Lesson's From The Track
During the summer, if it’s no shock, I spend most of weekends at the race track. Given the number of speeding tickets I get, going to race safely on the track is far more fun.
As I continue to work towards a new personal best, which would bump me up into the experts group, there seems to be an endless amount of lessons to learn, session after session. I am feeling firsthand my own 10-step challenge on the track as I try to break a 1:40 lap time, where the record is currently 1:25 and the coaches average mid-1:30s. Rookies, in comparison, average 3-minute+ lap times.
This weekend was a bit busier than usual, with as many as 60 racers on the track at a time, getting up to speeds as high as 160 mph. Crashes happen. This weekend, there was an endless amount of crashes and quite a few I witnessed firsthand.
Of the half-dozen crashes I personally witnessed, it was the same costly mistake—an inexperienced racer trying to keep up with more experienced riders. Ego was the mistake.
I could tell from how they were braking, their rigid body position, and other subtle clues that they were, for the most part, clueless. Anyone can twist a throttle in a straight line, but when that 180-degree turn downhill is coming up, that requires skill and understanding the set up of that turn. Skill these riders had not earned; they were jumping into the game with little seat time. Just like most of us, myself included, have learned in the markets often a similar mistake.
Before these riders crashed, I knew watching them go into the corner that they would be tumbling off the track in moments—and that’s exactly what would happen. After all that time spent preparing to get to the track, getting the bikes inspected, waiting for the session to start, only to crash a few turns in. Once you crash, your race day is over. You might have spent thousand of dollars to prepare for a day of racing that ends minutes into the day. As all the dangerous riders crash and are sitting on the sidelines, the experienced riders with much smaller egos enjoy lap after lap. There is almost a direct correlation between a racer’s speed and how small their ego is—the smaller the ego, the faster the rider.
As I’m currently in my own step 5 of my racing journey, getting feedback and listening to the coaches is gospel, as they’ve been in my shoes, and the simple feedback given is all I need to improve. I don’t need a faster bike or better parts; I need to work on my own skills. I've been trying to stay on the bike to dive into corner at a steeper lean angle, while the coach told me to literally do the opposite. Instead of leaning farther, his advice was to lean less, aim to keep the bike as upright as possible to carry more speed through corners.
Just as we try to instill with you here, in the beginning you might have thought more shares of a cheaper name was better then 1 share of a really expensive stock. When now you know which is the obvious better choices. Better choices I continue to learn on the track. Racing and trading both have similar results based on the effort we put in. We don't need faster setups, we just need smarter effort, nothing less, nothing more.
