[Yakaru]

Originally Posted by adouglas

Yeah, I've found that if I have a skilled rabbit I'll go faster... but only if I've got the bandwidth to follow without pushing the SR button.

To me, that means I was too far inside of my comfort zone. The limit was higher than I thought it would be.

Outside the comfort zone = discomfort by definition. At the higher speed, following the skilled rider, I was still comfortable. Therefore still within the comfort zone, right? Just not aware of its true extent.

There's a related thread about "finding the edge" that speaks to this.

Yep, for me that's the difference between 'comfort' or 'capacity' (how fast I can go before errors and SRs creep in) and 'confidence' (how fast I feel I can go). When riding at The Ridge and CotA there were times where I would end up behind @Momaru, but with some distance. He'd be in turn 3, I was in turn 1 or 2 as an example. I found this was a pretty good way to push myself past my confidence and realize I had the room -- I knew I couldn't just get "sucked in" since he was too far ahead for me to copy his lines but I knew our distance was stable/growing/shrinking.

For me the most important thing with this strategy is to not let the ego creep in -- if @Momaru was running away from me I should let him go and stay in my own skill zone; but generally this year I was able to keep up. Probably time for me to go read the edge thread, since I'm realizing the gap of my comfort and confidence is larger than it needs to be.