross really works every single muscle in your body and works it to perfection.
So after working on my weak points in the gym, then feeling the improvement on the bike it gives me the confidence to run, cycle and ride harder, faster and longer each day. With every improvement in distance, weight or speed comes more confidence and I really wanna be peaking for the start of the season. I feel I have had my fun year now but now I wanna win again. I think it was a blessing in disguise that I lost last year because I may not be training as hard as I am now and I feel I am already ahead of where I was last year at this time.
The next two weeks is a full-blown riding programme so I’ll be cutting out 45-minute motos by the end and probably feeling either amazingly good or pretty drained! Which leads me onto my next subject…
Kawasaki have a team sponsor called BSC – Body Sports Science – which is a major supplement and dietary specialist who also support Australian rugby and football teams. We’re pretty lucky to be involved with them so Keith, my new team-mate Dean Ferris and I all went down for a proper sit down and lengthy discussion on our eating habits, training programmes and supplements. It was good to get an expert opinion on everything and also have access to the sports university where we can get all our fitness and vo2 max tests done. We left with a boxful of goodies and booked in for my tests so I should have all that business to chat about next month.
Oh hey, I sold my camper! My first build and sell! I’m gonna be the new RS/SC Motorhomes of Australia! Tell ya what too, those boys could learn a few things from my joinery skills! The camper was a mad creation and it was probably the coolest thing I’ve ever built but it was time for it to go as it was just parked outside not being used for a while. The rain was putting me off going to the beach and I just had that feeling to get rid of it so I did! It was the coolest thing for taking to the beach though – it had everything you could think of and was really inconspicuous.
We kinda just blended in with the traffic down the beach rather than being branded a ‘camper’. It was like a little stealth mobile, full blacked out windows so you could just watch the world go by while in the comfort of your own bed. I will miss it and we had some giggles in it – the funniest times were when people used to check themselves out in the reflection of the windows, unaware that we were staring right at them only centimetres away.
I’m wearing Fly kit this year and I really like it. I actually have shirts that fit me this year and it makes me think I look cool on the bike! Plus the fact I don’t get my sleeves caught in the clutch lever is a much added bonus. I feel streamline and fit on the bike so far, still working hard on my technique as well as fitness, so hopefully if all goes well this year in the Aussie Nationals I can come back and do the British GP. I have already talked with Kawasaki and Steve Dixon about it so barring any misfortunes I’ll be home for Matterley and I hope I can do you all proud!
It’ll be awesome to come race at that track again – it’s one of my favourites…āØ
