Team GWA, Paris – Dakar Rally

With deep sadness I have today withdrawn from competing in the Heroes Paris to Dakar, these are difficult times that we currently find ourselves in and I have had to put my company’s needs first and give my full focus on ensuring it’s stability for the future. Going away for three weeks at this moment is simply not an option.

I am gutted by this decision, I have put so much into this both financially & training & have sustained several injuries in doing so. This is not the end however, simply a postponement. I intend to continue to work on my bike skills and fitness, so that when I do get my chance I will be even better prepared then I am now. I wish all competitors in this years event the very best of luck and a safe return, in particular, the riders under the support of Patsy Quick’s ‘Team Desert Rose Racing’; Clive Dredge who has shown a great deal of courage & determination in being able to ride this event despite never having ridden in anything like it before, my good friend Dan Costescu from Romania who has just won the Romanian enduro championship for 2009 which is a great achievement, Jennifer Morgan, Christian Howarth & last but not least, Nick Bridger.

Had four very rewarding days back in Morocco to get some more last minute road book training in. The first two days were using GPS with the first day hampered by some unseasonal  rain that had recently fallen filling some previously dried up river beds, and making for some tricky crossings. The area we were aiming for turned out to be completely inaccessible by our off-road route and we ended up doubling back and doing a stint by road eventually getting in just before dark. The second day was a combination of fast trails, open desert and a large stone field, I spent the last few hours riding alone and arrived at our hotel shortly after Tamsin Jones & Andrew

which pleased me on my pace. The third day we used a road book from a previous Dakar event and ended in the sand dunes at Mersouga riding in the dark for the last hour which made navigation pretty tricky and me very thankful of my xenon headlights. The last day was by road book and was a previous maroc rallye stage starting with 90 km on the road followed by a deep rutted sandy trail that seemed to go on for ever. We then had a variety of fast stoney trails, some open desert plains, a boulder field and some beautiful mountain pistes. We rode 560 km in total, 370 of which were off-road and took a total of twelve hours, we only stopped the once for around half an hour to take on fuel and some very welcome refreshments.

I have confirmed my place with Patsy’s next training session in Morocco where we will spend four days riding previous Dakar stages in the Sahara. We will be once again practising road book navigation, as well as spending long days in the saddle riding tricky mountain and desert stages. As well as Patsy & Zippy, others in our group include Tamsin Jones & Andrew Neri who have both entered in next years Dakar event in Argentina & Chile who need to get as much riding in these conditions as possible to put them in optimum condition by New Years eve when the Dakar will begin. This will be mine and Clive Dredge’s (Patsy’s husband) last opportunity to get this kind of valuable training prior to competing in next months ’Heroes Legend’ Classic Dakar rallye starting 24th October. I leave on the 24th September and we commence our four days riding Saturday 26th before returning to the UK Wednesday 30th September. I will post an update on how we get on upon my return!

I had originally planned to be competing in this event, but my injury put a stop to all that! I therefore volunteered to help Patsy Quick and Desert Rose Racing who had entered Patsy, Zippy (Clive Town), Robert Law and Tamsin Jones in the 24 hour marathon class. We also were supporting Bernie & Jenny Wright with their respective team mates in the 12 hour 2 member teams and Andrew Neri in the 6 hour marathon class. This is the first time that this event, or any other event for that matter has run a 24 hour race in this country and we were all filled with in-trepidation on how the race would unfold. The 24 hour class started at 7pm on the Saturday evening just as the light was fading. The circuit was reduced to approximately 8 miles for the first 11 hours and then opened up to around 15 miles long at 6am on the Sunday morning. Early on Sunday we started to get some rain which turned in to a dense mist above the course making conditions tricky to say the least. Unfortunately, Zippy was ‘T’ boned by another bike while on the first lap and sustained a foot injury, but being full of grit and determination it did not stop him until around 3am Sunday morning when the pain became too much to bear. It latter turned out that Zippy’s foot was in fact broken and it was incredible that he had continued riding for as long as he did, at the time he retired he had already completed 21 laps and was well up the front end of the pack. We were fortunate to have 2009 Dakar finisher Mike Shepperd on hand who in his professional role of race horse vet administered first aid to Zippy’s foot.

With the exception of Zippy’s injury, the team had an excellent result: Patsy finished 3rd in the Veteran Class, Tamsin was 1st in Clubman class and also the fastest overall female entry, Robert Law was 2nd in the Clubman class. Very well done to them all!!

Friday 28th August and I’ve just had another x-ray to check for any abnormalities with the plate holding my shoulder together, and I’m pleased to say it all looks very good. Since having the plate fitted, my shoulder has responded very well and although there was a numbness and lack of sensation down my arm and hand immediately after my operation, this cleared after three weeks and everything now feels really good. Apart from a small scar from where the plate was inserted, everything looks totally normal and you wouldn’t know that its there. I now have clearance from my specialist to get back on with my bike training and riding off-road, you cannot imagine how good this feels!

Right shoulder with 9 hole plate

Right shoulder with 9 hole plate

This X-Ray was taken 9th July two weeks after the operation to attach a 150mm long plate with 8 screws, it all looks to be okay and I’m hopefully now back on the path of recovery. It’s great not to have a lump anymore and the shoulder is looking good, I’m also expecting to heal with the minimum of scaring as my surgeon has made a very neat incision. I’ve now started back at the gym working out on cross-trainer & bike in order to get my basic fitness back as soon as possible, I’m concentrating on lower body & general stamina for the moment in order to give the bone in my shoulder time to heal before moving on to more vigourus exercise. With luck, I should be back on with my bike training by September, I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to getting on with my riding.

