Vicki Schouten, this year’s Miss March released the photo of her calendar page today.

Also out is Miss November Sunny Park’s page (released as a part of the initial 2011 Racing Girls Calendar teaser picture).

Miss April for this year’s Racing Girls Calendar is the sexy Miss Roxy!

While the other girls have been releasing photos from their photo shoots, which have all been looking very hot! They have not released their official 2011 Racing Girls Calendar pages or photos. You will all just have to wait and see the calendars in person

It’s an annual tradition and it’s back! The 2011 RACING GIRLS CALENDAR featuring a select 12 Canadian women racers. All proceeds from the sales of these calendars go directly to the female racers involved and help off set the costs of that season’s racing, which can some times add up to thousands of dollars. The calendar is a fun way to showcase these female racers and is a creative way to help raise funds and financial support. Think of it as mini sponsorships! By buying a calendar (or a few, they make great gifts!) you can show your support for your favourite local female racer!

This year’s Racing Girls Calendar features a number of novice women racers including myself as Miss October. Doing the photo shoot was absolutely nerve wracking, but it was a lot of fun! I would like to thank Donna Santos (photography, DonnaSantos.com) and Sigi Bloomberg (hair and make up, SigiBloomberg.com) for their professional help during the photo shoot for my calendar page! I would also like to thank Filip Bertrand (303Imaging.com in Calabogie) for taking such amazing pictures of me on the bike all season long!

Participating in this year’s calendar are the following racers:
Natalie Catherine Provost
Geneviève Lesieur
Samantha Goyer
Marta Wajngarten
Sunny Park
Vicki Schouten
Roxanne Gravelle
Sarah Bevan
Carrie Smith
Sarah Turl
Jennifer Roth
Marie-Hélène Paré

I will be putting all up to date news about the 2011 Racing Girls Calendar up on my new Buy your 2011 Racing Girls Calendar from Moto Marta 2011 Miss October Facebook Page. A few teaser pictures have already been released, including a few of the calendar pages as well as some production pictures. I will add them to the end of this post for those of you who do not have a Facebook account. Otherwise if you do, please become a fan of my page and let your friends know about it.

Please ask me about purchasing the 2011 RACING GIRLS CALENDAR and spread the word! All and any of your support will be GREATLY appreciated. I will be selling the calendars for $20 each and will be donating $2 for every calendar sold to the SOAR Injured Rider’s Fund.

Thank You! Marta, aka MotoMarta SOAR #42

Weather was perfect for a track day, sunny and warm but not too hot.  It felt nice to be able to stretch out and experiment with the TZ on such beautiful and wide track, with lots of room to rev out the engine.  Having slightly lower gearing then what was on the last time I rode the bike also helped and made the bike feel much more ridable in the slower corners at the beginning of the day.  I soon found myself going faster and gradually feeling more comfortable with the bike.

Thanks to the Zumius timing system used by Turn2, I got to know exactly how fast (or slow) I was going.  My best time of the day was a 2:46, so I was off my best time on the 750 by some 15 seconds.  It would have been nice to have sectional comparison of the times to know for sure, but I think I was going at similar speeds in the corners, just not as fast in between some of the more spread out sections or on the straights.  The other bikes in my group that were in the 2:30′s were going around the same speed in the corners (some slower) but would walk away from me on the exits and run away from me on the straights

Over all, I had a fabulous time on my new bike.  I’m absolutely loving just how light and nimble it is, and how much easier it is to lean into the corners then the 750.

You Tube: First time out on the TZ

As of today I am a proud new owner of this 2007 Yamaha TZ 125, an ex Royce McLean B bike, code named “Shorty”.

FOR SALE: 2007 Honda CRF 150R Big Wheel Supermoto with dirt wheels

Camshaft recall completed

Full FMF Factory Titanium Exhaust system

Stock hubs with Sun 17″ wheels

CRF450R 2 plot caliper

Oversized EBC front disk

Rear breaking wave rotor

Dunlop slicks in good condition

Stock dirt wheels

Both sets of wheels have sprockets and rotors so you only need to pull the axle to swap

Bark busters

Custom velocity stack

Skid plate

Blue rad hoses

Axle sliders

Gearing

BBR front and rear springs

Two sets of body plastics, red and white oem and black with blue and red graphics

Custom black seat

Renthal Kevlar grip

Brembo break master and lever

Hour meter

Other misc spares

Runs great!

$4,900

Contact Marta: marta@motomarta.com

Hugging the last corner before the front straight

Practice all day Friday and Sat morning. I wasn’t feeling good on the bike. Couldn’t get a better time then 1:28 which I was very unhappy with.  We moved the handle bars closer on Friday which made a world of difference for me.  Didn’t feel like I was climbing over an elephant at every turn and made a big difference in how much effort it took on my part to turn the bike.

Look Ma! One wheel!

Qualifying race at the end of the day on Sat landed me in second place behind a seasoned pro rider, Shauna “Gecko” Aaron. I was happy with my start, even though it started off with a wheelie, got tangled some where within the 1st group of riders from a race that was ran together with ours. I knew Shauna was in front of me and the other girls were behind me.  A couple laps in I came up on a slower rider and figured I should play it safe. No being a hot head like last time, it’s only qualifying and I’m not racing with this guy.  I figured I will  hold my spot and finish the qualifying.  I kept telling myself it’s only qualifying, and I will be on front row of our group regardless since there were only 4 of us.

The running order in the qualifying race

More practice on Sunday morning, I got a bit more aggressive.  A guy on a vintage bike tried to stuff me in the hairpin and I nearly hit him, which really pissed me off and gave me some motivation to try to run some faster laps.  After that I felt better about how I was riding. Did not check the times, didn’t want to know.

