Did a "race simulation" today at the track. Four 20 minute sessions which is what I'll need to ride on Saturday. Of course I did it on the easy bike to ride, so we'll see how that works out. I melted out of my leathers. It's hot.
Team prep is happening. Unsurpisingly I'm the t-shirt guy. I had nothing to do with the name, it's brilliant.
Short potato quality video of Mazduece during his last stint tonight during the race.
Nice.
BTW I went back to the first post and, well:
"the end goal, to race a race in the next two years or so. This thread will be slow."
Goals surpassed.
Big writeup to do, but also sprint races tomorrow, and so very tired. Four hours of racing, 242 laps, 2nd in class, extremely happy with everything.
I went racing. Actual wheel to wheel racing. It was great.
Long writeup.
Picked up Deucekid#3 from school on Friday and headed over to Derek's house to pick up him, the Grom, and an absurd amount of gear. We had enough tools to outfit a shop, brand new EZ up, chairs, two complete sets of riding gear, food and on and on. I NEVER bring this much stuff to car events. Motorcycle guys bring a lot of stuff. Now I know why they like vans. Morning of Saturday found us at Moto Liberty in Dallas. Amazing bike gear shop that specializes in having race suits in stock. They are maybe the only place in the country that has a variety of kids suits to try on. Kid#3 now has a suit, back protector, gloves and amazingly, boots. I'm sure this will lead to more stories.
To the track! First things first was licensing school which Mike and I both needed to take since neither of us had raced before. I was a good half hour of explaining flags and general track procedures. Generally the same as car stuff with a little more emphasis on track in/out and the dangers involved. During that time Derek had the Grom apart to put on a new set of tires we had gotten at the track. Mike has a hitch mounted tire changer. Because why wouldn't you?
We met a super nice guy named Scott right when we got to the track and his first advice was to get a good spot under the shade. We did that, it was great.
Practice was open for two hours and we lapped a lot. Got familiar with the bike and tried to get familiar with the track. It was dominated by left turns which is opposite the track I usually ride. I was also nervous after falling over twice earlier in the week. We were all happy with the bike by the start. Derek said the old rear was properly messed up which is what made the bike handle funny the other day. He might have been blowing smoke just to make me comfortable. Either way, it worked.
Race time! Four hour enduro. 4:00-8:00 pm. We put Derek on the bike for the start because he's the experienced one. Grid is random with the first two rows reserved for the top five points leaders. This lets the fast bikes get away and everyone else has to play with each other to get sorted out. Derek had a good start but ended up behind a young rider for the first lap and watched the rest of the Grom field put distance on him. He got around them and was clearly making small gains on them by about lap 3. Red mist. More gains. Fell over hard on lap six. Oops. He was slow getting up but got the bike up and back to the pits where I straightened the shift lever as Mike suited up. Once we could shift again Mike headed out. At that point we all calmed down and started lapping. Stints were 20-40 minutes long. A tap on the helmet as we went by indicated a desire to change. Mike and Derek were 3-5 seconds a lap faster than me but I was ok with that. I'm still new at this at take a while to get comfortable. There was a five minute red flag for a rider that went down in a bad spot and needed some time to get back up. Topped up fuel. We lapped. I got comfortable getting passed. I passed a few people. At an hour the fast team was pulling away and 2-4 were all within a lap. By the second hour we were up about two. We just lapped. Mike started putting in fast laps in his last stint and made a mistake. The shift lever was nice enough to let us bend it back again I hopped on only to find the fuel light blinking at me 8 laps later. A helmet tap and bringing it in for fuel two laps later where spacedet was a welcome extra set of hands. Derek brought it through the checkers and we were some happy guys.
As the results show above, our consistent lapping got us 2nd out of 4 in class and 10th overall out of 17. We (and especially me) aren't necessarily fast on the bike, but we stuck to the plan and turned laps for the whole 4 hours.
I'm not sure that people are really supposed to be this happy about plastic trophies, but we were. Mike and I had gone from guys who watched racing on TV to guys who suited up and raced. Derek had found two lunatics to come along with him. Riding is fun, but riding with friends is more fun.
Dinner, laughter, and bed. Sprint races the next day.
Day two, sprint races.
Started with Derek not coming down to breakfast and a text that said he felt sick and would Uber over to the track later. Public service announcement here: when you're super dehydrated and haven't really eaten all day, two beers and a large order of hot wings may not help you recover by the next morning. We believe that Derek has learned his lesson.
