Sooooo, sequel time! Again,
Momaru and I, courtesy of
Yakaru, joined the said Violet Vixen over in Washington to do two more days of California Superbike School at The Ridge. The day before our scheduled school dates was a bit of a scramble, between
acquiring Yakaru's most recent addition to the stable, and picking Momaru up from the airport, Zero on the trailer behind us. Still, we managed to make it to our hotel all in one piece by something like 19:00, Zero tailing us the entire way. We picked up a light meal close to our destination, and tried to call it an early night, but that was, as is often the case, in vain. I will not explain my 20-minute-ish stints of unconsciousness, broken by weird fits of waking and making adjustments on the couch. Sleep and I haven't been pals for a while.
The next morning, we pulled ourselves together, and headed to the track for two days of instruction, with fourteen on-track sessions in total. Ready or not, it was time to gear up and pay attention.
I won't play-by-play this one like I did with my last couple of track reports. On Wednesday, I worked with @
Misti as my on-track coach. I had made a rule to myself to really back off on the throttle and slow down massively for the drills and exercises. We spent the day working on turn #6, the carousel, and figuring out my line there, since I was frequently lost or just distracted myself by looking for a way around other riders. I also worked on throttle lag timing and using the throttle to control my line through the darn turn. As someone who chronically second-guesses myself, it's incredibly tempting to "correct" my line and make additional steering inputs through such a long turn, which I know is a complete no-no. I also have a nasty habit of not completely closing the throttle before diving into a turn, but that's a story for another time/thread. Anyway, turn #6 improved through the course of the day, in spite of my difficulty focusing for (mostly) off-track reasons. Taking the time to write and sort of meditate between sessions seemed to help. We closed the day with me looking for more reference points at a pace closer to speed, since many of the reference points I tried at lower speeds seemed to disappear whenever I got a little more grabby with the throttle.
For Day 2, Misti was on off-track drills, so my coach was Chris. We started by working over turn #6 some more, until I finally nailed it consistently. After a round of double high-fives and fine tuning it, we moved on to some minor corrections he had noticed elsewhere on the track, right up until we broke for lunch.
Lunch is a whole different story.
Coming back from lunch, Chris had an idea of some minor error corrections I had mentioned, but my consultant had other plans. As soon as I walked into the tent, Keith looked up at me with a glint in his eyes and mischievous grin. "Sasha," He started, "I was re-watching your video over lunch, and I know just the drill I want you to work on." There was a chuckle in his voice that elicited both excitement and a touch of apprehension. Then he stopped and said he should probably look over what my on-track coach had said. After reading through it and waving it off, Keith went on to show me pictures of Marquez, Lorenzo, and other MotoGP riders mid-corner. He said that I was hitting my apexes very consistently. It wasn't uncommon for me to rumble over the curbing a bit. We talked about how though I was using a lot of the track, I could use even more of it, allowing me to carry more speed and play with my lines more. After explaining the drill to me and challenging me to come back with grass in my knee pucks, he sent me along, that crooked grin on his face. I'm sure I had a poop-eating grin on mine, too. I went outside, sat on the pavement, and meditated for a minute to get my head more in the game, though, since I had no plans of crashing and paying for damages to one of the school bikes.
I may have taken him a little too literally. After taking chunks out of my left puck with the high curbing of turn #13, then grinding more off in the wavy pavement, I had a talk to the side with Chris about hyperbole and scaling it back a bit. Once he gave me permission to just hover my knee over the curbing, I was way more on-point with the drill. It was really fun and I found it incredibly productive, though part of me still has it in my head that I need to come back with grass in my sliders one of these days. Hahaha. We spent a little more time dialing in that drill, and then working on my visuals again, since it seems as though my eyes aren't always looking where I've turned my head, and that I have a tendency to look too far ahead through turns, contributing to me pulling lines tighter than necessary, and cutting turns a bit much.
I'm sure I may think of more later, but that's all for now. Pictures may be on the way shortly, too, if there's any interest in that and/or video.
Also, here's me pinging @
Yakaru and @
Momaru to add their perspectives on the two days.