Race Journal: Rautalampi, Finland – ATSX 250
“Don’t aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-run—in the long-run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it”
Victor Frankl
I decided to take a different approach to this race. This was a smaller race, did not matter as much to the World Championship so I had some room to experiment with my preparation and how I raced. I did this in order to see if the way I have been doing things is the best way. Time to swtich it up, right?
I decided to try to approach this race with a care free attitude. Being care free in competition has not been easy for me in the past. I want to perform at my best, every damn time! In previous races, I have led myself into a stressed out state of mind. As much as I wanted to win in this mindset, I feared losing, feared failure, feared not living up to a certain standard my ego had set.
Traditionally I would take advantage of extra practice on the track, but this time, I skipped the Sunday practice. I wanted to see if I could dial in a tough track in a day and where it would land me in the standings. I also promised myself I wouldn’t rush in my races, I would let things happen, including my performance.
The last race, an easier track, I had spent a week on, I competed in a race on the previous week and trained on the same track every day up until the race. It was an easier track that you only really needed a run to nail down. During this week in training I tried to come up with every situation I could in the track that would happen in the race. The result, I felt confident on the track. But then race day came and I fell in a round that I should have won. Yes, I was put in a position that I didn’t prepare for as much.
This happens in life, we try and plan and prepare so much for any situations thrown at us, but life doesn’t work like this. It is chaos and I am discovering that we need to go with the flow and ride the wave. If we try and control it too much we end up worse.
So I said, what if I don’t do too much? What if I do less? The result…
Finished 23rd/92 in the @redbullcrashedice ATSX 250 Rautalampi, Finland. This was a better result than some of my previous races that I prepared more for. This was also a more difficult track. I am going to try and use this strategy more in the future. Here is the race RECAP:
Time Trials: 25th in time trials with 2 clean runs got me into the finals
Round of 64: I usually go 100% in this round just to warm up for the next but last event I fell rushing so I took it easy enough to stay controlled and move on. Looking back at the race, it was closer than I thought behind me so maybe I shouldn’t do this again. Felt smooth though.
Round of 32: 4th gate pick had me in a difficult position. I knew gaining a first position into the turn was very low odds and battling would only slow me and another guy in back down so I decided to take the outside jump gap feature to gain speed into the second turn, a fun risk that worked! I was able to make a pass and get me into position to make another at the table top feature but I didn’t take the correct line and was unable to make it happen.