Completed 2-day training with Eric Bostrom and top coaches

So overwhelmed right now. Also somewhat depressed and frustrated. You know the whole "go slow to go fast" thing? Very hard to do, but it's essential to make progress and correct so many things I wasn't doing right.. so I'm quite a bit slower now than I was before this school

Besides Eric, I rode with Glen Goldman, owner of Team Pro-motion and former AMA racer. Had some classroom time and track walk with Eric Wood, one of the owners of Penguin Racing School and owner of Woodcraft. There were several other top coaches to work with us as well.. quite a bit of personal attention.

Some of the items I learned I'm bad at and need to really work on if I want to continue track riding:

1. Body position: I'm bending forward at the waste too much for no reason, which explains the sore neck the day after.
2. Foot/ankle position: Putting knee out was rolling my foot onto edge and I was often dragging sides of my boots. I learned that coming way up on toes as the knee steps out (or coming up on toes just before) provides a much better ankle/knee/hip alignment, but I'm so used to doing it the wrong way this will take a lot of time to re-learn. Having new rearsets on made this harder too.. I will need to adjust them.. feel really cramped when riding.
3. (This one is critical) Holding on too tightly to the handlebar: This is the result of poor body position (too much forward lean) and just not being comfortable in several areas of the track. Tight handlebar is asking for trouble, big time.
4. Not enough lean angle: I was achieving better lean angles before this school, but my confidence is shot.. total chicken until all of the above gets fixed.
5. Not enough trail braking: After this was explained to us, I felt like I riding there for the first time.. my braking points changed drastically (much much later) and I've never carried the brakes so deep into corners .. I was amazed how easy it was to get feedback from the bike, provided I could stay loose on the handlebar.. it was letting me know exactly when I was getting close to exceeding available traction and it was quite easy to modulate brake effort and/or lean angle at that point.
6. Reading the track / Using different approach for different types of corners: Before this school, I pretty much treated all corners equally.. outside-inside-outside path. It's fine (and somewhat safe) to do so, but you'll never be really fast and your lines will never be ideal.
7. Identifying good reference points and memorizing them: I'm still depending on cones in several places. Not good.. cones are rarely in same place 2 days in a row. Need to use curbs, grass, dirt, patches.. whatever permanent things can be identified to have solid set of points. Still having a hard time with this.

That's all I can think of at the moment, but there's probably more. Not sure I'm capable of learning all of the above at this point.. really wish I had started many years ago. *queue the violin*

And now few quotes from Eric Bostrom that made me.. :jawdrop:

EB: "Sometimes there just aren't any good reference points. I almost have this music in my head.. this beat.. I know when I'll need to brake, turn, throttle on".

EB: "I remember this one WSBK race.. it was raining very hard; I couldn't see past my screen, but I had the beat.. I knew when my points were coming".
Me: "Eric, how many times have you ridden that track before?"
EB: "Actually, that was my first time there"

EB: "Wheel spin when the bike is nearly straight up is an oh-sh*t moment .. that's when things can go very wrong, but when the bike is fully leaned over, you can spin the tire and skate around all day"
ME: "No, YOU can".

EB: "Knee is like a 3rd wheel and a great rider can save many crashes standing the bike back up after it loses grip. The difference between good riders and great ones can come down to ability to save crashes.. all other things being equal. One can have 50 wins and the other 0."

I learned a lot from you explaining to me what you learned while we watched the race Saturday. I stayed and watched the superbike race, really watching the riders this time. They make it look so easy.

motojoe122 said:

They make it look so easy.

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Yup, I did few sessions with Bostrom. Arguably the toughest section of the track (T3 chicane).. going behind him.. he just absolutely floats through it. Side to side transitions are absolutely seamless.. all while going fast enough to lose me in about 3 seconds.

Eric, don't be so hard on yourself. You probably have less than a thousand laps around the track and these boys, who by the way started racing when they were about 4yo, have hundreds of thousands of laps. It makes a huge difference. A huge difference in your confidence and a huge difference in how relaxed you are. It will come. Speaking for myself, I have no natural talent. My speed comes from doing it a ba-gazzilion times.

So, take your time, eat the elephant 1 bite at a time. Pick 1 or 2 things you want to work on each day out. Not more or you'll get overwhelmed. Keep notes and note RP's, good RP's, RP's that don't move. They'll continue to change as you improve. And you know this from teaching BRC's, be smooth. Smooth will reward you in many ways. All add up to good lap times. You can do it, it just might not be as quickly as you feel it should. I made the biggest advances in my second and third year at it. Winters are a great time to practice.......mentally, which you already know is most of it. That's why having a notebook is so important.

Lastly, the BOZ brothers are a little different and I mean that in a good way. Both have a ton of natural talent. And both are two of the best riders I've seen. You definitely received good instruction now you can take it and continue to learn and improve. It doesn't happen overnight and there is no easy way for us normal people Good luck and keep at it!:thumbup:

MG-242 said:

Eric, don't be so hard on yourself. You probably have less than a thousand laps around the track and these boys, who by the way started racing when they were about 4yo, have hundreds of thousands of laps. It makes a huge difference. A huge difference in your confidence and a huge difference in how relaxed you are. It will come. Speaking for myself, I have no natural talent. My speed comes from doing it a ba-gazzilion times.

So, take your time, eat the elephant 1 bite at a time. Pick 1 or 2 things you want to work on each day out. Not more or you'll get overwhelmed. Keep notes and note RP's, good RP's, RP's that don't move. They'll continue to change as you improve. And you know this from teaching BRC's, be smooth. Smooth will reward you in many ways. All add up to good lap times. You can do it, it just might not be as quickly as you feel it should. I made the biggest advances in my second and third year at it. Winters are a great time to practice.......mentally, which you already know is most of it. That's why having a notebook is so important.

Lastly, the BOZ brothers are a little different and I mean that in a good way. Both have a ton of natural talent. And both are two of the best riders I've seen. You definitely received good instruction now you can take it and continue to learn and improve. It doesn't happen overnight and there is no easy way for us normal people Good luck and keep at it!:thumbup:

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Aww.. thanks for making me feel better, Mike! :thumbup:
If my calculations are correct, I have ~500 laps total to date, (~400 on Thunderbolt and ~100 on Lightning).. so yeah, I suppose that's not a lot of experience.

One of the great tools I've come up with (I'm sure I'm not the first): watching onboard vids on youtube of my track.. the slower the better (so cars work well) and pausing to find good RPs