OK here's my input, but please bear in mind, it's my opinion and like arseholes, everyone's got one

Yes racing's expensive, this year was my first year in racing and I reckon it's cost me around the 10k mark. That said i could sell everything I've bought and regain around half of that.

The race entry fee's are around the same price as a track day but for a lot less track time. Around 4 races per weekend and there's around 8 laps per race and 10 minutes practice.

I've done all 9 meets with Derby Phoenix which equates to 36 races (give or take a few) but raced at tracks such as Donny, Snetterton, Mallory, Cadwell, Croft and Oulton.

Racing is a whole different ball game to track days. I love my track day's but after racing it seems such a chilled day.

The adrenilin rush is like no other I've experienced before, the high's of doing well are fantastic but as a result a bad day can be terrible and at worst life threatening.

I've come away with improving my riding by a huge amount, memories that most will never have and 2 plastic trophies - i wouldn't have done it any other way.

Track dayers are always digging at me at track day's and i've now found myself a target and often overheard people saying 'she ain't all that and she races' 'my lap times were faster than her and she races' what you have to remember is that i'm only playing on a track day. On race day i have a very different head on. Every lap counts, no one gives a **** what excuse you have for having a bad race, and i'm taking my end result over all the laps i've done and not just my best one lap of the entire day.

As someone once said 'when the flag drops the bull**** stops'

I started racing because i wanted to see how i stacked up against people in a competitive environment.

I race in 400's which i feel is one of the most competitive classes mainly because there's only so many bhp you can squeeze out of the machine. I really don't think in club racing that money gives you good results. I've seen people win races on standard machines. DP have an open class where any level of rider is against any size of machine and at Donny we had a 250 win the race!!!

I've written a piece about my year which I'll post in here in a minute so you can get an idea of what it's been like. Hope you enjoy reading it.