Race was after lunch and this time, unlike in the qualifying our group got a seperate start on the grid so we had some space between us and the other race in front of us. I had a great start. Got going the second the flag came down and didn’t have that “oh ok we can go now” thought while watching the other riders like I had the last time. Shauna was a little ahead of me but about half way to corner 1 I was right behind her and ready for the first turn. I expected Shauna to fly through turn 1 and continue to move further and further away but instead she seemed to have let off and we went through corner 1 much slower then I expected. At one point I hesitated if I should continue with my pace and pass her, or just fall back knowing I wasn’t much of a competition to her. I could just picture Johnny throwing his hands up over a crashed bike and decided to play safe and just follow her through to corner 2. We came up on corner 2 and at that point cought up to the last rider of the fist race, a rather slower moving Ninja 250. Planing to stay behind Shauna once again I matched her speed and figured regardless of what she was doing I was going to pass that 250 coming out of 3.

Hind sight being 20-20 I should have held my line and speed and made the pass instead of hesitating.  We were just coming out of corner 2 and at that point going rather slow, I touched the brakes, just like I have done many times before when coming up on slower traffic through that exact section, although obviously some of the factors were not the same because what resulted was not what had resulted the many times before.  The combination of speed, lean angle, and break pressure I applied wasn’t a winning combination. I lost my front end and went sliding and tumbling off to the grass to the outside of the track pretty much half way between corners 2 and 3.

The familiar feeling of the body hitting the ground, short jabs of pain, followed by thoughts of is it over? Ok, I’m stopped, where’s the bike and how is it. I got to the bike, left side looked fine, right side a little banged up. Handle bars still there although the right one bent and pointing down like a floppy ear, key bent, kill switch missing… but looks good to go. I grabbed the handle bars, braced myself on the bike and picked it up. I turned the ignition on, every thing lights up like it should, I get on the bike being careful not to loose my balance and drop the bike. It’s in 3rd gear still, I get it back into neutral and start it. All is good, I look up on to the track and see Sunny ride by, I only lost one lap.

I ride back onto the track carefully, all seems good other then the weird feeling downward pointing right handle bar. I continue on my way testing the brakes before the next corner before getting back on the gas. I ride by the wall and see people cheering me on and I get on the gas harder. I test the brakes a little early coming into the fast corner 1, but all seems good other then the fact the brake leaver is in a really weird downward position. I come around 2, 3, and something makes me think of the brakes again.. they feel mushy. Left and right follow and lead into a short straight before the tight 6… I’m not on the gas hard still thinking about my brakes, I slow down a tad and feel my rear tire squiggle, I think to myself that’s not right and look down for a closer look at my brake lever. That’s when I notice brake fluid dripping down from the cylinder and down the side of the bike. I brake some more and prepare for a gingerly easy turn into 6 and the moment I start to tip the bike in towards the left I feel my rear tire come around and off I go sliding again.

Bike didn’t do so well this time around and wasn’t ridable so I ended up watching the rest of the race from the infield waiting for the truck of shame to come and pick me up. With the events from the past few minutes playing in my head over and over again, the wait felt like for ever. To say I was disappointed and pissed off with myself would be an enormous understatement. The Gecko took first place, followed by Sunny Park and Nikole Ann Pilkington.

On a more positive note, Johnny ended up coming first in his Rookie race and with the points earned up to date, looks like he also won the Rookie cup championship.

Photos from SOAR Round 5

Sat: Long
Sun: Pro

Too much rain

Final corner before the front straight

SOAR was using a cool timing system by Zoomius, so with an RFI sticker on my windshield I was able to get my lap times without having to have a lap timer on the bike. I spent the first session of the morning going quite slowly just trying to figure out which way the track turned, trying to memorize the turn sequence, and get a feel for all the bumps and cracks and bumps. The track has 2 consecutive straights with a fairly tight and challenging but fun infield. The layout wasn’t that hard to learn and by second session I felt comfortable to start adding some speed. Granted I’m sure I was fairly choppy still and my lines weren’t ideal, but I managed to get around at a time of around 1:30 and I knew I could tweak that a bit more. By the end of the day I was consistently doing 1:24′s and I was very happy with that.

Saturday came around and we got a bit more practice time in the morning, followed by qualifying heat races through the remainder of the day. I had entered the Gecko Forwarding Rookie Challenge, a class for beginner racers with less then 5 races experience.

Coming out of corner 1

Some pics from SOAR Round#4

Leaning into the uphill right hander of corner 6

We spent the August long weekend at Bogie, could there be a better way to spend time off work? Johnny got to go up early again, I made my way up Friday night, rode Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. Riding a track 4 days in a row, that was a first. It wasn’t quite as tiring as I had thought, I guess after a while you start getting used to this.

Making a straight line out of 12B and 13

First time back at Calabogie with my new suit. Being able to actually move freely on the bike made such a difference. I was still having some issues with the plastic shoulder details hitting my helmet and preventing my head from turning as far into the turns as I would want to. I found that dropping my inside shoulder would help with that.

One of my favorite corners rightly named Temptation

Johnny had his new GPS Starlane lap timer so I got to use his hand-me-down AIM timer. Here I was all happy that I would finally start getting an idea of what sort of lap times I do and we couldn’t get that damn thing to work. We tried propping it up on the bike all sorts of ways, and eventually gave up. I ended up using Sandy’s unit (thank you Sandy for letting me borrow it!) so I did end up getting my lap times after all. My times were consistent at around 2:30 and dropped below that a few times. My best time of the weekend was a 2:28 which I was very happy with.

Photos from the weekend, taken by 303 Imaging