21st June 2001 - Rockingham

I booked another session at the California SuperBike School for two reasons. Firstly it was the day before we were due to race at Rockingham and I still needed the practice and secondly I felt I needed their help in resolving the problems I was having with my body position on the bike. I was having problems hanging off which meant I was unconsciously holding on to the bars rather hard to the point where the front end was shaking quite badly as a result.

The big difference this time was that I was going to do a level four course rather than the level one I did earlier in the year. Having already tried all the other levels over the past years I have always managed to pick up at least one key point that dramatically improves my riding - The last time it was simply the confidence to get on the throttle harder mid corner. Another advantage of level four was that in addition to the allocated track time we could go out in as many other sessions as we had either the inclination or the energy for.

After a short introduction we were sent off to our separate groups and the level four guys were asked what we wanted to work on. I decided to concentrate on relaxing on the bike as my first exercise and, after spending the session trying to keep out of the way of the level three guys who were out at the same time, started to find some reference points that I could use to make my riding more consistent. Riding with a single gear and no brakes is always a good leveller but I was surprised by how many people I could pass without resorting to mad outbraking manoeuvres and other such tactics. Maybe the racing was improving my riding after all and I just hadn't realised as I didn't get to ride with many non racers for comparison.

The first thing we were asked to do on returning was to draw the circuit. Seems like a straight forward concept but at least one level four guy missed out a whole corner and got another one a little wrong. From here we had to draw on the reference points we had identified on the way round. Needless to say most of us had fairly empty drawings but the idea was to build them up during the day. I also needed to gradually start hanging off a bit more and see how things progressed.

Once it is finished Rockingham is going to be a blinding circuit with a great combination of fast sweeping corners, that I love, and several tight, twisty ones, that I absolutely hate. As the day progressed we gradually picked up more and more reference points to the extent that on one corner I would clip the kerb right next to a solitary yellow flower that was growing on the infield. It just goes to prove that the more reference points you have the more you can relax as you know where you are and what you are doing relative to the last time you went through the same corner. How many people would expect to be able to pick out a single flower when cranked over hard on a right hand corner? To top it all it soon became apparent that the corners you dislike the most are the ones with the fewest number of identifiable reference points. Find some more points and it all gets a lot easier!

By the end of the day I was having a ball and made sure the instructors had to really work hard to keep up. During the day you gradually progress form one gear and no brakes, to using a couple of gears, then adding light brakes before finishing the day by really going for it. Nothing mad of course as there are still plenty of people doing level three, or even level one, out on the circuit at any one time. My body position was improving, although whether I can reproduce this in a race environment we'll have to wait and see, and I found I was much more relaxed despite going significantly faster than I had earlier in the day. I still wasn't keen on the slower corners that required the bike to turn much faster but I was gradually getting more confident every time I went round.

A really top day where I managed to resolve, well, improve on, many of the problems I knew I had before I came, e.g. body positioning and looking far enough in to the corners. For the first time I actually managed to visit Rockingham when it didn't rain all day which has to be a first ;-)