This year is a special one for me as its my first one back on my road to recovering from a herniated disc. It's been super fun to be a part of everything again and I can't wait to fire out of that start gate. But that's Saturday and this is today. I noticed something in the parking lot the other day, after a particular unimpressive display of practice race runs on my behalf. As I told my story almost every one joined in with a spectacular crash story of their own and many of them were from that day or the one before. Most of them are pretty funny cause most folks made it out relatively unscathed. Then I got to thinking, partly from my own experience and from listening to everyone else's tales of the crash, "Man I've got to go back out there tomorrow and do this again". Then I realized that I'm in this situation every year cause let me tell you the lines are not always there. I think this is a very common thing in competition, especially in sports that carry a good bit of danger in them. How do you get back out there after a big crash and move forward? Some folks say you need to realize the danger and fear to learn from them, I think you need a bit of short term memory loss:)
That's not to say you don't learn from a mistake but a lot of times you've just got to forget it happened. Cause you're gonna run the monkey backwards, you're gonna surf the speed trap, you're gonna pin and you're gonna piton Zwicks. After each one of these things happen you need that short term memory loss to kick in so each run after the crash can be the best one ever. Make no mistake this doesn't mean forget about the consequences or paddle outside of your ability. It just means that when you roll out of that start gate the only thought going through your head needs to be
" This is going to be the run of my life!" So good luck to all you racers and keep your eye on the prize!
Focus on the horizon line and forgot those other runs!