Motivation.

Woot moggy! We're going racing....

I'm training again properly, have been for the past couple of months - well, properly for me, real racers and that can look away now. In the middle of that funny thing when your body starts doing things that you didn't think it could and the brutal high intensity intervals start to make sense. And that feeds the motivation for the next ones.

I have a bit of a grudge match with a solo at 24/12. Last year's was a mess. Head a bit wonky from memories of the year before's 12-hour solo and the crap around it, thanks for that. Leg a bit wonky after someone knocked me off on a benign arena track catching the end of my bar on a pointless overtake - 'Oh, was I a bit close?' What do you think, muppet... - and then, when I should have just dug in and got on with it, the realisation that no way, back in the real world, was I going to be able to race pairs at SITS two weeks later and, in the process, would badly let my mate Dave down badly.

Which was obvious. And if I weren't so stupid and hadn't been so blase, I'd never have put myself in that position. But the end result was that I bailed on the basis that I'd live to fight another day at SITS. Which I did, but not very well because I'd already done 11 racing hours and my back self destructed at three in the morning.

But anyway - none of that this time. Just 24 solo at 24/12. One aim - to finish the thing and enjoy riding it, because oddly, despite being a not very endurance athlete - all fast-twitch muscle and sprintiness, me - I really like soloing. It feels like good value for money. The pace is relatively mellow. And you get to watch the course unfolding like a good book, shifting and changing and wearing.

And you get to know the course, the smoothest, most economical lines, the bits where you can relax and flow for free speed and...

So there it is.

But first I get to race 10 Under Kirroughtree with a mate at the weekend as a pair. A final blurry speed fest, hopefuly, by Ragley but with fat, fast tyres, to get that out of my system. Then a bit of a taper. A long drive and go.