Race Recap: MRA Round 5 at Pueblo Motorsports Park

Race Days Start Early

I woke up at 4:00AM, hit the road at 5:30AM after 3 cups of coffee, and arrived at 6:30AM in time for tech at 7:00AM and the rider’s meeting at 7:30AM.

“Pro tip” for anyone who’s never gone racing before: load up ALL of your stuff the day or night before. It gives your brain a night to think about what you may have forgotten. Make a checklist during the week leading up and make sure the boxes are checked before you leave. Things I’m apt to forget include my canopy, a chair to sit on, and a fire extinguisher for my pit area. I didn’t forget anything, so I must have done something right.

Time goes by incredibly fast on a race day.

My pit buddy helped me set up my pop-up canopy. I laid out all of my tools and gear the way I wanted them and gave the bike another once over. Tech went by quickly, bike had zero issues. I was the 3rd or 4th person in line. Many racers got their bikes teched at the previous day’s track day, making for a short line. In the past I’ve lined up with 20-30 bikes in front of me, so I wanted to be early to have plenty of time for the rider’s meeting, practice, and whatever else I wanted to do with my day.

I spent most of my time watching my pit buddy race, rooting both for and against him depending on what was going on during his races. It was his first time racing, and he raced as many classes as he could, including races our bikes didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of being competitive in. I understood the impulse. Seat time is seat time, and actually racing against the track, the clock, and other people is a different experience entirely from riding against oneself at a track day. As for me, I was only running one class – lightweight endurance – for my first trip back to the track as a licensed racer. The last time I raced a sporty bike was close to 10 years ago.

One of these days I’ll tell the whole story of how I went racing the first time around, how it went, and what I did wrong. Long story short: I didn’t have enough money, and back then I was in the beginning stages of what would later to become a very serious problem with alcohol. I kind of can’t believe I managed to knock a bike together and go racing after being sober for just ~6 months, but here I am. It feels good.

The Day’s Goals

In no particular order:

• Start the race
• Finish the race
• Get more comfortable on the bike, continue to identify machine strengths/weaknesses
• Identify more of my strengths/weaknesses as a rider/racer
• Stay healthy/Do not crash
• Collect lap times to compare with other racers
• Run under 1:46, the cut off for C and D practice at Pueblo
• Finish on the lead lap
• Finish in podium position

Game Selection

Why lightweight endurance? Why not add lightweight GP to the schedule? There is something to game selection. I’m not playing poker at a table full of pros, but I will sit down and take money from dads on vacation and half-drunk yadudes who barely know a flush beats a straight. Game selection plays a part in racing, too.

I’m running a lightly prepared bike (compared to many other bikes), an unpopular make and model for American road racing, with a bone stock engine (it’s stock from the air filter to the exhaust), nearly stock suspension (70s-style damping rod forks have 5wt instead of stock 10wt), and street tires as opposed to racing slicks on warmers. That said it weighs about 50lbs less than the stock bike does. All of my prep amounts to “add lightness”, which was the Lotus founder Colin Chapman’s design and racing philosophy, that I think gives many if not most amateur racers the best bang for our buck.

I don’t have recent racing experience apart from hare scrambles and two superstreet events. A longer race gave me time to get my tires hot, settle into the track, and then figure out how hard I have to work to catch the guy in front of me or keep the guy behind me from catching me. The longer endurance format seemed like my best shot at accomplishing my goals for the day.

Practice Sessions

I forgot to install my transponder during the first practice session, which was fine because I wasn’t going that fast. I thought I might get black flagged, but that didn’t happen. Later that day an expert racer let me know that only happens at MotoAmerica races. My lap times for the first session, who knows, who cares. I had 15 minutes to get more comfortable on the bike at Pueblo without worrying about lap times, but I was wasting brain power on “what ifs” for not having a transponder installed.

I tried to rush back to the pits, install the transponder, and go back out, but by then the session had ended.

Second practice I didn’t have this problem. Transponder installed, let’s go. Lap times are the only objective data I have, so to recap the second practice session, I started out slow and by the last practice lap I was still going slow. Best lap was the second to last at 1:57.8, backed up by a 1:58.4 on the last lap, which was way off the pace for the lightweight class. That said I wasn’t really “pushing” during practice. Practice at this point for me is more about getting comfortable with the track, the bike, and myself for what was happening later.

Watching Races

I watched my pit buddy, #389 Matt riding a “showroom stock” Yamaha R7, pull away from another racer on a Ninja 400, #888 also named Matt, every single lap starting from Turn 10 leading onto the long straight that doubles as a drag strip on Friday nights.

This was fun to watch because obviously #888 was faster through the corners, but #389 could out motor him (70hp vs 45hp) whenever the track straightened out. I was rooting for the underdog here, not my buddy, screaming “PASS HIM!” from the bleachers every time they came around T10. I thought for sure #888 would find a way around and make it stick. I couldn’t see the rest of the track, so maybe #888 did make the pass, but the track stayed straight for too long to make it stick. If it was me, I’d like to think I would have tried something in T4/5 and then hauled ass through T6/8 in an attempt to put the more powerful bike in its place, but that didn’t happen apparently. Or maybe it did, and the R7 out motored him on the way to T9.

One of the fun things about watching racing is you’re working with incomplete information, and it’s fun to speculate about what’s going where you can’t see the action. Corners you can’t see. Inside the racer’s heads, can’t see in there either.

Another aspect of watching is seeing how the races start. Where are the starting markers? How are they spaced? Where am I lining up later for my race?

