I spent Sept 19 and 20 at BeaveRun, a new racetrack north of Pittsbugh PA, riding on the track.
I brought my TDM, and my friend Mo brought his 1984 Honda Interceptor VF1000F. We carpooled from his place near Cleveland, and carried both bikes in the back of my truck. I'm not usually one to trailer a running motorcycle, but for the track it is better to trailer because you need fresh tires, and if you crash at the track your bike may not be in shape to carry you home. Also, you probably want to bring more stuff to the track than you would take on a tour, including things like gas cans that are hard to carry on the bike.
We had a heck of a time finding the track. Mo had directions but they were sketchy and we ended up driving along a fence that was on the far side of the track from the gate, and we couldn't find the gate. But eventually we got in. The guy at the gate gave us directions to the north track, and told us where the pits were, and where we could camp. I was nervous about unloading the bikes, because the wooden ramps I used with my old Mazda are uncomfortably short with my taller F150. So I picked a parking spot next to someone who had nice aluminum ramps, and we got them to loan us their ramps and help us get the bikes down. (Motorcyclists are the nicest people!) We got ourselves assembled, signed the necessary forms and got our bikes through tech.
The track days were organized by a group called Sportbike Track Time. They are one of the larger organizers of track days, and they use a lot of different tracks. It's not just track time they offer; they also provide classroom and on track instruction to their Novice class, and all the new track riders have to start there. If you have ridden on the track before, you are allowed to go to Intermediate. There's also an Advanced group but I don't know how they decide who is in it. I've been to track school once before, back in 2000, which would entitle me to go to Intermediate if I chose, but I was so far below average last time, it would have been crazy to skip to Intermediate. I opted to stay in Novice.
Each hour is divided into three 20 minute sessions, one for each group. Novice would go last, which gave them 40 minutes to get us ready.
The guy in charge, Bob, explained the rules. He pointed out the gate that led to the hot pit lane, and explained how to enter and exit the track. You don't enter the track until you are given the signal, and if you plan to exit the track you give hand signals well in advance and move to the outside, out of the race line. He explained the various flags. We would be assigned to small groups, each with an instructor. The groups were to stay together and all the passing would be controlled by the instructors; groups could pass other groups as needed but only on signals from their instructors. They would rearrange the groups as needed over the course of the day, to keep them as closely matched as possible. After our first track session we were to go to that building over there for our classroom instruction, and attendance was mandatory.
I got a laugh out of the way they determined the groups for the first session. Bob simply asked "Who here is fast? Is anyone here fast?" No one spoke up immediately, but he did eventually find four guys who admitted to being fast, and he sent them off with an instructor. There was a bit more contention for groups two and three. I guess no one wanted to claim they were fast, but lots of them wanted to be above average. Mo and I conferred quickly and I said we should not go in the same group because we might look at each other too much. Besides, he's faster than me. So I waited my turn while he jumped into a mid pack group. I noted that as the number of unallocated riders dwindled, all the women remained, and it started to look like we'd all end up in the same group. I started checking out their gear and trying to guess how fast they might be. They all looked much more racerly than me. In the end we were split between the last two groups and I was in the last group with two other women and one guy.
Our instructor gave us a quick description of what we would do in the first exercise. We would ride the track slowly and learn it. The track had markings painted on it that divided it into three lanes. We would ride around the track once in each lane, and we were to examine the pavement in each lane in turn, get used to the shape of the curves, any pavement irregularities, etc. Once we'd examined all the lanes we'd take a line more like the racing line. We were to remember to use the whole track. There would be no passing allowed. After this explanation we were released to go get ready for our first session.
Soon it was time to go out on the track. We explored the three lanes of the track thoroughly. You come out of the hot pit lane in the middle of a left, and immediately go around three right turns that are very close together, none of them very tight. Turn five, also a right, is tighter and the turn exit is uphill. Just over the crest of the hill is a gentle left, and beyond that the track rises then dips. You can't see into turn seven, a right, until you're practically in it. Then there's a long enough stretch to wind it out a bit, and then turn eight, which is a left that you almost don't have to slow for. Then the back straight, where you can really pour on the speed. This ends at a gentle right, then there's another short straight where you could keep going fast except it ends in a really tight, uphill right turn, and a somewhat less tight right that's so close you could almost treat them as one turn. You pass the exit to the hot pit, and make a very gentle left and you're in the front straight. At the end of the front straight there's a little rise that you can't see over, dropping down to a tight left and pass the entrance where you came out of the pits. The whole thing is about 1.5 miles.
