NinjaTwins January Update!!

2011 Season Bike Prep

January was a busy month for the NinjaTwins, we had a bit of work to do on the 250’s to get them ready for the new season. First being repaint those white “expert” number plates. We also changed the oil, changed out the brake fluid, and gave both bikes a monthly inspection. At high speeds there are a lot of moving and non moving parts on a bike that need attention. Every month the body work comes off, the bikes get a bath, and I check every bolt I can think of, basically my own form of tech inspection. Its my butt on the line if something goes wrong, so I take this part of monthly maintenance very seriously.

Painting the Ninjas!

Rich Oliver Mystery School….learning from a champion.

I believe much of the success you have in racing comes from what you do the rest of the month. So we spend a lot of time at the gym keeping in shape for our sport. While running and biking can help prepare you for long days at the track, nothing can get you as physically ready for riding as well….riding. Most of us cant afford to track our bikes every weekend, so many riders will cross train on a dirt bike. Niether one of us had been on a dirt bike, so we made the trek up to Rich Oliver’s Mystery School in Auberry CA. It was well worth every penny! We did a private version of a two day fun camp, where you go through dirt bike riding familiarization during the first half of day one, wait rear brake…what is that!?!  The second half of day one and all of day two are spent of the track learning to back it into the corners.  Andrew tore up the track! He learned a lot about traction management and how to cope with a rear wheel slide. . While I highsided, yes you can highside a TTR 125, and couldn’t finish the whole camp, I spent the remainder of my time asking Rich every question imaginable about mental and physical preperation for racing. Let me tell you…it paid off in my season opener.

Andrew backing it in at Rich’s TT track!

WSMC First Ever Expert Race!

2010 was a very up and down season for us. At the end of the year we had lost focus and confidence due to a few “get offs” So I hit the track with a new mental attitude, partly due to my time with AMA Champ Rich Oliver. I woke myself up each morning with a round of yoga and made written goals for each session. I am a huge believer in note taking, if you don’t write down what you learned each lap you WILL lose it. While my note taking is still a bit rudimentary, I am getting there, and its super helpful to look back on past notes and remind myself of things I worked on before. Though note taking I noticed my mental voice on the track was very negative. I would say “don’t brake early” or “don’t roll off” and would immediately tense up and do what I just told myself not to! So I decided to make my mental voice positive, I would tell myself where to roll off or where to brake, and I picked two spots on the track where I would force myself to relax. This helped tremendously! One of my favorite parts of club racing is the comraderie between racers. Fellow competitors Josh Fogle and Richard Barnett offered their time and tires to help me learn their lines and find places where they are faster than me, how cool is that! When I came off the track after my first ever expert race I knew exactly where I went faster to pick up time. How much time did I pick up from November’s race? Six seconds! Hells Yeah!

Niccole rounding the omega during Expert Ninja Cup!

Learning a New Track…Chuckwalla!

Chuckwalla is putting on a new racing series called CVMA. We plan to attend the rounds that do not conflict with willow so I went to the track to do some preliminary research. I drove to the track alone, but I wasn’t there for two minutes before I ran into fellow racers. The comraderie at the club racing level is my very close second favorite thing about racing, what’s my favorite? Well trophies of course! My friend Al Garcia took some time to show me around the track my first day, while the Cyclemall crew were always there to help me on to a rear stand and debrief. I took it extrememley slow all weekend. I have always been told you cannot learn anything riding at 80-100%. You have to slow down to 60% to turn your brain into a camcorder and be able to remember and analyze what you are doing. I took copious notes and asked as many of the “fast guys” as I could about their tactics through certain trickier corners. During the middle of the second day I kept hearing a noise from the rear of my bike that was driving me batty, so I asked a friend of mine, mechanic and fast lightweight rider Andy Palmer to jump on my bike and see what I was hearing. He jumped on the bike and absolutely schooled me, looked way more comfortable than I had all weekend. When he handed my bike back I knew I  learned two things that weekend, having friends at the track rocks, and wear earplugs so I cant hear the chain noise!

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Photo courtesy of Caliphotography.

Andy Palmer testing Niccole’s Ninja 250