jadeblue1
Wed 3/29/06, 6:23PM
when a problem presents itself, we all have mechanisms for solving it. when the problem persists, we all can usually work it out with a little extra time. every now and then, a problem comes along that defies the normal course of reason & after several failed attempts at solving it, it becomes a stumbling block. at this point, the options to solve it are few, and one that seemed best in this situation was immersion under pressure. completely focusing yourself in something will reveal the answer once you’ve peeled away all the l ayers of the problem.
the problem is speed, more specifically, going faster-how do you make yourself go faster when you can’t figure out what’s holding you back. i’m not talking about pinning it on the front straight longer, i’m speaking of gaining incremental time in every part of the track to add up to seconds off a lap time. funny thing, though when you try go faster for the sake of going faster it actually slows you down. so now you know the mantra that has been stuck in my head since december. it’s kind of annoying, because i was getting completely wrapped around the axle thinking about it. sure, it’s easy to say, oh, that’s nothing, just clear your mind, but when you haven’t figured out quite how to do it, it’s not so easy. so i decided the best thing to do would be ride it out-spend as many consecutive days in the seat as possible until i had the epiphany.
race weekend wsmc 3/17-3/19.
my plan was to ride all 3 days, but i didn’t even get a tire on the track friday due to oil spills, crashes, and rain. so after sitting all day & waiting, i was kind of bummed about not getting anything done. saturday practice i rode almost all day with the middleweights unti l my tire went away, and then i went down to lightweight practice on a fried tire to finish the day out. the wind was atrocious & i didn’t feel like i had accomplished anything...
sunday morning i was ready for riding, a little nervous, as i didn’t get to work on the things i had hoped to friday, but i figured i would just get out there and ride. race #2 was formula twins lightweight, i was gridded towards the back, got a pretty good start, and just aimed for the bikes in front of me. i was almost in the groove & turning some really smooth consistent laps, and was doing my best to stay ahead of a red nekkid sv that was constantly showing me a wheel. last lap of the race, the nekkid pulled around and got on his brakes going into 9, making me check up & sending steven b- who had been towing on a 2 bike draft-sling shotting around us. we were 3 wide headed for the line-i got the nekkid, but steven beat me by half a bike length. i was bummed when i saw the posted results, because it had been scored from the transpoder line, not the finish line, which was about 200 ft before the start /finsh, so it didn’t give me the position. that’s ok, it would’ve only been 11th & not worth a protest. 550 superbike was also a good race, with me picking my way back from last place after i went to hot into t3 & almost ate a dirt sandwich. i spent most of the race in a mad dash to pass as many people as possible before the checkers. that plan worked well, and i ended up in a drag race with seth clark to start/finish, but he got me by a bike length. overall, not a bad day-best times i’ve ever turned on the big track with th sv & it was only the 2nd time i’d raced it.
adam’s kart track 3/22
sean keone lent me a 125 dirt bike that makes about 7 hp to ride this track-they have bike night on wednesdays from 5p-10p-& i’ve been going almost every wednesday night for the last 2 months to get sliding time in. it ‘s good practice for getting feedback from the bike & making mistakes at 40 mph vs 90 mph.
buttonwillow opener 3/24-3/26
i decided to try a few afm events to get some more practice on more technical tracks as my cornering skills need a lot of work. buttonwillow is a track i like, but haven’t ridden very much, and only had the sv on it once before in january for a track day. friday practice was nerve racking-trying to learn all the right lines & shift points was a lot-i think i got about half of it right. but by the end of the day i was feeling more comfortable with running a faster pace. saturday i didn’t make it through ttech the first time, so while i was trying to fix my bike, i missed my first session. then it started raining & we didn’t get back on track until 3-3:30 pm (afm doesn’t run in the rain). i got 2 sessions in that were shaky at best, and when they combined groups 1 & 2, i was overwhelmed by the number of bike s on the track, so i didn’t ride the lst session of the day.
