Still slow
Aug. 21st, 2007 06:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elizillaSo last weekend I took the VFR to the racetrack for two days.
For those who don't know, here's the basic scoop on how this works. The group that organizes these events is called Sportbike Track Time. STT divides the riders up into three groups, Novice, Intermediate, and Advanced. Each group gets to be on the track for twenty minutes each hour. The Novice group is for beginners and those who seek continued instruction; in addition to 20 minutes on the track each hour, Novice riders are required to attend a 20 minute classroom session each hour, and they are given strict rules for how to ride during each track session. If you've done Novice before, and you so choose, you can go to Intermediate. Intermediate usually has the most crashes, since it's less structured and has more people who are trying to prove something. Advanced is for people who have racing licenses, or who STT invites based on how well they ride.
The other cool thing about STT, is that they offer discount pricing to women riders, so it's pretty cheap for me to ride with them.
I've done STT track days before, so I'm eligible to go to Intermediate. But I am slow and I know it, so I have continued to ride with Novice. The lessons are the same every day, and last weekend was my fifth and six time with these lessons. I just don't learn this kind of stuff very fast. And after this past weekend I am still slow.
Here is how the STT day goes:
7am - Tech and registration open. Everyone needs to have newish tires, good brakes, and a throttle that snaps back on its own, and they must remove/tape mirrors, tape their lights and speedometers and license plate edges, etc. Intermediate and Advanced have to replace their coolant with water but Novices don't.
8:30am - Riders meeting, required for all three groups. The guy in charge of the track day, Monty, gives a speech about the rules, how to enter and exit the track, things you should know about this particular track, what the various flags mean, what to do if you crash, don't be a jerk, the evils of "straight line bombing and corner camping", the importance of staying hydrated, the various available services, lunch, etc.
9:00am - Advanced and Intermediates dismissed from the meeting. Intermediate riders get the first 20 minute session. Novice riders stay for further instruction. Instructors are drawn from the Advanced group. The Novice riders are divided into groups of four to six, and assigned to individual instructors. They try to sort them according to who is likely to be fastest. The fastest riders go to Group 1, and they work down from there, with the slowest in the last group. The Novices are told that the first thing to do, is to examine the entire track. You do this by mentally dividing the track into three lanes, and riding around the track, at a moderate pace, three times, once in each lane. Each group follows their instructor. After the three trips around, the instructor will lead you and show you the racing line. You're supposed to choose things along the track to mark where you want to turn in for each curve, and memorize them. All passing is done as groups, based on the hand signals from instructors. Stay with your group, don't pass within your group.
9:40am - Novice riders get their first track session.
From then on, every hour there is twenty minutes of instruction and twenty minutes of riding. Here's what they cover:
- At 60mph, you're traveling 88 feet per second. Can you make a plan and execute it in a second? No. If it's within 88 feet of you it's already happened. Looking at this stuff just feeds your brain bad information. Focus your attention farther down the track, where you can still do something about it. This slows things down and makes it so your brain can keep up.
- Each turn is divided into entry, apex, and exit. Set the proper entry speed, pick the proper apex, and power on through the turn.
- Staying in the sweet spot of the suspension, keeping the bike's weight properly balanced front to rear.
- How the bike turns, the rear wheel is key. Countersteering, leaning, throttle steering, etc.
- If you don't use the throttle properly and pick the correct apex you'll run wide.
- Body postioning demo. There's a bike on stands and each student sits on it. Put your toes on the outside edge of the pegs. Keep your forearms parallel to the ground, put your chin over your right forearm, rotate your hips around the gas tank and point your right knee out, while resting left knee and elbow against the tank. Take your weight off your hands. Now switch sides, and once again no weight on the hands.
On Saturdays they're very formal and do this all in great detail. On Sundays they rush through the lessons more quickly and let things slide a bit, probably because the majority of the students are there for both days and it's just a review for them. Still, there are always a few Sunday-only students. My advice to anyone going for the first time, would be to get a Saturday session, because they're more thorough on Saturday. But if you've done it before and wish they'd stop lecturing so much, Sunday's the best.
The track I went to, Gingerman, has some unusual rules. There are two churches on neighboring properties and the track has to observe quiet time from 10am to noon on Sundays. So they run until 6pm each day, to give back those two hours. (I was also pleased to hear Monty criticize the guys with straight pipes. He said that many tracks are starting to enforce decibel limits because this excessive noise causes tracks to be shut down. IMHO too many people who run loud pipes do it solely to show off, and these people need to realize that their peers are not impressed, so it's good that Monty is speaking up on this issue.)
Other unusual things - There is a group that is trying to turn this Gingerman STT weekend into a big Ducati festival, and for this purpose they had a trackside dinner, a band, and a movie scheduled for Saturday night. This was sponsored by Red Bull, so there were scantily clad pretty girls wandering around giving away free cans of Red Bull on Saturday. There were also demo rides on Ducatis and Triumphs, which I did not take advantage of since I was too busy with the classroom sessions and the track sessions.