I decided to ride the XR100 today. I wasn't much interested in the sprints to be honest, but I wanted track time on a bike that I'm comfortable on and could push a little bit.
Two hours of practice and I spent over an hour of it lapping. I'm comfortable now. Not fast, but I have a much better idea of how to ride the track and how the corners flow together. I'm sure I could knock several seconds off my endurance times on the Grom now. Totally worth it just for the track time.
A word about sprint races with TMGP becasue I found it interesting. Races are 6-8 laps and you pay by race. The bike is classed by the rules, but you may also race any class up from yours. There is also a Dinosaur race (for old/big riders) usually a women's race (but the usual women were missing/injured) kids races and at this track a backwards race. I believe there were 23 individual sprint races run with most people participating in multiple races with at least one guy in 14 of them. You pay $35 for the first race, $25 for the second, $15 for the third and $5 for every additional race. It's a neat system and gives people a lot of track time and racing experience. I just entered the Supersport race which is where the XR is classed mostly because I had no idea what I was doing. Mike entered four races, one on the Grom and three on the KX65. The only picture of a bike on track that I took was Mike during the Grom race.
Most of the racing in most of the races was done by the first lap. At that point the field spreads out and people work hard to not make mistakes. There were a couple riders that battled through the day and that was fun to watch. The best battle I saw was actually for not last when Mike and a fellow rider swapped positions several times a lap for the final four laps of the race. It was as intese and action packed as any race on TV and we loved every seconds from the sidelines.
My race was three people. Me and two riders that were not just young enough to be my kids, but I think younger than any of my kids. I was still nervous, almost looped the bike on the start and had to work over the first lap to get myself in a position to cleanly pass one of them. By that point the other rider had pulled away far enough that I wasn't going to catch him. I settled in to the same pace that I had over practice and took my first chekered flag. I'm not happy because I beat a 10 year old and got a plastic trophy, I'm happy because I was there. The hardest step in any of this is signing up and showing up. Next time I'll enter more races and finish behind a lot more people. Maybe someday I'll dice for a position.
Where do I go from here? There is another endurance race (a six hour) in six weeks and sprints two weeks after that. Due to scheduling they are one day events at two diffrent tracks in the Houston area which means no travel. Both of them are on the calendar now. I'll be back to my schedule of two-ish days a week at the kart track to keep learning and improving my fitness. We're trying to sort out the school calendar to figure out when to get kid#3 out to the track to start learning.
We have a list of spares and things we need for the next endurance race. We need our own fire extinguisher for the fuel stops. Another team loaned us theirs but it's good form to bring your own. We need extra levers. Probably new front brake pads. Another set of tires as the ones on the bike won't make six more hours of riding. This continues to be much less about the machines and more about the experience. I need to check the autocross schedule and get out to some more car events as the weather cools and see how all of this seat time is affecting my car driving. Keep having fun. This is fun.
Working through some data. We only had it running during practice and for about 2/3 of the enduro. I need to wire it to power if I want it to last longer. These are two fast laps (not me) that were not quite next to each other. The X on the map correlates to the left side of the speed plots and the track is run counter clockwise. We're looking at lines trying to figure out what was fast.
Did you align the start/finish for both laps within the AIM software? we've neglected to do that occasionally and it skews the results more than you might expect.
What happened between 1100-1600? the laps look quite close aside from that bit.
1100-1600 is the quick right left on the upper right part of the map. I don't think we ever figured out how to do that so basically every lap was hucking the bike in and seeing how it went. A tremendous amount of variation with all three riders. We kind of suck.
How do you align start finish? I'm stumbling through the software right now. It's not an easy interface.
it's something counter intuitive like insert gps lap? This video from basically 1:12 to 1:40 covers it, you can set the start finish manually if the track isn't in the AIM database. or you can just use the GPS coordinates for most popular tracks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IFjQEQaLA8
In reply to klodkrawler05 :
Cool. That's how I was building my maps. I set the start/finish manually out on the track and let the software define the lap for the purpose of analysis. I haven't had to move the self defined start/finish yet but it's good to know how. By clicking off the align laps button it lets the ridden lines "float" for lack of a better term and you can see how the lines varied between laps. The variation in line you can get on a bike is bigger than in a car just due to the footprint. We were running four wide through corners on a 15 foot wide track and had plenty of space.
