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Well, first weekend in EX, and I was nervous. Not because of the competition, but of the fear I couldn't hack it. This certainly got in my head waaaaayy too much, and my performance showed it. I couldn't get focused, I felt so unprepared when I went out for Saturday practices. The result was a nice little trip off of turn 9 after I cut it too close and hit the inside paint on entry, tucking the front. Great, well at least I know what I did.
After cleaning the sand out of my bike and other regions, I fixed up the bike with the help of my LDR peeps, particularly the always crafty John linn. Forks tweaked, clipon snapped, rearset toasted.
GTL- I got an awesome start, and thought for a second I could hang top tenwrong! I was swept back to 12th, where I was content to run a safe race and keep it upright in my first expert showing.
Lwgp- Another ok start, and I had a blast battling with 106 Eric johanson and 900 Jane Kennedy. In the end, I still succumbed to my mental baggage and placed 16th. By far the most exciting race though, and I got to practice using traffic a lot.
Lwsb- watched a MW guy get knocked unconcious hard in t1 right before this race. That didn't help my already weak mental game. I had also swapped tires, to a set of takeoffs I thought were better than what I was running. Wrong! I ran laps a couple seconds slower than earlier, fighting some seriously sketchy tires. I think they may have been heat cycled one too many times! I spent an embarrassing race far behind the pack. It was humbling, but thanks to everyone cheerin me on down the front straight anyway, I was struggling!
Besides a couple other excuses, i can definitely say most of my lackluster performance was mental. I learned a lot, and I know what needs work before next weekend. I sure need to do a trackday, slow down, work on reference points, body position, and focus. Rather than just going out there in a pressure situation, I gotta break it down and get back to basics. That, along with the forks getting some stiffer boingers, and some fresh dunnies, I should be refreshed for round 6...back into the 1:20s and hmmmm, chase chuck into the teens???
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Originally Posted by wiggeywackyo
It didn't look like the best spot to spend Saturday morning, but better then than the last laps of a race like me!