Our twenty minutes went by in a flash. We didn't even go very fast, but it was still thrilling. There was even a notable event during that session. Someone had dropped a big long shiny bolt, right in the middle of the track, on the entrance to turn ten. Eventually the corner worker figured out what the instructors were trying to say with their hand signals, and he came out and picked it up. But for five or six laps it was very distracting. I learned later that it had been a frame slider bolt on a new Aprilia.
The classroom instruction covered a lot of things I was already familiar with. (Not that I can do all this stuff well, but none of the theory was new to me.) Use the whole track. Memorize the track and choose markers you can use as cues to remember exactly when to get on the gas. Don't worry about blind curves because the pavement doesn't move and the cornerworkers are there to signal any hazards. Don't look at your speedometer. Put the balls of your feet on the pegs, not the heels. Counter steer. Look where you want to go. Set your corner entry speed so you can accelerate smoothly through the whole turn, which will keep your suspension settled. Throttle steering. Hanging off. Getting a knee down. (Obviously this wasn't all in the very first session, but all these topics got covered over the course of the day.)
My early favorite was turn five. The uphill exit made it great fun to just rail through it. It didn't seem hard at first, but it got tougher as I started carrying more speed through the turns before it. I also liked turn one; it seemed to me that it was the best chance to keep my tires somewhat symetrical by scrubbing the left side.
Turn ten was the scary one. It was the tightest turn, and it was coming off the fastest part of the track. With the groups in single file we were often bunched up, waiting our turn to go around it on the racing line, and I was paranoid, afraid someone would dump their bike in front of me there.
According to the instructor, turn eight was the most dangerous, and we were not to pass there, not ever, not under any circumstances! I couldn't understand it, early in the day, but he kept telling us how easily bikes could get tangled up there, and how he'd seen two bikes kiss there and go out of control so badly they went all the way over the hill that was the infield, and ended up tumbling onto the far side of the track. Later in the day as the speed increased, all the turns got tougher and that section started looking narrower and more treacherous. But it didn't look that way to me at first.
I'm not much of a peg dragger. Unless you count the highway pegs I used to have mounted way low and forward on SpringWind, I never dragged pegs at all until this year, when I started to occasionally drag the left peg on the V-Strom. The V-Strom has a reassuringly long peg feeler on the left, and the peg drag feels smooth and graceful as the aluminum grinds away and the peg folds up. I can do it at slow speeds, feeling totally in control, almost dreamy. But I had never touched anything down on the TDM until my second day on the track, when I touched the right down in turn ten. The footpeg didn't fold, and the scrape felt harsh. Maybe it wasn't the peg, maybe it was some other hard part. In any case I was extremely startled. I panicked, straightened up, and ran wide. I went off the pavement onto the grass.
I was stupid to let myself panic, but at least I didn't crash. I got myself back under control and rode through the gravel and grass hummocks very calmly. That section of the outfield caught other people, too, and at least four of them fell over once they went off the pavement. The TDM may not be a great track bike, but it handles nicely on loose, bumpy surfaces, and I've ridden heavy streetbikes on enough gravel that I could keep my head out there. Still I felt dumb, because I have never gone off the outside of a curve like that on the road!
After the session ended, I inspected the rear tire and found that the rubber was chewed up on both sides, with little melted chunks getting spun off, all the way to the very edge of the tire. If I can grind the rear to the very edge, and take rubber off it in chunks, without dragging pegs, I think that's a sign that I've found the maximum lean angle of the bike. I hadn't ought to be grinding hard bits. Best to focus on ways to increase my speed without increasing my lean angle any more.
I don't have knee pucks or toe sliders, and the TDM really isn't conducive to that sort of thing anyway, so I didn't try to get my knee down. I did try hanging off, and felt really unstable. I suppose it will feel more stable if I practice. Mainly I worked on throttle control, because when you're that far over, any choppiness in the throttle control will make the bike unstable and the hard bits are more likely to drag. When I tried hanging off I was probably going slower simply because I felt so clumsy. Next time, I plan to start trying to hang off a little earlier, while the speeds are still a bit slower, and see if I can learn it a bit better.
