Being a Pansy Foo foo, I didn't want to do a track day with *MY* bike, I mean if you want to push a bike to its limits, you want to do it with someone elses right? So, a friend with the same idea, and the same bike spookily, signed up and off we went.

There are three levels On Track, Premiere and Elite (or something like that) Basic is, I've never ridden a bike, or I don't know what corners are like. Super is I can go round corners but I'm not so sure, and Elite is Everything from I am a Biking God, to I go round corners a little faster than I did before.

You only really want to go on the Elite, they will make you do a Super, but basically, look at it and a one off cost. The super has 2 guys and one instructor, to my surprise I found that I was a good deal faster than my mate (waay hayy I'm faster than someone..) on the CBR600's they provide, so when it was my turn to lead, I romped off with the Instructor in tow, to Give RHRS their due, they have a Spare insructor going round looking for exactly, this, and he took over leading my friend round. Now normally at this point for the second go, they would swap my friend for someone who was as fast (or slow) as me. However we were lucky, because of no shows, we got 1 on 1 for the second part.

The main problem is, that you have 20-25 mins on the track, a break, Instructor tells you, you are doing x wrong, you go out do 20 minutes, instructor says x better, but still need more, you go out again, he tells you x much better but watch out for y. End of session.

The Elite, is much much better. Basically, you have a Racing God at your desposal, and indeed as a bonus this racing God also has to be goog at teaching. The key difference here is the approach, you have a certain amount of track time, 90mins iirc to use how you want, so if you have 9 things you want looked at, you can do that in 10 minute chunks, however, if you are a relative newbie then the instuctor will go for generally smoother. After following the instructor round, and then him me, I found that I felt more confident on the bike, the hanging off bit was becoming easier, and I was moving around on the bike, bugger me this was hard work.

All in all after a session in the rain, we looked at the timing sheets, they had timed me on the 600's and then on the blade as well, I had improved over a second a lap, almost every lap...including the wet lap. I had ridden the blade faster in the wet, than when *I* felt fast in the dry on the 600.

To summarise.

Its not cheap, but its very very good. The alternative, would be doing track days with a cheap trackday bike, however say this cost you 2k, and you allowed for 10 track days at 100 ukp each..for 3k, this gives you 6 Elite courses. Now one off on your bike, and the costs go up. On the RHRS no extra cost, plus you have a decent instructor 1 on 1. My view is this year and possibly next, I'm going to mix Elites, with lots of liesure riding. Ideally of course, you would do the 10 track days and the 6 elites..