"Friendly competition is always a great opportunity to learn something new about racing." (Pictured L to R, Yamaha team mechanic, Ben Spies, Eric Bostrom, Ben Bostrom. Photo: Aaron Stevenson, Cornerspeed)
Greetings from the paddock again. This column is about training for track days and for racing. We spend a great deal of time discussing on how we must train the body but training the mind is just as important as training the body so let’s talk about one of the mental aspects of bike control which comes through self control . . .and that’s patience. Patience and how it affects bike control.
It’s interesting that in life and in our culture, we, humans, never have enough patience. No one wants to wait. No one seems to realize the value of patience and sometimes, it’s what we need the most. Whatever it is, we want it now and we seem to always want more of it, sometimes too much of it. Yes, we become impatient and usually it’s to our demise.
I write a great deal about cycling (pedaling) and it’s benefits to a motorcyclist especially since most all of the top racers use cycling as a training tool. There are many interesting corollaries between cycling (pedaling) and motorcycling (twisting the throttle). Patience is a major aspect. Probably the best example is one that always comes up in any type of racing which is “closing the gap” or chasing someone down. On a bicycle, you really have to be very aware of every aspect of your riding to be able to do this efficiently. In terms of fuel, power and endurance, you are the machine. This requires you to be very aware of what is going on inside of you as well as around you. Get impatient and try to close a time gap too soon and you “blow up”, run out of energy, etc. OR perhaps you try to enter a turn a little faster in an attempt to make up time only to lose traction and crash. Hummmm? Now that sounds very familiar for us “throttle twisters”, doesn’t it?
So the similarities are not just in the training and how we use muscles and balance in a similar fashion while improving fitness but also in how we must approach racing; concentration, awareness, using good judgment with our inputs and knowing when to conserve and when to push (energy expenditure). All of these relate to patience. Multi-time world superbike champion Troy Bayliss has said that he used bicycle racing as a way to figure out many of these aspects he applied to his superbike racing. So no matter what you are racing, there is always something to be learned.
On the racetrack when we become “impatient”, we lose focus and concentration. We are no longer living in the moment and applying the necessary attention to what is occurring now. This means our awareness is diminished because we’re beginning to ignore feedback from the machine. So now our judgment is a bit impaired from not being in the moment and we begin making mistakes.
When it comes to chassis dynamics and understanding how a motorcycle handles, we need patience and lots of it. We need to take our time and learn. It takes time to learn so that means being very patient. At the Cornerspin school (our road school we teach on dirt), I see it over and over where many students come in thinking, hoping and expecting to be able to control a bike sliding full lock sideways like a national flat tracker by lunchtime on the first day. Usually that means lots of Advil by lunchtime (and a couple of ice packs). Any worthwhile endeavor we do requires patience. And there is a certain level of being “Mr. Monk” (having a bit of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) that will get us there. To really get good at anything, it takes a lot of practice and that also means being willing to do something over and over. Sometimes to the point of shear boredom.
For many of us, that boredom never comes as we are overjoyed to be Mr. Monk and do the same repetitive drills over and over. We just enjoy training and riding! As we train over and over, we learn to practice patience in the understanding that the payoff will eventually come. And if the desired result doesn’t come (a championship or whatever we were training for), we still had fun doing it all the while we were practicing and training.
Patience seems to be the biggest stumbling block for everyone no matter what one tries to accomplish. At the Cornerspeed school, we’ll ask students “what do you hope to accomplish today?”. Overwhelmingly, we get the answer “drag my knee”. That’s cool but if you don’t have “patience” to wait until you’ve worked on proper body position with a good line selection, chances are you WILL drag your knee followed by your butt, your shoulders and your head. We encourage everyone to “take things in baby steps”. You know what we mean by that; learn to be patient.
Let’s talk about something that everyone is always trying to do which is “closing the gap”; catching the next rider in front of us. In most cases, this means getting on the gas early. . . as early as possible. . . and if you’re not being patient. . . sometimes too early.
In this situation, our attention shifts from present time. We stop listening to what the machine is trying to tell us. We are too impatient to get things done, we are too greedy with our throttle hand and the next thing you know, we’re working desperately to keep a very pissed off machine from throwing us on our head.