Unfortunately the weather did not cooperate. It started raining at around 3pm Saturday, and rained most of the rest of the weekend. The movie had to be canceled because of the rain. By the time I was ready to set up my tent, the whole grassy area where I might have put it was awash, so I decided to sleep in my truck instead. I woke up a number of times during the night and it was always raining. During the day Saturday, I'd been good about staying hydrated, and therefore I had to get up in the night to pee, three times. Each time, it was raining harder. By the third time, it was raining so hard, and it was so dark, that I decided not to walk up to the bathroom. I just peed on the ground near my truck, and got back in. I got soaked to the skin in the thirty seconds it took me to do this. Yuck!
On Saturday afternoon, I was a lot less distressed by the rain than a lot of the other Novices. So I came closer to holding my own, than I had all day.
On Sunday morning, about half the Novice students did not even start the day. And with the rain, lots of them quit as the day wore on, and a few more crashed out. By the last session, there were only two of us left, me and Cheryl. The one remaining instructor, Travis, basically turned us loose. I passed Cheryl! And I opened up a half a lap on her by the session's end. But before you get too impressed, please realize that my VFR750 is just plain faster than her EX500. By a lot. I could run away from her in the straights, but I suspect we were pretty evenly matched in the corners. So I'm not going to take a lot of credit for mad riding skillz just because I was able to get away from her.
The thing that was cool, was that I finally managed to hang off. This has been my bete noir at past track days. Of course it didn't make me any faster, in fact it was basically useless, since no one was getting knees down in the rain. But just being able to do it at all is a huge change.
The thing that was bad, is that I was repeatedly singled out and lectured for my failure to follow other riders closely enough. There are reasons I reflexively refrain from following too close, and on the street these reasons are highly valid. Unfortunately, on the track, this is not a useful habit. I fought it and fought it, but it was an uphill battle, and I think the instructors thought I was arguing with them when I explained why it is so hard for me. I wasn't telling them they were wrong, though, just trying to explain why this following thing is such a huge struggle for me. They did not seem to remember me from past track days, fortunately. With luck they will forget me again before I do the next one, otherwise I fear they will lose patience and tell me to stop coming back. Maybe I should find a trustworthy riding buddy or two, and get them to work on this with me on the street, let me follow them closely so I can get past this fear? OTOH, this is just a bad idea on the street, for many reasons. I will have to think about this some more.
For those who don't know, here's the basic scoop on how this works. The group that organizes these events is called Sportbike Track Time. STT divides the riders up into three groups, Novice, Intermediate, and Advanced. Each group gets to be on the track for twenty minutes each hour. The Novice group is for beginners and those who seek continued instruction; in addition to 20 minutes on the track each hour, Novice riders are required to attend a 20 minute classroom session each hour, and they are given strict rules for how to ride during each track session. If you've done Novice before, and you so choose, you can go to Intermediate. Intermediate usually has the most crashes, since it's less structured and has more people who are trying to prove something. Advanced is for people who have racing licenses, or who STT invites based on how well they ride.
The other cool thing about STT, is that they offer discount pricing to women riders, so it's pretty cheap for me to ride with them.
I've done STT track days before, so I'm eligible to go to Intermediate. But I am slow and I know it, so I have continued to ride with Novice. The lessons are the same every day, and last weekend was my fifth and six time with these lessons. I just don't learn this kind of stuff very fast. And after this past weekend I am still slow.
Here is how the STT day goes:
7am - Tech and registration open. Everyone needs to have newish tires, good brakes, and a throttle that snaps back on its own, and they must remove/tape mirrors, tape their lights and speedometers and license plate edges, etc. Intermediate and Advanced have to replace their coolant with water but Novices don't.
8:30am - Riders meeting, required for all three groups. The guy in charge of the track day, Monty, gives a speech about the rules, how to enter and exit the track, things you should know about this particular track, what the various flags mean, what to do if you crash, don't be a jerk, the evils of "straight line bombing and corner camping", the importance of staying hydrated, the various available services, lunch, etc.
9:00am - Advanced and Intermediates dismissed from the meeting. Intermediate riders get the first 20 minute session. Novice riders stay for further instruction. Instructors are drawn from the Advanced group. The Novice riders are divided into groups of four to six, and assigned to individual instructors. They try to sort them according to who is likely to be fastest. The fastest riders go to Group 1, and they work down from there, with the slowest in the last group. The Novices are told that the first thing to do, is to examine the entire track. You do this by mentally dividing the track into three lanes, and riding around the track, at a moderate pace, three times, once in each lane. Each group follows their instructor. After the three trips around, the instructor will lead you and show you the racing line. You're supposed to choose things along the track to mark where you want to turn in for each curve, and memorize them. All passing is done as groups, based on the hand signals from instructors. Stay with your group, don't pass within your group.