The second day, a Monday, was like the first, only there were a lot fewer riders; we were two to an instructor. The same material was covered in the classroom, but the track sessions progressed more quickly, probably because there were less than half as many people out there at any given time, and most had been there the day before. One new guy was there, though, and he was very slow. He had refused to tape his speedometer, and he was proud of never going over 70mph, even on the track.
One of the instructors left partway through the day and the groups were rearranged, and I got stuck with the slow guy. By the end of the session I was completely rattled. The instructor was trying to keep us together, and we were constantly getting passed at a high delta-v. The instructor was paying attention to the slow guy instead of to his own riding; he was too erratic for me to follow him closely. At the session end he gave me holy hell for not staying close, and I protested that he was erratic and I kept rushing up on him. He said I wasn't good enough to pass him or run him over and I shouldn't worry about it, just stay close.
I sought out Bob and requested a different instructor. He tried to talk me out of this, but I told him that if they didn't move me I wasn't going back out on the track. It really wasn't their fault, I suppose. The slow guy wasn't even trying; he seemed to think he was morally superior for being slow. I don't know what possessed him to go to the track and act like that. They could have forced him to tape his speedometer, but at that point I wouldn't have agreed to ride in that group again even if they had. I could feel everything I'd learned over the two days starting to come unglued in that session. You can't push your limits in such tight quarters, if you can't trust the rider in front of you.
While I was suffering with the slow dude, Mo was getting his knee down! Go Mo!
Since I absolutely refused to ride another session with the squirrelly instructor and the slow guy, Bob said he would come out and lead me for a session. There was a bit of a snafu when he forgot and left me sitting forlornly in the hot pit, but the track marshall called him on the radio and reminded him. He was an extremely good instructor, and he actually got me to hang off. I hadn't given it much of a try before, but he was so good that I felt compelled to work at it. I felt much better after that session, and I looked forward to the next one.
When we came in, I learned that Mo had tossed his bike. I'd seen a bike way off the edge, but hadn't been able to identify it in the short glimpses I got while flying past it. He had gone into turn ten really hot, dragged his peg and his knee. Then something upset the bike, maybe a little ripple in the track. The rear wheel levered off the ground and the bike started to drift. He fought it back down and thought he was going to save it, but it came up again and he couldn't save it. The bike slid on its side, right off the track. All Mo could do was let go and lift his other leg to step off it. He wasn't hurt, but the bike was rashed up pretty bad. A hole was ground in the clutch cover and all the oil came out, fortunately off the track. We had one more session to go, but Mo's track day was over.
It didn't turn out to matter. Some guy in the advanced group grenaded his motor. He didn't crash; it was a mechanical failure, a spectacular mechanical failure that spewed oil all over the front straight on the track. The cleanup would take longer than we had left in the day, so the last session was canceled. We loaded up the truck and went back to Cleveland, where I had dinner with Mo and his wife, before going on home to Michigan.
Oh! One other thing. They have a special session for ten minutes after lunch each day, where the only folks allowed out there are women riders, and people riding two up. On the first day I carried a passenger, the mother of one of the other riders who was in my group. He was carrying his wife on his bike, and since they both wanted to go I volunteered to take his mom. On the second day, I was the only one on the track for a little while. It was cool! How often does anyone get to be alone on the racetrack? Woohoo!
I got home around midnight, which is earlier than usual for a motorcycling weekend. But I felt as tired as if it was 3am. I only rode 191 miles over the two days, but I was very sore. It's hard work to carry your weight on your toes and toss your body back and forth on a moving motorcycle, and the five hours in the car coming home added even more stiffness.
The track day was good and worthwhile and this time I kept up just fine. I will do this again sometime. Next time I think I will go in the Intermediate class. Now that I've done the Novice thing reasonably well, I think I am ready. Intermediates don't have to ride in groups. There are certain passing rules but other than that they are free to ride their own pace. On the other hand, I think the instruction in the Novice group is very helpful. I guess I can decide when I get there. Maybe I will buy a sportier motorcycle.