Well, it’s now been several weeks & unfortunatly an x-ray taken two days ago has showed little evidence of this mending on it’s own. I’m therefore going into hospital today (Friday 3rd July) to have it plated, this should at least speed up the healing progress and it won’t look like I have an extra terrestial inside me trying to break out. All being well, I hope to be back on a bike within the next 4- 6 weeks.

eeks . . . Will keep you updated.

Well, it had to happen some time . . . I entered the Welsh Tarrenig Rally due to run on Sunday 10th May and booked myself onto Simon Pavey’s level 3 enduro course for the 7th & 8th May at ‘Walters Arena’ to get some last minute training in before the race. I was part of a small group of three being led by my old friend Gwyn riding the new BMW450 Enduro bikes, and all was going really well with the first two hours doing some fast trails and gnarly ascents & descents. We then stopped for a short refreshment break before resuming with practicing our technique on riding quickly around a coned off area with the objective of improving our race performance around tight corners, this started off well with all of us improving our ability each lap we completed, until on one of the faster laps I managed to get the front wheel to wash out while turning in resulting in me being pitched over the side of the bike and falling heavily onto my right shoulder. This was a low speed accident of no more than 20mph and normally would result in just the frustration of falling off, the ground on the whole is pretty soft and I wouldn’t expect any injury with the exception of a bruise or two. But luck was not with me and the piece of ground I impacted on was solid stone! I knew immediately that I had done myself some damage and had to be lifted to my feet by Gwyn, who then helped me get my body amour off exposing my collar protruding at an unnatural angle and my shoulder sagging. The pain was pretty severe and I knew that sadly my riding was going to be over for a while, I wasn’t quite sure of the extent of my injury and was hoping the pain in my shoulder was due to dislocation, if so the it would quickly recover once reset.

Gwyn gave me a lift on the back of his bike back to our base area where I was subsequently air lifted to hospital. After being x-rayed it was confirmed that my shoulder is broken along with a couple of ribs at my back, not a good way to start the weekend! At the moment I’m being told that it will take 7-8 weeks before this will heal and that I won’t be able to drive for 4 weeks, but have made an appointment with the ‘Bone Doctor’ a clinic based in Ipswich that has had a lot of success in healing broken limbs a lot quicker then would normally be the case ‘www.physioclinic.net’. I will post an update next week once I have been.

I would like to thank everyone at the BMW off-road school for all of their support and caring and to stress that this was just an unfortunate accident that in no way reflects on the school or their instructors who always place rider safety as a top priority.

Well, I made it! I managed to get away from my stressful business life and return to Morocco with Desert Rose Racing for six days intensive training. During this trip we did a mixture of practicing GPS & Road book navigation, this was split with three days on each. We flew into Marrakech on Saturday 14th March and all met up at a small hotel 15km from the airport. Clive Dredge otherwise known as ‘Toad’ (Clive is married to Patsy and has entered this year’s Heroes Legend Paris to Dakar rallye) had driven out a few days earlier towing an enormous trailer with an equally enormous Ford truck carrying all of our bikes, these now had to have final setup adjustments and were taken for a short ride to check over and fuel up for the next day’s riding. Sunday we rode across the Atlas Mountains to Ouarzazate, it was a very hot day and dehydration took its toll on me resulting in a frightening crash off one of the mountain pistes. Fortunately I got off lightly with minor damage to my bike and no broken bones, this taught me an important lesson and I made sure I was properly hydrated and did not carry unnecessary clothing / equipment for the remaining days riding. Monday we were riding by GPS to Erfoud, this was a mixture of off-road by GPS and tarmac in between. Tuesday we rode to Mezouga using Road book navigation, this was a long day with some difficult navigation and a variety of terrain including fast trails, dried out river beds and very fine sand, we were riding in pairs and my partner was Dan Costescu from Romania whose excellent navigation skills was to ensure that we would be back first that day. Wednesday we went from Mezouga to Zagora, another Road book day, and Thursday Zagora to Ouarzazate which was a very long and challenging day. This started with miles after mile of deep sand followed by very fast trails and stony plains ending in magnificent pistes winding through breath taking mountainous terrain. We were still in the desert a couple of hours after dark (a chance to try out my pair of xenon headlights) and finally got to Ouarzazate at 10:30 in the evening. This left our last day to travel back across the Atlas Mountains to Marrakech, then pack all our gear up ready to return home. For Clive (Toad) it was not over yet, not only did he drive all the way from the UK hauling the bikes, he put 110% into his riding every day, loaded & secured the bikes back on to the trailer at the end of the week and then spent four days driving the bikes and equipment back to the UK, a real star. I would also like to extend my praise and thanks to Patsy Quick & Clive Town (Zippy) for all of the hard work that they put in with the planning of and subsequent organization of this trip, and ensuring our safety. We all benefited from this trip, in particular relatively new comers to this sport like me where there is a steep learning curve. I am definitely a better and more confident rider because of them, I also would like to thank the lovely Su Downham from MotoAventures for driving our support vehicle & sorting out our accommodation throughout the week.

Today I drove back down to visit Patsy at her home near Eastbourne to drop off my rallye bike. When I collected it during December for a press release it was 95% completed but still required some finishing touches and some gentle running in, this will now be done over the next couple of weeks with the intention of then taking it to Morocco for one week for a shake down & some challenging riding with road book navigation over some dakar & Maroc rallye stages. We plan to arrive at Marrakech on Saturday 14th March for six days of riding, returning back to the UK saturday 21st March. The bikes will be taken to Morocco by ‘Desert Rose Racing’ prior to us flying out and brought back by them once the riding is completed. I will post more details on this event nearer the time. Picture below courtesy of the Malvern Gazette news papers.