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Fear? Confidence?

What are these? How do they relate to racing? Is a certain level of experience required to block out one and hold onto the other? What are the reasons/excuses that let one in and the other escape? Is there some spontaneous event that can drastically change the dynamic balance of the two without warning? These are the questions I'm asking after this past weekend at Grattan.

A quick flashback to the "peak" of my racing. I had the utmost confidence in my riding ability. Sure when I first hopped on race bike for the first time there was a sense of fear. Whether it's crashing, getting hurt, or whatever else; you're new to racing and you're not exactly playing slow pitch softball in the backyard. Everyone goes through it initially. It's fear which gives you that nervous edge before a race. It makes you focus on the task at hand. If you don't have that nervousness, you don't focus and you make mistakes. You can get hurt. It's that same focus that makes you fast. And it's handling the sense of fear that can make you really fast.

When I was on the SV in 2003 I had a lot of confidence. I knew how to ride the bike fast. Sure the bike was fast in and of itself. Sure I was an amateur and the competition wasn't the same as it is now in the expert 600 ranks. However I still went out and won races. I won races against my competition. I won races overall against experts that weren't actually my competition. I ran top 5 – top 10 in middleweight races that my bike wasn't classified to run in. I won races against Heavyweight machines that were supposed to beat little bikes like mine. I won races that I started well behind in. I won races at my home track – and away from my home track where fast locals raced and had the same level of confidence I had. I also lost races, but I learned from them and used that to win other races.

So what's changed since then? Anything to be said is surely an excuse and I hate excuses. Everyone has an excuse, for anything. I'm compiling a list of all the excuses I've seen and heard since I started racing, as excuse-making is so prevalent in racing, I can't stand it. If you want to be successful in racing you have to eliminate the excuses. What's the point of racing otherwise, if at the end of the day you can't say you gave it your all and that simply wasn't enough? I would think after awhile, racers would grow tired of blaming their racing inadequacies on the bike, or something other than themselves. If the problem is the bike, fix it. If the problem is something else, fix it. I absolutely hate settling for excuses, but as much as I hate to say it, I think I've got a few myself right now. And I've got to get rid of them.

So what is it then? Is it the bike? Is it taking a year off of from racing and jumping in a highly competitive class? Is it my lack of experience on the 600? Is it some pressure to perform for James and Brighton Superbike? Is it my own pressure to be winning races like I'm accustomed to? Is it something as crazy as my bike not being yellow? Everything seemed so natural back then. Now it seems like so much work to do the times I was doing on the SV seemingly so easily back then.

Everyone has their own take of what it is. I've had a bunch of friends trying to help me get it this year – the transition from twin-cylinder machine to four-cylinder machine. Everyone offers their own words of advice and I genuinely do appreciate it, even though at times it's hard to decipher all of it and know if and how I can apply it to my own situation. It may help, it may not. I'm a pretty analytical person. I like to break things down, figure out what's not working and fix it. Some guys aren't like that. Some racers I know can just hop on the bike, wick it up, and do fast times out of the gate. Those are generally the same guys who push the envelope without the right experience and crash more than the racer average. My formula has never been like that. I'm not afraid of crashing, but I don't like. It doesn't build confidence; it takes it away. I've never subscribed to the "push it till you bin it" mentality. That's not intelligent on a number of levels. Granted, I've gone out with the attitude that I might have to nearly throw the bike down the road in order to win a race, but that's far from the norm; and that situation has yet to actually occur.

Right now it's experience (the lack thereof) that's the culprit for me. I'm building it slowly at each event (sometimes it feels really slow), and waiting for it to click where I start making bigger jumps in terms of laptimes. I had a flash of it at Grattan in Sunday morning's practice. And at every event so far, it's been an upward curve of progression which is good.

What else? Is the bike perfect? Probably not. Is it capable? Yes definitely. We had the luxury of having Larry Denning turn some laps on the R6 this past Friday. I wasn't comfortable on the bike and I felt like I was working really hard for really slow laps, so James asked him to give us some feedback and he graciously agreed. He went out, came back in, and in a detailed manner said that some definite improvements could be made to get the rear shock working like it should be. James made changes, Larry went out again, noted that the bike felt better, and gave some additional feedback on what he thought of the bike. He liked the power of the bike and all the input he gave centered around getting that power to the ground better. It would have been nice to have him do a couple more sessions, but it's not often that you can get a rider with the experience and talent of Larry Denning to jump on your bike and let you know what he thinks of it.

So the experience issue (or excuse if you want to call it that) ties directly to both fear and confidence. It's sort of an inverse proportion of experience and confidence relative to fear and apprehension. It took some time for me to get up to speed when I started racing (even though I was fortunate to win that first race early on), so it will come. I'm not going to stop until it happens and I’m back running up front.

Friday, June 30th, 2006 | POSTED AT: 6:58 AM
FILED UNDER: General

4 Comments on “Fear? Confidence?”

Aaron wrote on 30 June, 2006, 1:19 PM
Eddie, you make some great points. I really enjoy reading your articles these days. Keep up the good work.

Here is a thought for an analytical mind to measure your learning curve. Take your the difference between this years lap times and your SV times at corresponding tracks as a percentage. Than plot that out on a chart/graph. Is that curve going the right way? Is it flat lining? Let me know if this makes sense to you. I just thought it might help to see the curve climbing in the right direction. It might build confidence. We both know that confidence can help to overcome fear.

Good seeing everyone at the track. Look forward to the next Grattan round.

Aaron
Eddie wrote on 4 July, 2006, 4:59 PM
Hey Aaron,

The curve is going the right way. The slope just needs to be a little greater. :) Thanks for the feedback. Much appreciated.

Talk to you soon ..
cire wrote on 8 July, 2006, 6:05 PM
Ed,

Have you ever thought about going in journalism???

Eric
Eddie wrote on 8 July, 2006, 6:50 PM
Yeah Eric, I wouldn’t mind doing some writing if the situation ever presented itself. :)