Round 4: I’m Still Here

August 25, 2025

Last year was tough. Logistically, getting to the track to begin with was almost impossible, and, when I could make it out, it was all I could do to get within spitting distance of my PB laps. The end of the year was also marred with disappointment and mechanical bugs. When the dust had settled, I needed a break. I put all my gear into winter storage, stuffed the bike into a corner of the garage, broke out the snowboard gear, and forgot about racing for a little while. I took a very long, deep drink of winter this year and thoroughly enjoyed a low maintenance hobby from first powder to slush season. I ended up hitting the slopes about 20 times and expanded my skills to include double blacks, tree runs, and terrain parks. It was magnificent.

Double Black Tree Run, Mogul to Chute Section Through the Trees, Keystone, Winter 2024-25

As winter drew to a close and shoulder season approached, the thought of getting back on the track slowly crept forward from the back of my mind. As with last year, I knew that 2025 was going to be pretty limited. Although I had every intention of getting the bike fixed and getting back on the track, I never felt the need to rush and, instead, prioritized a handful of other projects before getting to Duc Prime. Finally, in early June, the urge to ride fast on asphalt fully kicked in and I got to work. It took about 2-3 weeks of chipping away at the bike in the evenings to drop the engine, split the case, replace the bent shift forks, swap in a new gearstack, properly reshim the gearbox and shift drum, take care of a handful of “while you’re in there” items, button everything back up, and get the bike back together.

Ducati Life, Miller Garage, June 2025

On the plus side, I’ve fooled my youngest into thinking that I’m a super manly man with all the heavy garage work he’s seen me dive into.

Engine Work Makes Your Kids Think You’re Masculine, Franklin’s Bedtime, June 2025

By the third week of June, I was able to take the bike out to IMI for a shakedown run to prove out my repairs. At the end of that ride three things were obvious: 1) the bike was fixed, 2) my riding needed some work, 3) I needed better fitness. Point 2 was so completely abysmal, I didn’t even consider riding in Round 3. I was so rusty that a midseason race in the AmU class would have been dangerous to myself and anyone around me. Instead of making plans for an immediate round of racing, I endeavored to get in some track time at HPR to try and find some feeling with the bike again. I jumped through hoops to squeeze in a sliver of tracktime and did, indeed, find a way to get to the track before the boys’ summer break began, but that trip was a mixed bag. Due to completely reasonable and understandable safety protocols, combined with my own personal logistics, I only ended up getting about 15 minutes of tracktime in. However, within that amount of time, I found enough feeling to get within 2% of my PB at HPR Full without feeling like I was pushing very hard. I was pleasantly surprised.

Not long after, I tried once more to squeeze in some more track time but, instead, I injured my wrist the night before another trackday. Ironically, I screwed up my wrist while doing some minor strength training at the gym to help prepare me for, you guessed it, motorcycle racing. The doctor told me to lay off it for 4-6 weeks and gave me some PT exercises to go through on the tail end of recovery. That’s life. What’re you gonna do?

The injury ended up being well-timed, though. Round 3 was never an option for a number of reasons, but if I stuck to the doctor’s orders, I’d be ready to ride at Round 4. I followed the treatment plan for the wrist while leaning hard into cardio training to keep me occupied. By the end of July, the sharp shooting pains during minor force applications on the hand slowly started to subside as I ramped up PT and, by the second week of August, I was back on the dirtbike again. I felt that things were good enough to try riding the big bike and committed myself to Round 4.

I hit up my favorite sparring partner, Ryan Gajewski, and we roughed out some plans to get some AirBNBs right next to each other in Pueblo and to get our trailers parked together in the pits at Pueblo Motorsports Park (PMP). Separately, I made some plans to ride at PMP the day before the race. While riding at HPR the day of a race is probably alright, I was quite reticent about showing up to PMP, where I hadn’t ridden in 3 years, for the second to last round of the season and turning into a rolling roadblock for the guys who’ve been riding all year. That’s dangerous. I spoke to my better half about getting an extra day into our weekend plans and she agreed.

The Saturday ride with Legion was another pleasant surprise. In my first session, I was quite rusty and my riding was not good. However, as with my very brief time at HPR, within the first several laps of my second session, I was back down to a decent practice pace and was actually lapping faster than I had during my fastest practice laps at PMP in 2022. Once again, it felt easy; another pleasant surprise. I truly think I’ve unlocked mid corner speed on Duc Prime. If your braking is hard enough to keep the front end compressed as you tip in, you get your body waaaaaay off the bike, and you lean over far enough to just about drag your elbow on the ground, Duc Prime will turn. Although it’s a few feet away from the apex and, thus, things get a smidge closer to the ground, the screengrab below demonstrates the difference between the Duc and oh, say, an R6.

How to Turn an 848, PMP, MRA Round 4, August 2025 [Photo by Santiago OH Shirtz]

In the video footage of this turn, we’re not cornering at terribly different speeds, but you can see an obvious difference in body positions. The R6 just needs a general suggestion from the rider that a turn is happening, which is quite a cool thing about those bikes and is, I suspect, why they are so successful as club racing weapons. Duc Prime, on the other hand must be forced to turn, starting with the application of the brakes. There’s no other way. It’s cool, though. It makes me look like I know what I’m doing, and the front end of the Duc is incredibly stable… almost too stable, sometimes.

