Three community newspaper reporters had their eyes opened to motorcycle road racing Thursday when Team Roadracingworld.com’s Chris Ulrich took them for a few laps around the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course on the back of his 180-horsepower, two-seat GSX-R1000 AMA Superstock racebike. Only two of the reporters had ever been on a motorcycle and none of the three had seen motorcycle road racing before, but after two laps of the 2.4-mile, 15-turn Mid-Ohio road course with Ulrich, a former AMA Superstock race winner at Mid-Ohio, the reporters had a whole new understanding for motorcycles and motorcycle road racing. “That was very cool! I could feel my whole face going backwards. It was really fast. Whenever he accelerated I had to really hold on tight,” said Laura Mazur, a reporter with the Community Post, a weekly newspaper in Minster, Ohio, after her 140-mph ride with Ulrich. “You’re reaching out to us to get things out to the rest of the world, and we can definitely reach out with this. You get the full experience of it by doing it with them.” “That was better than sex, and it lasts longer, too,” laughed Jane Ernsberger, a reporter with the Shelby Daily Globe, a daily newspaper in Shelby, Ohio. “It’s just awesome because you guys gave regular reporters a chance to get out and do something we normally don’t do, and with our ability to write, we can share that with everybody who can’t get on the bike with Chris.” “That was amazing,” said John Peck, a reporter with the Communicator News, a weekly newspaper in Columbus, Ohio. “It amazes how fast they go, how often they have to brake, the knowledge they have to acquire before getting on the track, actually knowing the track, where the curves are, when to slow down — it’s just amazing. I have a different perspective of motorcycle racing now, a lot different. Now, this weekend, I’m thinking about coming here when I had absolutely no intention of making it here before.” Ulrich’s teammate Robertino Pietri rode his GSX-R1000 Superstock racebike in close proximity to the two-seater machine during the journalists’ rides to give them a better perspective of actually racing with other motorcycles on the track. The rides were conducted during a regularly-scheduled break in Thursday’s promoter practice. Ulrich’s team has been doing media rides using two-seat racebikes for about five years.