sunday was raceday, and i was nervous about the large grids, but had also resigned myself to the fact that i just didn’t have enough seat time in at this track to really improve my times. however, when the flag dropped on the clubman race, i got a really good start, and did a lot better than i thought i would. although the amount of bikes on the grid was daunting, after the start and every one got through the bus stop, it spread out well. i had bikes to chase, people of equal skill level to ride against, and it was a lot of fun (a lot of work too-that track is very tiring to ride at speed). i finished 11th in lightweight novice0much better than i thought i was going to do-and took 9 seconds off my fastest time from practice the day before. the 2 expert races i did were large grids also-very initimidating to go flying into t1 to try to get a position just a head of someone before the squeeze-but again, it spread out, and i started chasing bikes. on the second lap of the race, my front end came up on me-i had never caught air on the wheelie bump before & it was kind of scary at first, but when i did it again on the next lap, it was getting fun. i was trying my best not to get lapped by kurt spencer, and thought i was going to make it, but under brakes on the last corner before the finish line, #10 went by & i knew it was over. however i took another 3 seconds off my time. for the last race-650 twins, i vowed i would not get lapped, and sure enough, i didn’t & took another 3 seconds off.
it was the best adrenalin high i’ve ever gotten from racing & the most fun i’ve had on the track ever. so when i got home & loaded up the truck for star school, i made a few mental notes of things i knew i needed to work on while it was fresh in my mind: more efficient downshifting, more corner speed, a better way of finding my own reference points so i can read a track better, and a better way to pass people with out target fixating & getting pulled in by crappy lines & slower speeds.
star school 3/27-3/28
i signed up for this last november & was really looking forward to getting some help on the mental end of my riding problems. the first half of day 1 was frustrating, as trying to learn new riding techniques & push out old ones to effectively wipe your slate clean was really hard. i was alternating between frustration & impatience & was getting annoyed that i couldn’t figure out why the hell i couldn’t pick some of this stuff up.
then the body position coach pointed out a few things in my riding position that was throwing me off. he adjusted me 3 inches-that’s it-and it took all the weight off my arms. the next thing he told me was that i wasn’t breathing. what? how can someone not breathe? he said that when you get in a stressful situation or somewhere where you’re really concentrating hard on something, people forget to breathe. so he told me to force an exhale at the turn in point of a corner & force an inhale at the apex-concentrate on breathing instead of trying to be techniquely perfect...and he was right. i wasn’t breathing. and the really funny part is, the breathing excercise actually worked. it was easier to focus on the track ahead on me & push out all the other crap by just breathing....funny, that’s why i was doing yoga up to about 6 months ago, because the concentration on the correct breathing while doing the positions was what made the excercises stress-relieveing. i never even thought to connect that technique with riding...(here it comes, the moment of epiphany) here i’d been doing everything else to try to fix my concentration & it was simply breathing...
after a session of doing the breathing thing, the rest of the things they were teaching us just sunk in & were a lot easier to practice. my visual scanning was a lot better too-i could actually tell where my reference points were well enough to look through the bike ahead of me to see them...the 2nd day it rained (again!? ok, so now every time i’ve been to the track in the last 2 weeks it’s rained) i was getting much better feedback from the bike, and from my body position-i realized the shoulder & knee armor in my suit was digging in to the point that i could get full flex. so i took out all the armor in the legs & the shoulder armor & rode until i was soaked through. ( i really need a new suit) but there were a few things i really didn’t get to practice on the 2nd day-like trail braking because of the rain, but it was still awesome. star school was great, got a lot of good techniques & was looking forward to practicing them.
wed 3/29
ok, so now i’ve been on a bike for 5 days straight, i’m getting pretty beat up, but i was feeling good this morning. so when i got a phone call at 8 am to go ride the crest with a buddy of mine for their birthday, i dropped everything & ran out the door. i was anxious to see if what i learned in star school would work on the street or i could even remeber it. i did & it did. i have never ridden the crest as smoothly as i did this morning-i felt like i was on rails. even the crappy pavement didn’t bother me, nor did the water, mud, sand, rocks, and other various rain debris on the road. got back to the office at 1 pm, and haven’t felt like working at all today-it was too much fun this morning.
so if you made it all the way down here listening to my rambling, hopefully there was something here you found useful or at the very least amusing. i finally jumped a mental hurdle that i’ve had since december and it feels really good. although i do feel kind of silly that i never figured out the breathing thing myself...oh well, guess i was just too close to the forest to see the trees.
