The whole team came together for the trip

to the seaside, also in attendance were Mike

Broadbent from Racelogic whose high-tech

equipment would be used to record our speed

and Graham Bristow, General Secretary of the

British Pacing Association, who would verify

the speed Graham logged to keep everything

official and watertight.

The weather forecast had been for showers but

it turned out to be bright sunshine – pretty good

apart from the 20 mph breeze that was blowing.

High tide was before dawn at around 4.30 am

and we had to wait until the tide had gone out,

not just to expose the sand but to let it pack firm

enough to create the surface that we needed.

Of course, the tide would eventually come back

in again, the water would rise up through the

sand and the surface would become unstable.

Just as Dave Le Grys had had a window of

opportunity before the rain closed in, we had

our six-hour window when the surface would

be good enough between tides. That was the

plan, anyway.

The stretch of beach we were going to use was

more than two and a half miles long, which

should easily have been long enough for us, but

when Dave Jenkins took the truck out to get

used to driving at speed on the sand we could

all see straight away that Pendine was not going

to be the ideal surface for our record run. When

put to the test, the sand was not as rock hard as

we had expected. It moved. That gave Dave a

bit of a problem in keeping the truck going in a

straight line and, compared with the concrete

at Bruntingthorpe, the sand wasn’t giving him

the kind of traction he wanted, meaning that

he could only make 118 mph. The softer surface

was soaking up some of the truck’s power.

Worse still, I could expect it to do the same

to me.

66  Britain’s Fastest Bike

The other thing that was obvious to everyone
was that Dave was dislodging loose, dry, surface
sand that was forming a cloud behind the truck.
Dave fitted baffles at the bottom of the fairing
as well as filling in the space between the stop
bar and the fairing to try to prevent sand from
flying up at me from below the truck. Jason

Hill reckoned that would help, but he was more

concerned about the way that loose sand was

flying around behind the truck. There were also

worries about debris on the course, including

scraps of driftwood and dead jellyfish. Anything

we could see could be cleared out of the way,

but if there was something just below the

surface that was flung up by the truck – well,

nobody wants to be hit in the head with a dead

jellyfish at 100 mph, do they?

Finally, everybody was ready for the first run,

and we set off. As our speed built up, things

started to get pretty hairy behind the truck.

Sand was flying everywhere. I felt like I was

being shot blasted and, while I really wanted to

try to keep myself between one and two metres

behind the truck, using taped markings on the

fairing to keep me slightly off centre in order

to take the breeze into account, visibility was

so bad that if I dropped back as much as one

metre I couldn’t see the marks. Any more than

that and I could barely see the truck. Breathing

wasn’t easy either. It felt like my tonsils were

being sandpapered. Nevertheless, on that first

run we made it to 102 mph.

Before the second run, Dave took the truck
down the course again, the fairing was checked
to make sure it was all okay and me and the bike

Following page:

Getting up to speed

before I really had to hit

my peak power output.

Right: Not your

usual Pendine car

park customer!