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Thunderhill Raceway 8-25/26-12 - One hell of a weekend

At the end of August I headed up to Thunderhill for a double header of trackdays. I had a few things I wanted to focus on, primarily getting my lines nailed and then ensuring that my reference points were solid. Add in applying some of the skills I had been working on (braking/trail braking, reading corners, body positioning) and a need to learn how to pass more aggressively and less like a girl.

Saturday started off slow but well. With THill being the track I've spent the most time on, I was up to speed and working on things fairly quickly. It was a sold out day though, and the track was busy...my frustration with passing became very obviously especially with bigger bikes with slower riders. Towards the end of the day I had a few good pieces of advice that rewrote my riding. One of the pieces of advice was a body positioning tip from Kathy Reilly which worked great. She suggested that I hook my heel of my outside leg onto the footpeg rather than the ball of my foot. This provided an increased security that allowed me a little more freedom to work on my upper body. Second was a bit of passing advice from Rory Kamper. Somewhere in the discussion of how to pass, he mentioned that it is "all about momentum." The lightbulb went off and somehow I started to figure out how to pass. Sure I had heard many other things about passing from many people, but for some reason momentum was the magic word for my little brain to make it start to come together. Both pieces of advice did good things and left me with plenty to process for Sunday morning.

Add in that I was working on cleaning up my lines in several corners. I was feeling pretty confident with 1, okay with 2, great with 5/6, okay with 7-11, but needed work on 3, 12/13, 14/15. Got a little better on all of them, with 3 still being my weak spot, and 14 was way better but I wasn't as consistent with hitting it as I would have liked.

Sunday morning dawned promising. I felt like I was riding far more consistently than I had previous times at Thunderhill, and overall I was able to really start applying some of Saturday's gains. My lines were feeling much more consistent and being able to pass easier was making a huge difference...and by this point, I was getting plenty of passing practice in! After the morning sessions I got bumped up to the A group (one of my secret desires for the weekend). First session out with A was going great - I was having a ton of fun, and realized I was missing out hanging back in B group...that was, until I got baptized with oil as the guy in front of me blew something and didn't realize it and I got stuck in his cloud of oily goo. Made it through that, finished the session and cleaned up, headed back out for the next session when the time came. That session didn't end so well - started okay, but mental fatigue kicked in and managed to kick my ass. Those who were there know the details, but I learned a valuable lesson about paying attention to those little things that are easily ignored.

Either way I learned a lot that weekend, even if it could have ended a little better. In the end I walked away with some great changes to my riding, some valuable lessons and the knowledge that I am in this for the long haul :)

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