‘til next time...
the problem is speed, more specifically, going faster-how do you make yourself go faster when you can’t figure out what’s holding you back. i’m not talking about pinning it on the front straight longer, i’m speaking of gaining incremental time in every part of the track to add up to seconds off a lap time. funny thing, though when you try go faster for the sake of going faster it actually slows you down. so now you know the mantra that has been stuck in my head since december. it’s kind of annoying, because i was getting completely wrapped around the axle thinking about it. sure, it’s easy to say, oh, that’s nothing, just clear your mind, but when you haven’t figured out quite how to do it, it’s not so easy. so i decided the best thing to do would be ride it out-spend as many consecutive days in the seat as possible until i had the epiphany.
race weekend wsmc 3/17-3/19.
my plan was to ride all 3 days, but i didn’t even get a tire on the track friday due to oil spills, crashes, and rain. so after sitting all day & waiting, i was kind of bummed about not getting anything done. saturday practice i rode almost all day with the middleweights unti l my tire went away, and then i went down to lightweight practice on a fried tire to finish the day out. the wind was atrocious & i didn’t feel like i had accomplished anything...
sunday morning i was ready for riding, a little nervous, as i didn’t get to work on the things i had hoped to friday, but i figured i would just get out there and ride. race #2 was formula twins lightweight, i was gridded towards the back, got a pretty good start, and just aimed for the bikes in front of me. i was almost in the groove & turning some really smooth consistent laps, and was doing my best to stay ahead of a red nekkid sv that was constantly showing me a wheel. last lap of the race, the nekkid pulled around and got on his brakes going into 9, making me check up & sending steven b- who had been towing on a 2 bike draft-sling shotting around us. we were 3 wide headed for the line-i got the nekkid, but steven beat me by half a bike length. i was bummed when i saw the posted results, because it had been scored from the transpoder line, not the finish line, which was about 200 ft before the start /finsh, so it didn’t give me the position. that’s ok, it would’ve only been 11th & not worth a protest. 550 superbike was also a good race, with me picking my way back from last place after i went to hot into t3 & almost ate a dirt sandwich. i spent most of the race in a mad dash to pass as many people as possible before the checkers. that plan worked well, and i ended up in a drag race with seth clark to start/finish, but he got me by a bike length. overall, not a bad day-best times i’ve ever turned on the big track with th sv & it was only the 2nd time i’d raced it.
adam’s kart track 3/22
sean keone lent me a 125 dirt bike that makes about 7 hp to ride this track-they have bike night on wednesdays from 5p-10p-& i’ve been going almost every wednesday night for the last 2 months to get sliding time in. it ‘s good practice for getting feedback from the bike & making mistakes at 40 mph vs 90 mph.
buttonwillow opener 3/24-3/26
i decided to try a few afm events to get some more practice on more technical tracks as my cornering skills need a lot of work. buttonwillow is a track i like, but haven’t ridden very much, and only had the sv on it once before in january for a track day. friday practice was nerve racking-trying to learn all the right lines & shift points was a lot-i think i got about half of it right. but by the end of the day i was feeling more comfortable with running a faster pace. saturday i didn’t make it through ttech the first time, so while i was trying to fix my bike, i missed my first session. then it started raining & we didn’t get back on track until 3-3:30 pm (afm doesn’t run in the rain). i got 2 sessions in that were shaky at best, and when they combined groups 1 & 2, i was overwhelmed by the number of bike s on the track, so i didn’t ride the lst session of the day.
