jimpastorius wrote:
I would not add any technology such as video cameras, data acquisition, helicopters, etc to the equation until you have the most important technology, the brain, in the right place.
These are my suggestions:
1) After one course walk, you can visualize 80-90% of the course. Not every cone, but every section. After the second course walk you can visualize the entire thing. After the third walk, you can run it in your mind.
2) When you run the course in your mind, you are actually feeling the car and what it is doing. You always, always make the perfect run in your head. No negatives allowed. If you think the car will push, it will push twice as hard. If you worry about a slalom cone, you will hit it.
3) You should be able to provide a good estimate on the time it will take you to run the course at 9/10ths.
4) After every run you take a minute and overlay your run with what you visualized as the perfect run. Make corrections there.
5) When you come to the line, your mind is clear. No worries, no thoughts, just another day in the park. You have already "driven" the course 20 times. Yes, your pulse will be up slightly, but no nerves.
6) If you mess up, which you will, get back to the line you were visualizing. Don't try to make up the lose time, you can't. If you push on turn around, when you get back to overlay the run in your mind, you only have one mistake to figure out why. Not a whole series cause you tried foolishly to make up for that mistake.
I hate when I would get to the line and there was a chatty starter. I don't want to chat at that point
As a starter, you can easily pick out the fast guys. When I say go, the dude sitting there trying to focus and remember that last cones, sucks. They are not ready. The top drivers will almost immediately dump the clutch and rocket out of there...no delays.
Funny, these kinds of mental preparations carried over well to road racing.
I'd just like to say this is what works for Jim. I could NEVER do this. I don't have the attention span or something. Once I've run the course once, I don't visualize again, really. I go over the run from memory and note my errors, and am usually pretty good at that. Maybe that's the same thing, I don't know, but that's more my procedure. I can usually compare two "real" runs after I've done them in my head, but I never add in my virtual run.
Why? Because my virtual run is never better than a best guess. I've tried several times to time my virtual runs in my head and never been very close (ie. within 10%). Ever. So I quit bothering with that. When I visualize, I do it with braking and gas, but I never worry much when visualizing with how much of either. I think it works better for me to visualize looking ahead properly. When I do that, the gas and brake "just work."
I've never bothered thinking about pushing or loose when visualizing. These are conditions brought on by errors, and you should be working to be good enough to correct these as close to immediately as you can. The great Mario Andretti was once interviewed after qualifying on the pole at a race and pretty much putting a whipping on the field. The interviewer asked him what it was like to run what looked like a "perfect" lap. He said there's no such thing as a perfect lap and the racers job was to simply get good at minimizing mistakes. He said he had several on that lap, but admitted they were very minor and that it was definitely a good lap, just not perfect.
You're not having some out-of-body experience here. You're DRIVING the car. You've got a plan through visualization of where you need to be and where you need to be looking. For me, the rest just falls into place and when I can minimize my mistakes, I have a good run. I'm not saying I beat everyone, I just have a good enough run that I say "well, there was time in this place and that place, but I did everything my talent would let me do and now I'm shaking because I nailed everything I could do on that run."
As for number 5, well, that's not something you can just tell someone to do, unfortunately. Reading the book Aaron recommended can likely help, however. So does a lot of practice, as well as Ryan's mantra of having fun. I usually do my best when I prepare well *and* when I remember to try to do something that will put a BIGGER smile on my face. Pulling to the line should be every bit as much of a happy time as much of the rest of your day. Not as good as the time right after a great run, but still good. You're fixing to go do what you love. It doesn't need to be anything else.
These are just my perspectives on something that's much bigger than just a list of what works for a particular person. Have some fun finding what works for YOU. When you're having fun you will naturally relax more, which will also help. You might also consider just borrowing a heart rate monitor and wearing it at an event. See where and when your heart rate spikes and try to think about what you were thinking then. Analyze that part of it. You might find out something about yourself you don't even know. *shrug*
--Donnie
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Granted the strategy should be different for Pro-solo and wheel to wheel racing with rolling or standing starts.