9:40am - Novice riders get their first track session.
From then on, every hour there is twenty minutes of instruction and twenty minutes of riding. Here's what they cover:
- At 60mph, you're traveling 88 feet per second. Can you make a plan and execute it in a second? No. If it's within 88 feet of you it's already happened. Looking at this stuff just feeds your brain bad information. Focus your attention farther down the track, where you can still do something about it. This slows things down and makes it so your brain can keep up.
- Each turn is divided into entry, apex, and exit. Set the proper entry speed, pick the proper apex, and power on through the turn.
- Staying in the sweet spot of the suspension, keeping the bike's weight properly balanced front to rear.
- How the bike turns, the rear wheel is key. Countersteering, leaning, throttle steering, etc.
- If you don't use the throttle properly and pick the correct apex you'll run wide.
- Body postioning demo. There's a bike on stands and each student sits on it. Put your toes on the outside edge of the pegs. Keep your forearms parallel to the ground, put your chin over your right forearm, rotate your hips around the gas tank and point your right knee out, while resting left knee and elbow against the tank. Take your weight off your hands. Now switch sides, and once again no weight on the hands.
On Saturdays they're very formal and do this all in great detail. On Sundays they rush through the lessons more quickly and let things slide a bit, probably because the majority of the students are there for both days and it's just a review for them. Still, there are always a few Sunday-only students. My advice to anyone going for the first time, would be to get a Saturday session, because they're more thorough on Saturday. But if you've done it before and wish they'd stop lecturing so much, Sunday's the best.
The track I went to, Gingerman, has some unusual rules. There are two churches on neighboring properties and the track has to observe quiet time from 10am to noon on Sundays. So they run until 6pm each day, to give back those two hours. (I was also pleased to hear Monty criticize the guys with straight pipes. He said that many tracks are starting to enforce decibel limits because this excessive noise causes tracks to be shut down. IMHO too many people who run loud pipes do it solely to show off, and these people need to realize that their peers are not impressed, so it's good that Monty is speaking up on this issue.)
Other unusual things - There is a group that is trying to turn this Gingerman STT weekend into a big Ducati festival, and for this purpose they had a trackside dinner, a band, and a movie scheduled for Saturday night. This was sponsored by Red Bull, so there were scantily clad pretty girls wandering around giving away free cans of Red Bull on Saturday. There were also demo rides on Ducatis and Triumphs, which I did not take advantage of since I was too busy with the classroom sessions and the track sessions.
Unfortunately the weather did not cooperate. It started raining at around 3pm Saturday, and rained most of the rest of the weekend. The movie had to be canceled because of the rain. By the time I was ready to set up my tent, the whole grassy area where I might have put it was awash, so I decided to sleep in my truck instead. I woke up a number of times during the night and it was always raining. During the day Saturday, I'd been good about staying hydrated, and therefore I had to get up in the night to pee, three times. Each time, it was raining harder. By the third time, it was raining so hard, and it was so dark, that I decided not to walk up to the bathroom. I just peed on the ground near my truck, and got back in. I got soaked to the skin in the thirty seconds it took me to do this. Yuck!
On Saturday afternoon, I was a lot less distressed by the rain than a lot of the other Novices. So I came closer to holding my own, than I had all day.
On Sunday morning, about half the Novice students did not even start the day. And with the rain, lots of them quit as the day wore on, and a few more crashed out. By the last session, there were only two of us left, me and Cheryl. The one remaining instructor, Travis, basically turned us loose. I passed Cheryl! And I opened up a half a lap on her by the session's end. But before you get too impressed, please realize that my VFR750 is just plain faster than her EX500. By a lot. I could run away from her in the straights, but I suspect we were pretty evenly matched in the corners. So I'm not going to take a lot of credit for mad riding skillz just because I was able to get away from her.
The thing that was cool, was that I finally managed to hang off. This has been my bete noir at past track days. Of course it didn't make me any faster, in fact it was basically useless, since no one was getting knees down in the rain. But just being able to do it at all is a huge change.
The thing that was bad, is that I was repeatedly singled out and lectured for my failure to follow other riders closely enough. There are reasons I reflexively refrain from following too close, and on the street these reasons are highly valid. Unfortunately, on the track, this is not a useful habit. I fought it and fought it, but it was an uphill battle, and I think the instructors thought I was arguing with them when I explained why it is so hard for me. I wasn't telling them they were wrong, though, just trying to explain why this following thing is such a huge struggle for me. They did not seem to remember me from past track days, fortunately. With luck they will forget me again before I do the next one, otherwise I fear they will lose patience and tell me to stop coming back. Maybe I should find a trustworthy riding buddy or two, and get them to work on this with me on the street, let me follow them closely so I can get past this fear? OTOH, this is just a bad idea on the street, for many reasons. I will have to think about this some more.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 01:08 am (UTC)Actually, I suspect the EX500 would be easier to carry through the corners at high speed, because it's lighter and smaller than a VFR.
