It's funny how quickly you can mess up your own head, isn't it. We are our own worst enemy and sometimes making yourself stop, evaluate things from an outside perspective, and reset, can completely change the decisions and paths we end up taking.
I did a lot of endurance racing back in 2021 and rode for the British Endurance Racing Team (BERT), which was run by David Railton. I really enjoyed the gig: riding motorbikes is the best feeling in the world – along with shagging, I guess – so to ride a 1000cc race bike for hours on end, right through the night, pretty much ticks all the boxes. The British Endurance team started with a UK race, then two rounds of the World Endurance, which was mega and a proper eye-opener, and we did the big European round at Spa, which was a six-hour race, but at the end of 2021 it was clear that BERT wasn't giving it another year – and I was out on my ear.
In February 2022, in preparation for the TT, I went to Almeria and did a test with Team Classis Suzuki on an ex-Hawk GSX-R 1000 superbike. My deal with the team was actually done at the end of 2019 after my long-time sponsor and good friend, Steve Wheatman, offered to support me with a complete set-up for the TT in 2020. As it did to so many people (for different reasons), Covid-19 ruined that job and I didn't get to ride the bike for two more years, meaning the Almeria test was my first spin on the bike. Unfortunately, when we got to Spain, things were… a challenge, and after four not very enjoyable days of riding a bike which didn't want to co-operate, I called it a draw and 'retired' at the beginning of 2022. I hadn't had a good time in Spain, and added into the mix, my missus was going through a tough pregnancy. The doctors and nurses had done nothing other than put the fear of god into us at