Inventory check: really long winter break, no rush to get back to the track during the early part of the season, more engine work, a little bit of trackday time, some race weekend planning, an interesting night in Pueblo on Friday, and now we’re all caught up; on to the race.

Sunday morning was smooth. Kori was pulling double duty, working when possible and watching the boys when needed to allow me as much time on the track as possible. In spite of some stress induced tensions on both sides of the fence during the weekend, I truly could not do this without her support and I’m very grateful that she burned both ends of the candle so that I could go racing. My good friend, Ryan, also got the bike tech’d for me the night before the race, which was a huge assist. Thanks again, I owe you one, man. Everything happened more or less as intended. No drama, just a nice smooth morning leading up to my first race.

Completely stealing a page from Ryan’s playbook, I went out for the Middleweight Endurance race and treated it like another practice session. It was a hell of a time, though, because I got tangled up in a group and had to fight my way through it. My pace was good, I was riding with good energy, and my racecraft was there. After fighting to the front of the group I was in, I remembered that I needed to nurse my tires and ducked back into the pits after just a few laps. I felt good.

First Race Laps of 2025, Middleweight 2x, PMP, MRA Round 4, August 2025

After that race, I had a chat with Kori about our timeline and decided that AmU wasn’t happening, and that the Middleweight Supersport race would be my only race of the day. When Ryan got back from his endurance warmup we chatted for a bit about track conditions and I decided that the Duc felt great. The SC1 front tire was a little soft for my taste, but I was running really high pressure to counteract that and it felt tolerable. Aside from keeping calories and water in my body I just listened to some relaxing music and waited for my next race. I was having a good time with this approach. No nerves at all, just a good time at the track with my people.

When the second call for Middleweight Supersport went out, I went through my pre-race ritual (everyone has one… the MRA should do a video about that sometime for fun), entered the track, did the warmup lap, and found my place at the complete ass end of the grid. Literally the last open spot. Whatever. Let’s see who I can chase down…

The race start was not the best I’ve ever had, but, I’ve also stalled off the line before, at PMP no less, so I can’t say it was my worst, either. I really wanted to fight with Ryan, so I found him in the mix and kicked off the race with an outside pass in 1 to stay with the group he was in. I closed right up on the back of the group and tried to continue hitting my markers, which resulted in a huge moment on the entry to 5 as the back end came up quite high, set down sideways, and took me for a little ride while trying to avoid running up the rear of the guys in front of me. Other than missing the apex by a bit, it didn’t cost me much, but it was a warning that I may have to exercise some patience. As I noticed the front guys clearing off pretty quickly, I reasoned that this midpack battle may be where I have to focus my efforts. So be it. I put on my thinking hat and started studying my opponents. After a full lap behind Dave “Starfighter” (I wish I had an awesome nickname like that), Ryan Gajewski, and, I think, Matthew Duff (sorry if I have the wrong person, there), I felt I had pace on all 3 guys. Now, granted, I think Dave was just messing around out there and could’ve pulled the pin on us at any point. Be that as it may, the way things were unfolding, I just needed to pick a good place to start making passes. On lap 2, I could see that Ryan was trying to work out where to get around Matt. If he made that pass while I was at the back of this group, it could be tough to catch him, so I started getting close to the back of Dave on the start of lap 3 in anticipation of making some moves of my own. On the entry of 4, though, we all had a chain reaction surprise. Ryan checked up to avoid stuffing Matt, Dave checked up to avoid stuffing Ryan, Dave and Ryan had some contact that unsettled the rear of Ryan’s bike, and I swung wide to avoid the whole mess altogether. Everyone came out alright but, for me, it was a clear sign that it was time to get to the front of this group so that I could run my own pace and stay clear of entanglements.

I closed in on Dave through 9 and 10 and was able to get him into 1, I outdrove Ryan on the exit of 3 and beat him to the entry of 4, and I pulled alongside Matt and outbroke him to the apex of 5. With clear track in front of me, I turned my fastest lap of the weekend, which got me within 0.7s of my PB at PMP. I ran a few more laps at a quick pace and, by the time the white flag went up, I took a quick look behind me to see a decent buffer and rode a quick, but not blazing, final lap to take the checkered flag in 7th.

Middlweight Supersport, PMP, MRA Round 4, August 2025

That was more or less the weekend: practiced for 2 sessions on Saturday to find some confidence, warmed up during part of the endurance race on Sunday, rode from the back of the grid to 7th in Middleweight Supersport, and got within 1% of my PB pace after no riding at PMP for 3 years. I had tons of fun, I felt quite good on the bike, and it was great seeing all my racing friends and the MRA community, in general. I went home with a sunny disposition and a huge smile on my face.

Looking forward, I’m making every move I can to ensure that I get to compete in Round 5 at PPIR. I like that track quite a bit and I’ve done well there in the past. If that falls through, I’m sure I’ll be on the track atleast 1-2 more times before winter hits to keep the juices flowing. My main goal right now is to start tearing down some of my old PBs and I’d love to see that happen 1-2 times before the snowboard and I start hitting the slopes again.

Until next time: Never lift!!!!!

2025 Supporters