Hello all,

I have been a little slack with my blogs since Eastern Creek – I’m sorry, but I’m back now! We have had two more rounds since the last blog, Mallala and Phillip Island, so we’ll start with those rounds.

Malalla went reasonably well for me considering I hadn’t ever seen the track before the start of the weekend. My speed was never as good as the front two guys, Bryan Staring and Jamie Stauffer, but due to some dodgy qualifying weather I was able to sneak up to second on the grid. That made me really happy but I knew the races were going to be really tough.

In race one I scored my second holeshot for the year and lead the majority of the first lap before I got sucked up and spat out the rear-end of the five-way battle. Once I found my place I just tried to keep pushing and maybe find some speed for the second race.

I felt like I did that and in the second race I lead almost five laps and held my own with the front guys bar Jamie, who was on a mission setting lap record after lap record. I finished 5th again but I definitely wasn’t happy as I was in a three-way battle and the two others were making a lot of mistakes. All in all it was a good weekend as far as preparation goes for next year’s Mallala round.

After that it was on to Phillip Island for the MotoGP weekend – a race I have been dreaming of being a part of for years and I think it was maybe even better than I had dreamed. It was unreal!

We had three races over the weekend, two championship races and one support race. We had some dramas throughout the weekend and I was unhappy with my results because I thought going into the race that I would be quite strong considering I had tested and raced there this year.

I qualified fourth and finished in that position for all three races, but unfortunately I was stung with a jump start in race one which put me back to 11th after a 10 second penalty.

It was a real blast in the last race for us when I managed to holeshot in front of thousands of GP fans and lead the first lap, being able to run with the front guys. I set my best lap and nearly what I thought was a lap record on to get off the bike and find out Staring had gone way under the lap record. It made me feel a little better about being left behind in the final laps but I sure do want to challenge for the podium and possibly a win at the championship decider at the end of the month.

Besides the racing, I have just been keeping myself in shape. I’m currently on the Gold Coast staying with Staring and heading out to Queensland Raceway for a track day tomorrow.

I tell you what it makes it much easier to get out of bed in the morning when it’s not freezing and blowing a gale outside like back in Goulburn!

We have been out on a bicycle every morning and yesterday morning we went to watch a team cycling race. There were about one hundred people racing and we noticed right up the pointy end was Troy Bayliss putting the rest of the field in a lot of pain. It was pretty impressive.

That’s it for now, I’ll check in after the final round later this month.