And so it begins..

Let me paint you a picture of "life" with the Zlock brothers...  Dan & Dale.  (Owners of Zlock Racing)  Note, I haven't seen Dale in months.

Location, the team HQ in Washington. I'm on the upper mezzanine of the race shop organizing my leathers and helmets for the weekend.  I hear Dan and Dale struggling (read grumbling "shock") with loading something into the race trailer for the weekend. I peer down from the upper floor and sincerely (honest here) ask "Hey, do you guys need me?" To which Dale replies, without hesitation I might add, "Do you hear a motorcycle running?" ..... and then silence... followed by a chuckle... 

Pfffftt ...  Ahhh, the bond is strong after all these years..  (Laughing) 

So, after what felt like the longest winter in history I find myself back on track with my racing family for another year of adventure.

As always, huge thanks to the sponsors, friends, family and people that make this happen.  Special note to Rob Burns (the team painter) who was unfortunately involved in a car accident just days before our first race.  Thankfully unhurt, Rob wasn't able to complete the 2017 colors leaving the bike quite bare for the opening round. (Hence you won't see any pictures of it until the next round) - Something to look forward to then..  :)

Notes on practice & the races.

The first few laps of the year are always a hazardous situation for me.  My mind has the ability and the "intention" to go fast but my body and respective "feel", from several months off of a motorcycle, aren't in-tune with this "intention".  If this makes sense.  It's quite easy to make a mistake on a cold track that'll put the team on the back foot for the weekend.  Not to mention my sense of self-preservation and this affinity with being able to feed myself... :)  So, with that, in a perfect world, I purposely chill out for the first few sessions, if I can. ...  Another thing that always seems to surprise me is how, despite how hard/intentionally I train in the off season, you simply can't replicate the same muscle stresses off of the motorcycle.  I always seem to start the year in great "shape", but it takes a bit of time to get into "bike shape". Seat time is the remedy. 

This was an interesting race for me.  Two key things happened. Firstly, at this point of the weekend, I had a total of eight laps under my belt for the year and simply wasn't "up-to-speed" to push the limits. Also, our competition had taken a step forward in their package for the year. Great stuff actually!  The result saw me in a serious scrap for the win.  It's funny because I really enjoyed the race as it gave me an opportunity to evaluate the competition for a few laps to observe where our relative strengths and weaknesses were.  Armed with that I could formulate a plan to get by for a hopeful win.  Luckily, after a few laps I was able to use some lapped traffic and a decent last lap (New lap record I might add, 01:14.448) to sneak away with the win!  Bodes well, 16 laps for the year, one win, one lap record!

Race two.

Reflecting on the previous day's experiences we had a plan for the race. Luckily, things went our way on the first few laps and with some really lucky breaks through lapped traffic, we managed to eek away another win!

Stay tuned as we'll up and racing again in just a few weeks!

Oliver