Guy Martin: When You Dead, You Dead

Book excerpt: 'The maddest 12 months of my life. The journey starts with an oddball race up an American mountain and ends with me checking myself out of hospital with a broken back. Again ...' As Guy’s Latvian grandfather frequently reminded him, ‘When you dead, you dead’. So before it’s all over, Guy Martin is making the most of the time he’s got. In this past year alone, Guy has raced the Isle of Man TT and finished on the podium; bike trekked through India; competed in solo 24-hour bicycles races; flown a stunt plane; broken a go-kart speed record down a French mountain and attempted to break the motorcycle land-speed record at Bonneville Salt Flats. And he’s done all this around his day job as a truck mechanic. But let Guy tell you about it himself: ‘This book starts in a Transit, ends in a Transit, and in between I’ve raced a few pushbikes, raced a few motorbikes and got a fair few stories to tell you.’ Spot on.