Right. Today’s race had potential for disaster: take a 39 year old father of 3 who last rode a motorcycle off-road 27 years ago (yes, really); and add a high-strung, hand-made, Italian, 2-stroke racing bike with a bad personality; mix in the fact that said father has [i]never actually ridden named bike[/i] other than around his close to test it. Bake in a timed-lap enduro oven for 4 hours and see what happens.
The day didn’t start off too well when we left the house 15 minutes late. After topping up the pre-mix tank along the way, we got lost on the way to the event. See, the regs said take the first road to Micheldever Station when in fact, it is the [b]second[/b] road. It took Mrs. Doorag and I a bit to work that out, but we found it eventually.
I’ll let Fausto or G-Dub recount my entrance to the event. 
Anyway, sign-in and scrutineering went well and I had my start time at 11:09. (This may be important later.)
Anyway, here I am before the start looking confident but getting nervous.
At the start.
I swear, it always starts on the first kick at home!
That’s better…
And I was off. Slowly.
I made it around quite well at first. The nadgery bits through the trees were alright. The problems started with muddy ruts. 
At one point not too far in, I was flanked by two faster riders, both trying to get past. Then I caught a cross-rut and ran into the guy on the left (sorry!) which knocked him over and forced me back to the right where I had a hard fall right in the path of the other guy. He promptly ran dead into my right butt cheek and proceeded to crash as well. (sorry!)
I found out a couple of minutes and one or maybe two more falls later that all of this was caught on film by the DVD crew (I think) BOLLOCKS! 
Anyway, I fell on a few more rutted sections, but the rest went amazingly well considering. I had some falls here and there, but I did all the ‘hard’ stuff like negotiating fallen logs (one small and the other slightly larger and surrounded by marshals), the bomb holes (although I crashed in one of them every single time I did it 
I managed to get the bike to climb a tree to a height of about 2 feet before it almost fell on me as well, but thankfully there wasn’t any film crew around.
My First Lap!
I knew better than to stop after the first lap because I might not go back out there, so I cracked on. The second lap was much better than the first and I didn’t have nearly as many offs.
I learned that I was best when riding in second gear. I was slow, but the goal of the day wasn’t to win, it was to finish.
After the second lap, I stopped in the pits to get some electrolyte drink and a sandwich.
I won’t go into detail about all the laps since they all went about the same. 4-5 offs, no major crashes, slow going.
I did manage to catch some air off a small jump when G-DUB was behind me. He passed me at the next turn and had a positive word for me which was much appreciated at the time (thanks!)
In the end I cleared every obstacle without crashing – except one. Dont; know why, just couldn’t work it out. It was just a large ditch and nothing that should have been too tough but I couldn’t work it out. GGGrrr…
After all was said and done, I finished. And did all my laps apparently. I thought I missed one but they assured me I did it. Bonus!
Here’s the ‘after’ shot.
That’s it for now. I’ll post a “What I learned” later.
Oh yeah – I forgot. No major injuries either. A few bruises here and there with some scrapes but noting to bothersome.
Oh yeah, yeah – My special test time was 4 minutes