Pre-Race Preparations

There’s more to racing than the bike and the race track. The most important part is the rider, a person with a mind and a body. Add soul to that mix; I tend to think of the “soul” as how humans experience emotions.

Shout out to my sobriety here. Sober 6+ months from all mind-altering substances other than nicotine and caffeine, two drugs legal in every state and across the world because they’re cheap and don’t tend to ruin their user’s lives. I eased up on the caffeine the week before racing. It tends to give me anxiety if I consume too much. 2-3 cups of coffee and no coffee/Monster/Red Bull after noon seems to do the trick. Keeps me calm and level headed, not worried about things that don’t matter. I read a lot, do a little programming, some math, and play card games to keep my brain working. I’m 37, hopefully these habits help as I age. Sobriety is the key piece here though. It’s hard to do anything through the brain fog of a killer hangover or, heaven forbid, shaking from acute withdrawals and craving whiskey at 5AM like I was 6+ months ago.

I work on my feet, so the body part takes care of itself. I tell people who are trying to lose weight or get fitter to just start with walking and stretching and eating a halfway decent diet. It doesn’t work for everyone, but it works for me. I stretch a lot. I move around a lot. I don’t go to the gym and haven’t done much intense cardio training in about 10 years. That said the last time I ran 3 miles, earlier this year, I did fine. It wasn’t very hard. I can put my palms on the ground in front of me with my knees straight. I know many people who can’t get within 4″ of their toes when they bend over.

I’m 6′ flat, 175lbs, and pretty bendy. I eat well, but I don’t deny myself dessert when I want it. My thoughts on eating are “Eat food, not too much, mostly plants” (Michael Pollan, never read the book though, sounds like it’s all there in the title). I’m not a vegan or vegetarian, but I eat meat once or twice a week and the rest of the time it’s plants, whole grains, beans, nuts, oils, high fat/protein, low carb.

I like to eat this way, real food just tastes better, so it’s not difficult. I ate well even when I was a degenerate alcoholic, when I wasn’t too messed up to eat. That said I eat chips or candy or whatever junk food when I want to, which isn’t that often. People go absolutely ape shit trying to min/max their diets and exercise programs, and it’s just not worth it for me.

Compared to truly athletic people I’m not terribly fit. Compared to the average American though, I like to think I’m as fit as a fiddle. Best part is I don’t do anything “extra” for it. I just live how I live, stay active, eat well, STAY SOBER, that’s it, done deal.

Emotionally I do the same thing a lot of men my age do. I don’t do emotions! I try to stay the hell away from social media, the news, political concerns, dating, and people who are liable to upset me. Avoidance is the strategy here.

Mind, body, soul. Two out of three is not bad I guess.

The Race

I suck at starts. I don’t even try. My goal for the start is to take off without stalling the bike, without ending up on my ass after cartwheeling the front, and to avoid hitting the people in front of me.

I did all of that and passed a few racers in T1, leaving four more racers out front and rapidly moving away from me, putting me in P5 with not much hope of catching them. That first lap was on par with my best time during practice at 1:58.467. That pace felt too comfortable, so I started going faster by holding the throttle open for longer, braking later, and getting on the gas earlier. It’s really is that simple. I also got more aggressive with my downshifts, performing them leaned over to the left through T6 and into T7 under braking.

I clicked off a 1:54.833 during the second lap, beating my best practice lap by a good margin. My times were all over the place. I got slower for some laps, then started going faster more consistently starting with a time of 1:53.399 on Lap 7. My vision started to slow down, and I remember thinking “You can brake later, you can get on the gas earlier, this bike has more lean in it than you’re using” and I started going faster. Laps 7-15 were fairly consistent in the low 1:53 range, but the racing magic happened during the last lap when the leader passed me to put a lap on me.

One of my goals was to finish on the lead lap, and there I was getting lapped. He passed me on the straight, and he was fast through the corners. But watching him do his thing right in front of me told me I could go faster, and so I did. I held the gas open longer, braked later, and got on the gas earlier. I leaned the bike more. I made damn sure I didn’t miss my upshift coming out of T7, which was something I’d done multiple times during previous laps.

Give me something to chase, and I’ll go a hell of a lot faster. That’s exactly what happened.

After 28 minutes of racing, I went 1:52.114 on the last lap, lap 16, which was my best and fastest lap of the day.

I didn’t realize it, but two of the racers in front of me retired after 4 laps. This put me in P3 for the finish, and a podium is a podium; I’ll take it even if I wasn’t really the third fastest rider to start the race. What matters is I finished the race in P3. I didn’t know this until I was back in the pits and looking at my times. I was damn stoked to see the results!

Wait, you mean I get a trophy? 6 months after getting – and staying – sober and showing up to my first race in ~10 years as a licensed racer? Really?!

I was beyond stoked in that moment. I missed one goal, which was to finish on the lead lap, but met another, which was to finish on the podium. I thought finishing on the podium would be more unattainable than it was. A lot of it came down to getting lucky and having two faster riders retire before the finish, but that’s racing, and I’ll take it and won’t try to make any more excuses for doing well for the day.

Preparing for the Next Race

The next race is August 27-28. I upgraded my forks using Race Tech springs and cartridge emulators. The difference is huge, and I’ll be at High Plains Raceway on Friday the 26th to test them out at speed. The only “downside” is the still look the same on the outside, but sometimes it’s what’s inside that counts. Also have a fancy shock with adjustable lo/hi compression, rebound, length, and preload on the way, but it won’t be here until the last round. The idea is to go as fast as I can on street tires and see if I can get within spitting distance of the podium again. Other than that I’ll continue to stay sober, stay active, eat well, and hope for the best!