Practice, in Theory and in Practice

Ok, so I still haven’t found my camera, and the bike is now stripped of its crashed-up bits. I know I said I’d take pictures, but being banged up kinda takes the wind out of me ‘tear the house apart, it’s here somewhere’ sails, I admit. I will have the actual parts around for a while, so if I come up with the camera, I’ll substitute bent/rashed parts pics for the afore-promised bent/rashed bike pics.

This will be my second year of racing, and I feel like I spent the whole first year so wide-eyed and stunned at how great it was to be racing after 20 years of dreaming that I regularly forgot to focus on any specifics while riding, and spent way too much time just riding around with a big goofy smile on my face. Many times I sat in my pit, race face on, thinking intently on what precise aspect of a turn or a section of track I was going to work at…sometimes I’d even take notes to help me define what I was going to do and how I was going to do it. I’d strap on my helmet and gloves in preparation for a practice session, running over these ideas again and again in my head. I’d get on the bike, and slowly roll over to pit-out, a paragon of focus and determination. I’d sit patiently waiting for Chuck to point at me and wave me out on the track, and when he did so, I was ready to go to work.

However, as I’d work up to speed, a strange thing happened, and two direct relationships conspired against my efforts. First, the faster I went, the more fun I’d have, and second, the more fun I’d have, the less ability I had to think about anything specific. Those of you who know me probably see the issue at hand…I’m a pretty fun-loving guy, and by the time I made it back to start/finish, I was, as Matthew Sweet would attest, 100% Fun. This is not exactly the recipe for technical skills development on the race track.

While there is definitely something to be said for enjoying myself (after all, that is the point), I also want to learn how to go faster, and become a better rider. Simple seat time accumulation will certainly aid this cause, but I also need to focus on specific aspects of riding, and my big goal this year is to spend less time riding around, and more time learning to go faster. How I will tame this fun v. diligence problem is yet to be determined, but I choose to be optimistic. The question is, what will I work on first?

I’ve had people tell me that I’m pretty good on the brakes. I think they really mean that I’m pretty good on the brakes for an old fat novice, but hey, I’ll take encouragement where I can get it. In a nutshell, my braking technique isn’t to wait ultra-late to brake, because I feel that this leads to wide eyes and far too many pucker moments. Rather, I find it much easier to brake as late as I feel comfortable, but work to brake less hard (softer?) and for less time. Being a complete n00b, I have no idea if this is good or terrible, but it’s what I do. This all sounds good, but it turns out that I’m about 96% on the ‘softer’ and 4% on the less time. I seem to trail brake all the time, everywhere. This might be good for passing, but it ruins my drives, and it’s no way to be riding a bike w. 115hp (or whatever the R6 has).

What does this information tell me? It tells me that Focus #1 this season will be to get off the brakes earlier and on the gas earlier, and harder. If I feel that I make significant progress in this area, I may then try to move my braking points closer to turn-in. But for now, I must work on gassin’ it, end of story. I suck at corner exits, and being a fat guy greatly exacerbates this problem. Let’s take a look at what it means to me to have poor corner exits.

If everything about me and Rider X (let’s call him…Harry) is equal in a given corner (brake point, brake duration, turn-in, throttle-on, bike hp, etc), I will still lose ground because I weigh more than Harry, and therefore my drive won’t be as good. This means that I’ve gotta be better than Harry at my exit, just to, well…not be worse. You can start to see now just how serious a problem it is that my drives are, at the moment, terrible compared to other riders.

I will be taking the Ed Bargy Racing School at Nashville at the end of April, so Ed may very well turn all of the above on its head (figuratively please, Ed…I’ve been on my head enough this season) by giving me an entirely different priority to work on. Lord knows, there’s plenty of possibilities. I ride almost entirely by the seat of my pants, so perhaps developing reference points will be tops on the list. Perhaps I’ll discover that my crash has sapped some confidence, and I’ll simply be working to get back my previously existing comfort level. Who knows? In theory, all I need to do is to get on the gas earlier. Easy, right?

This reminds me of one of my favorite platitudes: In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice, there is.

Hmm…

In theory, there is no difference between racing and practice, but in practice there is.

Better.