Thanks everyone for your support in 2010.  While our season wasn’t too eventful, we got to enjoy helping with the BMW ART school and participate in a few other events.  We are looking forward to the 2011 season.

Thanks again,

Michelle & Yves

Both Michelle and I volunteered as on-track riding coaches for this year’s BMW Advance Rider Training (ART).  The training was held at the beautiful Calabogie Motorsports Park facility in Calabogie, Ontario.  This course is geared towards street riders who are looking to learn to be a bit more confident and improve their skills for street riding.  Therefore, this was not a racing school which made it interesting for us as coaches.  Our goal was not to teach them how to setup a racing pass or block-pass another rider when breaking for the corner.

It was a lot of fun seeing everyone on a variety of street BMW motorcycles exploring the limits of their personal comfort zone.  The day combined both classroom instruction sessions and on-track exercises.  A new exercise added to this year’s course was a skidpad setup where students learned to downshift while slowing down in a corner.  People debated the usefulness of this exercise but it was an interesting exercise regardless.  Even in racing, you will often see racers run off a race track after missing a shift or hitting a false-neutral.  Needless to say, it was neat to see how students dramatically improved their skills and comfort in just a handful of passes of this unnerving exercise.

The day ended well with no crashes (none that I know of anyways).  Everyone got lots of track time and improved their skills.  Thanks Pat, Paul and Don for inviting us to help out with the BMW ART school.

It’s unfortunate, but we have made the decision to not attend Round 1. This week has been one of those weeks, and something had to give. Turns out it’s the racing weekend that took the hit.

We do plan to attend the second round in mid May. That gives us an extra two weeks. I have no reason to think that won’t happen. Knock on wood!

We’re a few days away from the first round, and right in the middle of preparations. The first round is always the one that is more time intensive.

The trailer we purchased a few of years ago has made our stay at the track so much more enjoyable. Unfortunately, the trailer, just like everything else, needs a bit of TLC. The trailer has now been taken out of storage, and the temporarily stored stuff in it removed. It has been mostly de-winterized. Wheel bearings have been serviced. It has been washed inside and out. Some new add-ons and misc repairs.  All of these little things add up to a lot of time. But we’re finally able to load stuff into the trailer today.

Of course, this would all go so much faster if we didn’t have other distractions that home ownership entails. We’re doing our best to get everything together in time for racing, and most likely we’ll get there. Let’s just hope Environment Canada doesn’t kill our motivation to keep pushing hard to make it.

Keep checking here if you want to know if we made it after all

Welcome to our new site and the start of the 2010 season. Our focus this year will be the R.A.C.E. SuperSeries regional championships.

Come back as we’ll be updating the site with coverage of RACE round 1, April 30th to May 2nd. Or better yet, come spectate and visit us at the track!

- Team Shadowrunner