scuzeme

Well another installment of my observations and experiences at club level racing hope you aint getting too bored with my ramblings.
For those of you who don’t know VMCC Round 5 ended in a big “off” for me and although I walked away the same cannot be said for the Yamakazi which suffered quite substantial damage.
I remember when I started racing I was battling to get down under 1:22’s at Manfeild and now im knocking on the door of 1:13’s which brings me to this months observation: If your gunna get faster you better get smarter” that’s right, seriously speeding round a race track will inevitably thin out the gene pool if you don’t learn from your mistakes and assimilate vital knowledge and adapt your machine to the forces working for and against you when your racing.
How do I convey this? how I might explain and confer what happens as you get quicker? Ill ask you to picture a pyramid, the height of the pyramid donates speed, the width of the pyramid donates margin for error, so at the base of the pyramid at slower speeds you have quite a wide margin for error but as you get quicker that margin for error rapidly narrows.
All racers notice that as they get more track time, their lap times come down in quite good chunks, maybe they can make 1 or 2 second jumps, but you soon find out that these chunks get smaller and smaller the faster you go until your talking 10ths of a second.
A rider finds as he gets nearer the sharp end its not only about his ability and having no fear attitude, the fact is at some point if you want to get faster your going to need mechanical advice and componantry that will assist and enhance your natural or learned ability so that you can go faster.
Like I have touched on before you will at some stage hit a wall or platau then something will “click” in your head or you will adjust something on your machine like the suspension, tyre choice, clip on angle and be able to eek out another wafer thin slice off your best time.
Although I have not reached this pinnacle in my racing I can see where its going, there is a point where you will need to spend the big money on the bling stuff just to get a small edge on your competitors at the sharp end, you will need to get expert advice on set up, you will need to have some high end “stuff” to help make you go faster.
The more you head up the pyramid the less choices you have and the more precise and accurate you will need to be in everything from riding position to the engine components your using.
Having an ability and enhancing that ability with a high end machine is only one half of the coin, to go faster still and to go faster consistently requires both metal and physical toughness, at this point in my racing im finding the last races of the day the most gruelling you have to be 100% focussed on every part of the track and have a conditioned body that can hold its own in the latter parts of a race meeting, for a 40 year old this means exercise, eating properly and heaps of sleep Hmmmmm now where getting really serious.
The other point i want to touch on in regards to going faster and something that i experienced on a personal level in my last race is this well known saying "the faster you go the bigger the mess", i was saying to someone the other day that everytime i started feeling sorry for my self in regards to the condition of my race bike after the crash i immediately was reminded that i walked away injury free.
You can write off a bike, but if you write off your body your gunna wake up dead one day or in a wheel chair so i really have no reason to start sulking infact i should be celebrating i got off as lightly as i did.

The champions of our sport have the unique ability to ride at the top of the pyramid and regularly ride outside the margin for error and for their shear skill still hold it together. Its one thing to watch Craig, Hayden or Andrew from the side lines but to see what these guys are doing right infront of you would make you shake your head and blink your eyes in disbelief! these guys truly are natural talents combined with expertise and go fast technology but they too are striving to get ever faster and ever higher on the pyramid of speed, they are playing for higher stakes and i take my hat off to them.

Cheers and see you at round 6 (some feed back on these blogs would be great if you have the time or the inclination)