Apex [h.s]

chapter seventy five

Song: Heroes, David Bowie

Though nothing will drive them away, we can be heroes just for one day

Frankie Doyle

November

I wanted to cry...

No actually I wanted to scream, or maybe throw up...

I don't know what I wanted. I could feel so much energy buzzing through my veins. I felt like I could run a marathon. But another part of me wanted to curl into a ball under my duvet.

Anxiety, excitement, nervousness, determination, happiness and absolutely freaking out were just a few emotions in the very interesting cocktail of emotions I was feeling.

I didn't know what to do with myself.

I slowly crawled out of bed and wrapped my duvet around myself. I always found it eerie being awake before six. No one else ever seemed to be about. There was a stillness. The only movement came from leave rustling in the light breeze.

The navy sky was slowly being overtaken by an orange glow as the sun fought for the day. I had always loved sunrises. Not because they held promise, or a new start, or any of that cheesy shit. Just because they were really fucking pretty.

I wasn't hungry at all, nerves had overtaken my stomach. But I knew that I needed my strength today, so I made myself a decent sized breakfast before heading onto the balcony to eat it.

Today was going to mark the most intense race I had ever taken part in. I was used to racing in short and sharp races. They were like sprints. You hard to race as best as you could, as fast as you could for a short amount of time. Before this, I think the longest race I had ever participated in was an hour or so long.

Bathurst was an endurance race. It was 161 laps of a six kilometre course. All in all, the race took around six to seven hours of non-stop racing.

Strictly speaking, the lead driver isn't allowed to drive the whole time. There's got to be a switch over to a co-driver at some point.

My co-driver, Isaac, had raced in Bathurst before, but I'll admit, letting someone else be responsible for my car made me anxious. I liked to be in control and I knew that for some of this race, I was going to have to let that go.

I had originally asked if Kai wanted to be the co-driver on my team, but he politely declined. He said he wanted to get more experience in a V8 car before he took on an event as big as Bathurst, which I completely understood. Mark brought in Isaac a few weeks into my training. He also raced under T & M Race Engineering, but was based in Australia.

Isaac and I had been training hard together over the past months to build up our endurance. There is a requirement that the lead driver only does a maximum of 107 laps and the co driver makes up the other fifty four. We decided I would do the maximum. Mark had said that it was my race and it was my job to show what I had, Isaac was only there to make sure I didn't pass out from hunger.

That was part of the reason I was in Australia for so long to train. This was a whole new dynamic for me as a driver. I needed to make sure that I knew how to drive over long periods of time just as well as I could beat the shorter races. That took time and practice. I honestly don't think I had ever worked harder in my life to make sure that I was ready.

I wasn't going in with the intention to win, as much as I would like to. I was racing against the greats. The people who had conquered this race course for most of my life. The people who I looked up to and inspired my racing career. Even if I bombed out today, it was just an honour to race on the same track as them. That didn't mean that I wasn't going to try my hardest and show them what I was made of. I had eyes on me and I had to prove that I was more than just a pretty face on the international circuit.