You should be proud. You may be one of the slow folks at the track, but that means you're faster than 90% of the people on the street. Either way, you're still a damn smooth rider.
Maybe I should find a trustworthy riding buddy or two, and get them to work on this with me on the street, let me follow them closely so I can get past this fear?
One of the things I like about the SabMag group is that there are a number of riders in it I trust implicitly on the road. (Including you.) It makes group rides a lot more fun when you can just trust that the people you're riding with won't do something stupid. Well, aren't likely to do something stupid.
I definitely think you could practice tail-gating with Phil or Erik. Whether or not this would negatively impact your general riding habits is a good question. It may be one of the reasons why a lot of dedicated amateur racers stop riding on the street.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 03:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 09:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 01:32 pm (UTC)I think my traffic riding skills are very good, actually. And I never do enough track days to permanently harm them; by the time I'd made the 16 mile trek to Tios and back last night, I was fine.
But my physical, bike handling skills, well, not so much. I've always been weak in this area, ever since the very beginning, back in MSF. I feel that what we do on the track addresses some of these skills weaknesses.
What is the quote Phil uses? "The expert rider uses expert judgment to avoid using expert skills." But if you habitually avoid having to use expert skills, then when/if that judgment fails, you won't have those skills to fall back on. The track is a place to get some physical skills, without having to take such risks on the street.
Another thing I plan to do, is this dirtbike school that Mo recommends. American Supercamp. I think this will help me gain a whole different group of physical skills.
Don't assume I'm only being saintly and educational and serious here, though. The track is a whole lot of fun and I expect the dirtbike school will be too! :-)
no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 03:39 pm (UTC)And if I remember correctly, you got the VFR because you didn't want to wreck the TDM on a track. The implication there is wrecking the VFR wouldn't be a tragedy. Maybe you should release your inner squid more on the track.
And the dirt-bike school is definitely a good idea. It's expected that you dump a dirt bike on occasion, so, IMO, it removes the fear of dumping it, and lets you be a little more aggressive.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 04:13 pm (UTC)I think next time I go, I need to make a point of actively watching the intermediate group ride, and decide how I feel about it. Maybe I should just ride out to one of the more local tracks sometime when an STT weekend is going on, and I am not signed up to actually ride. That way I can pay closer attention to how things are going for the other groups and other riders out there.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 05:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 01:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 01:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 01:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-24 01:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-24 04:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 03:29 am (UTC)As for the tailgating thing, I would ask myself what was the most important thing for me: What do I potentially gain, what do I potentially lose, what's the best case and what's the worst case? Then go from there. Either way, you rock.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 03:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 04:02 am (UTC)I totally feel your frustration and empathize. So, track days aren't one of the things you're effortlessly good at. That's ok, right? You have plentiful other qualities that the fast people can't hope to emulate themselves. It sucks to want to be good at something, to try to be good at it, and to fail to meet our own expectations. One of the plus sides is, your thing is Track Day and not Interacting Well in Social Situations or Being Responsible and Dependable. Also, you get to do the track days! Fun, in amidst the frustration. Too, you keep going back. You don't give up.
I was thinking about you earlier today, and among the thoughts was, "When K decides to do something, she does that thing;" you don't pussyfoot around and whine and bitch and moan and get stuck half-way. You do it. I might wash out if I sucked at Track Day, fearful of humiliation or worse, failure. I might feel like I had something to prove and crash myself into oblivion. You're doing it safely and sanely and at some point, you will be like Fran Crane - liquid smooth and ffffast! I wish you had met Fran and I wish I'd known her better.
a girl on a slower bike, who doesn't even have a drivers license and is doing her first track day ever. :(
Well ok, ouch. But at least you passed her! :-) And as someone mentioned above, you had it harder in the corners than she did.
Just be you, your beautiful self. The rest will happen.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 01:48 pm (UTC)Some get there the crazy way and they scare me when I'm close enough to see/be affected by it.
On the other hand there's Phil. So there are people who really are fast without being stupid in the process.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 02:41 pm (UTC)But I still have a lot of room to get faster without taking more risks, simply through skills improvements, and I want those skills.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-24 02:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 01:50 pm (UTC)I think I want to get the MSF advanced course and a dirt riding course under my belt first, though.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 02:29 pm (UTC)Your bike would be good for the track. It's small and agile with good performance characteristics.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-22 02:27 pm (UTC)Gotta get up to NHIS again. Gotta get that Bandit fixed. :)