John’s Blog: The winter break is over. Bring on testing and the new season!

Hi everyone,

With the testing sessions coming up very soon and things starting to move towards the 2018 season, I thought I’d give you a quick catch-up on the winter break…

I spent some of the break back home in Oban for Christmas and New Year. As always it was great to catch up with everyone and soak up the wonderful local countryside again!

Also I have been training non-stop over the break: plenty of cycling, gym work and out on various bikes of course. I picked up a great new bike from KTM too… a Husqvarna fs450 – certainly an improvement on my last and I really enjoy putting it through its paces.

I also spent some time with Macna, my new leathers partner. A group of their riders all did a X-Challenge day, which was real fun and, as you can guess, VERY competitive between us all. Also it was a good opportunity to get sorting out the new CIP design leathers.

I’ll have an updated helmet design too which I’ll reveal soon. This is to celebrate joining up with LS2.

I’m back in Spain now with Michael Laverty – which is always great – we’ve spent the last few winters here training together. It makes you both push harder if you’re working together and we do the same kind of fitness programme anyway, so makes sense to do it together.

I’ve also recently been riding supermoto on my new Husqvarna fs450 in Perpignan with the CIP team.
It really was a great day! It was open pit lane all day so I got plenty of laps in!
I was there along with new team mate Makar Yurchenko, Michael Laverty, Jules Cluzel (world supersport rider) and 6 time Supermoto world champion Thomas Chareyre.

I then went to Arles, Where the CIP Moto team have their workshop, and stayed the night at the home of team owner Alain Bronec. The whole team were there at the workshop so it was nice to spend time with everyone, and I already can feel the family feeling from the CIP team.

This week the guys then went to KTM Austria to pick up the new bikes for the team. They build the new bikes up there with KTM factory staff.

The first official IRTA test is in Valencia on the 6th, 7th and 8th of February so I’m really really looking forward to getting out on the bike and getting stuck in on the first real testing ahead of this exciting new season.

Thanks as always for your support,
John