Roughly 3400 miles - track day at Thunderhill

I brought the SV to Thunderhill for two more days of lapping and learning. I feel like I really was able to improve my technique and riding form, and I shaved about 10 seconds off my lap times over the course of the first day. Awesome!

In day two, I took a couple more seconds off by the third session. I was carrying a bit more speed through the turns, and therefore braking harder to enter the following turns. In so doing, I started to fade the brakes, and I learned that brake fade is a crappy deal.

Braking hard into turn ten, I very quickly noticed I wasn’t slowing down. The brakes just weren’t having any effect at normal brake lever pressure. So I pulled harder. The edge of the track kept getting closer, and my speeds weren’t really coming down. Then I pulled MUCH harder, and bottomed out my fork. The ensuing tank-slapper* was really something. The bars started shaking back and forth incredibly quickly, and the bike was skidding left and right and left and right and boom. I went down.

The now-prone bike left the track much more quickly than I did, and apparently those frame sliders do a good job of keeping the important parts from getting scratched on the asphalt, but serve as vaulting poles when they hit the dirt. The bike careened away, and I slid on my back to the side of the track. Good times.

Check the pics. Pretty spectacular. I am totally fine. I have a bruise on my arm, and one on my hip. I am a little stiff, but that’s likely more from the exercise of riding for two days. I swear I am just fine.

The SV though - totalled. Given the options, I think that’s absolutely fine.

*See an example of this type of gnarly headshake in the video I shot from the previous day. This is one lap of thunderhill, starting at turn five. Download the video and then skip ahead to about 15 seconds before then end and watch the drama.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 5th, 2006 at 11:00 am and is filed under Vehicles, Motorcycles, Sv650. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.