In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :
That's pretty rad, I imagine on a pro car track like Rd America you could easily go 6-8 wide then!? jeeze. I'll be interested to see what you learn from the bike data, does the stuff like slow in fast out still work on a bike or are bike corner lines set more so by the speed you carry through the turn plus the size of the stones on the rider? seems like plenty of people have no issue blowing the brake zone (or at least braking later than ideal) in a car.....on a bike it seems like self preservation instincts would kick in and it'd be the opposite and the trick would be working up to actually braking as late as the bike will allow
In reply to klodkrawler05 :
At my skill level you can't slide the bike in to get it turned. I did watch a pro on a supermoto do that last week and it clearly worked, but I need to work up to it. On the bikes I'm riding speed out is the biggest factor. Even with 4.5 hp, throttle changes the line in the corner, so you need to set up the beginning so you can get on the throttle early. Just like in a car, you know if you did it right by corner exit and the line the bike takes as it tracks out. Of course body position affects lean angle and speed and all of that. It's a little like adding another axis of freedom to car driving.
I'm sure on a big track you could, and would, go 5-8 wide. I'm figuring out how to get passed, but passing other people and the momentum/lines to do it anywhere other than in braking is baffling. So much to learn.
Still riding twice a week, 50 laps at at time. Fastest laps in the last two weeks have gone from 1:13.81 to 1:12.25. Most all of the speed is figuring out how to ride the fast corners fast. That's a problem I have in cars too. Finally working the tires properly. Looks like I'll get a couple thousand laps out of them.
Make sure you check your spokes regularly. I had my xr100 rear wheel get quite loose on a road course.
In reply to jfryjfry :
If you go back a page or two I broke 7 spokes on the rear wheel and tracked down a company that makes a set of heavier spokes for the rear. Laced it, trued it, torqued the spokes with a spoke torque wrench (which I didn't even know existed before this) and things have been solid since. I still squeeze pairs every time I check tire pressure.
Awhile ago I asked you for the thru hub dimension so i could check the truing jig residing in the 'grosh' attic to see if it would be of use to you and this glorious madness...
In reply to 759NRNG :
Let me see when I get the wheels off next time. My bet is no because the rear motorcycle wheel is a LOT wider than a bicycle wheel.
Just a data point that I'm recording so I can remember. Word is that the earlier XR100's came with a 100 main jet which was a bit lean and the later bikes like mine came with a 98, which is even leaner. Opening up the airbox and different exhaust will require re-jetting, that I knew, but internet people said that a stock bike benefits from going to at least a 105. $8 jet kit from Amazon and I'm at a 105. Feels better doing full throttle pulls down the driveway, but the real test is the track next week. First time I've ever changed jets.
Tire lube fiiiiiinally showed up after a bit of a shipping snafu. Second set of tires I've ever mounted is still hard. Didn't pop any tubes though, so I'll call that a success.
The eye of a former tropical storm is going to pass over my house at some point today so we're not riding in the next day or so. I'm excited for the kid and I to get on track and see how she likes it.
Track opened back up today. Even after running the blower on it there was quite a lot of dirt and slippery stuff. Perfect for kid#3 to start riding!
We did three sessions of about 10 laps each. She's done rental karts at other tracks maybe twice? Other than that she had no reference for this sort of thing. She did great!
She was faster every session, felt good and wants to go back. It was a good day. She came home and almost immediately fell asleep on the couch. Building those racetrack neurons.
To the track again. It was wet. Some standing water. The idea was to ride around and figure out the rain line, which I did, mostly. Data is fun becasue I can tell you I fell off at 22 mph. Leathers are cool.
Big risk? I'd say, "managed risk." Looks fun, carry on.
In reply to Nader :
Managed risk is one of those funny things. It all feels under conrol until it's not. My buddy low sided and his airbag suit went off yesterday. It was cool, but ultimately expensive. He crashed going 27mph in the same place I did in the wet.
I've been running data on most sessions including the ones where I follow kid#3 around. We've got data here from a couple of different days. The upper line is a hot lap by myself and the other two are me following her on two separate days. She's figuring out corner speed and feels comfortable enough to shift. She went from 34 seconds off my lap to 20 seconds off. HUGE improvement. She's very close to getting a knee down and I'm going to put a mount for the SOLO on her bike so she can collect data herself instead of it bening from my bike following. She was very interested in seeing what the data showed. We're still having fun.
Mrs. Deuce loved the fact that kid#3 was hitting 40mph on the back straight. Nothing for a mother to worry about at all. 
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