Todd Green wrote:
>
> In my best Randy Chase form..
heh! :-)
>
> Well my first Nationals is over. Honestly it was a very frustrating and
> disappointing experience all in all.
Welcome to Team L! I should have went home Sunday night. :-)
I've competed for National
> championships in other sports before, and I know that both the athelete
> and the equipment must be at the top of their game if they hope to win.
Nice write up. On my long drive back, I had some time to think about
similar things. One, having my car break at the Pro is disconcerting. I
was not sure it was fine afterwards. I was not sure it would hold
together. Than breaking my exhaust on Tuesday did not help. I think it's
a good point. You have to get past that idea that your car is wrong. In
this sport, to drive very well, requires faith in the car and it's
handling. As you say...the mental part of this is huge. I expected to
win the Pro. I *KNEW* I would have trouble at Nats. I should have reread
that story that Katie posted about "expecting to fail."
I also thought a lot about the mindset of Nats vs the Pro. As you
mentioned, a lot of things come into play there. You only have 3 runs.
For me, the time between runs is so long, I tend to overthink things and
still miss the big picture. And when your last run has to be clean, but
you still need to go fast, how hard do you push it?
What is the best strategy, or does it become determined by your
competition and what happens? You always have to go fast, but do you
make sure you first get a clean run in and then push it on your 2nd and
3rd runs? That seems to make sense.
I think next time I will approach Nats differently. More importantly, I
will recall that last year, the offseason was over very quickly. I
intend on taking car setup more seriously in 2001.
Randy Chase
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