sunday was raceday, and i was nervous about the large grids, but had also resigned myself to the fact that i just didn’t have enough seat time in at this track to really improve my times. however, when the flag dropped on the clubman race, i got a really good start, and did a lot better than i thought i would. although the amount of bikes on the grid was daunting, after the start and every one got through the bus stop, it spread out well. i had bikes to chase, people of equal skill level to ride against, and it was a lot of fun (a lot of work too-that track is very tiring to ride at speed). i finished 11th in lightweight novice0much better than i thought i was going to do-and took 9 seconds off my fastest time from practice the day before. the 2 expert races i did were large grids also-very initimidating to go flying into t1 to try to get a position just a head of someone before the squeeze-but again, it spread out, and i started chasing bikes. on the second lap of the race, my front end came up on me-i had never caught air on the wheelie bump before & it was kind of scary at first, but when i did it again on the next lap, it was getting fun. i was trying my best not to get lapped by kurt spencer, and thought i was going to make it, but under brakes on the last corner before the finish line, #10 went by & i knew it was over. however i took another 3 seconds off my time. for the last race-650 twins, i vowed i would not get lapped, and sure enough, i didn’t & took another 3 seconds off.
it was the best adrenalin high i’ve ever gotten from racing & the most fun i’ve had on the track ever. so when i got home & loaded up the truck for star school, i made a few mental notes of things i knew i needed to work on while it was fresh in my mind: more efficient downshifting, more corner speed, a better way of finding my own reference points so i can read a track better, and a better way to pass people with out target fixating & getting pulled in by crappy lines & slower speeds.
star school 3/27-3/28
i signed up for this last november & was really looking forward to getting some help on the mental end of my riding problems. the first half of day 1 was frustrating, as trying to learn new riding techniques & push out old ones to effectively wipe your slate clean was really hard. i was alternating between frustration & impatience & was getting annoyed that i couldn’t figure out why the hell i couldn’t pick some of this stuff up.
then the body position coach pointed out a few things in my riding position that was throwing me off. he adjusted me 3 inches-that’s it-and it took all the weight off my arms. the next thing he told me was that i wasn’t breathing. what? how can someone not breathe? he said that when you get in a stressful situation or somewhere where you’re really concentrating hard on something, people forget to breathe. so he told me to force an exhale at the turn in point of a corner & force an inhale at the apex-concentrate on breathing instead of trying to be techniquely perfect...and he was right. i wasn’t breathing. and the really funny part is, the breathing excercise actually worked. it was easier to focus on the track ahead on me & push out all the other crap by just breathing....funny, that’s why i was doing yoga up to about 6 months ago, because the concentration on the correct breathing while doing the positions was what made the excercises stress-relieveing. i never even thought to connect that technique with riding...(here it comes, the moment of epiphany) here i’d been doing everything else to try to fix my concentration & it was simply breathing...
after a session of doing the breathing thing, the rest of the things they were teaching us just sunk in & were a lot easier to practice. my visual scanning was a lot better too-i could actually tell where my reference points were well enough to look through the bike ahead of me to see them...the 2nd day it rained (again!? ok, so now every time i’ve been to the track in the last 2 weeks it’s rained) i was getting much better feedback from the bike, and from my body position-i realized the shoulder & knee armor in my suit was digging in to the point that i could get full flex. so i took out all the armor in the legs & the shoulder armor & rode until i was soaked through. ( i really need a new suit) but there were a few things i really didn’t get to practice on the 2nd day-like trail braking because of the rain, but it was still awesome. star school was great, got a lot of good techniques & was looking forward to practicing them.
wed 3/29
ok, so now i’ve been on a bike for 5 days straight, i’m getting pretty beat up, but i was feeling good this morning. so when i got a phone call at 8 am to go ride the crest with a buddy of mine for their birthday, i dropped everything & ran out the door. i was anxious to see if what i learned in star school would work on the street or i could even remeber it. i did & it did. i have never ridden the crest as smoothly as i did this morning-i felt like i was on rails. even the crappy pavement didn’t bother me, nor did the water, mud, sand, rocks, and other various rain debris on the road. got back to the office at 1 pm, and haven’t felt like working at all today-it was too much fun this morning.
so if you made it all the way down here listening to my rambling, hopefully there was something here you found useful or at the very least amusing. i finally jumped a mental hurdle that i’ve had since december and it feels really good. although i do feel kind of silly that i never figured out the breathing thing myself...oh well, guess i was just too close to the forest to see the trees.
‘til next time...