2 Stroke Diaries – It’s Only a Fish ‘n’ Chipper in a Field

We all have those weekends. The ones where absolutely nothing clicks. You convince yourself all week that this is going to be the weekend. The bike looks good in the garage. You’ve watched enough YouTube videos to come out feet on the pegs, on rails, looking and feeling a million bucks.…and then the gate drops….

Nothing…

Round 5 of the UK Evo Modern Two-Stroke Championship at Brookthorpe was exactly that for me. I just couldn’t find a rhythm.

You know those days where every lap feels like you’ve borrowed someone else’s bike? Every corner feels just a little awkward, every jump you feel like Ronnie Mac, and the harder you try, the slower you seem to go.

That was me all weekend.

I’d have the odd lap where I’d think, “There it is… I’ve found it, I can still do this.” Then I’d immediately lose it again in the next corner…Brilliant! 

By the end of the weekend I’d somehow managed to scrape together 9th overall.

Now, in all honesty, that’s not the end of the world. But if you’re anything like me, the finishing position doesn’t always tell the story. I wasn’t disappointed because of the result. I was disappointed because I knew I could ride way better than I had. And if you’re a motocross rider, you’ll know exactly what that feeling is like.

Then there’s the dreaded post moto mental recap where you replay every part of the race in your head. You analyse every mistake. You convince yourself that if you’d just carried a little more corner speed, or searched for some different lines, or not been such an old granny about the whole thing you might actually be enjoying yourself and not wanting to load up and go home.

Thankfully, the weekend had something far more important going for it. The racing might have been average, but everything else was mega. I stayed in the motorhome with my beautiful fiancé, spent the weekend surrounded by family and friends and I  laughed far more than I sulked. It became one of those race meetings that might’ve been disappointing in the riding department but reminds you why you started doing this in the first place.

Then something hit me on the drive home.

I’d spent two days really annoyed with myself over what was, in reality……a fish ‘n’ chipper in a field.

That’s not me disrespecting the series at all.

Quite the opposite. It’s me reminding myself that none of us are lining up for a factory contract. Nobody from HRC is waiting at the podium. The overall results aren’t deciding million pound sponsorship deals. It’s just a group of grown adults who have collectively decided that spending thousands of pounds to race noisy old two strokes around muddy fields is an excellent use of a weekend.

And honestly…

…it is.

Sometimes we all need reminding that motocross is supposed to be fun. Of course we want to do well. Of course we’re competitive. But when the helmet comes off, you’re stood in a field, usually in the middle of nowhere, with your mates, someone has the kettle on, someone’s burning burgers on a disposable BBQ, kids are riding bikes around getting up to no good, and everyone is laughing about something that happened in one of the races.

That’s the real result.

Not top ten.

Not first.

Just another weekend doing something we love with people we’d probably never have met if it wasn’t for motocross.