what is this!? total lack of confidence
 

Ladies and gentlemen of the forum, I come before you with a question has anyone else experienced a similar situation and how did you get over it? Or did you?

A little background info: 22.6 I had to witness my good friend username Missynet take a flying crash on her 1k Hurricane. Thought I dealt with that already. A month passed with occasional rides but not too many cause of the old wrist issue has been pesting me during the hot summer. So, come august and my holiday, 6.8. me, my neighbor and a friend from work head out to a race track to do my very first track day. I thought I knew something about riding fast but was pretty quickly brought to my knees as I was literally getting my a$$ handed to me at the track, there was no way I could even have kept up with my friends on their Kawi ZR-7 and a Yamaha R6. The track day ended prematurely as one of the guys crashed his R6 and had to be trailered home and to the hospital to get checked. I didn't see it but was the first one on the scene and stopped to lift his bike up cause he hurt his foot and shoulder. About a week later I went to a night ride a couple of nights in a row, and on the latter run had a small bird hit me smack center of my mirror spooking the heck out of me.

Now if I'm going on a ride I find myself having the death grip, I lock my elbows, get my neck sore, get spooked of every single car that comes near me in traffic, when I accelerate hard I constantly hit false neutrals etc. Basically every single newbie error on the book! Today when I was leaving for work I chickened out and took the car because it looked like it might rain, not because I didn't want to get wet but because I dreaded having to ride on wet road! I've somehow suddenly lost all my confidence on the bike. I got over 20tkm on it so I could say I know the bike and how it behaves, and yet am scared riding it for the first time since the week I bought it!

I got about two months max left on this riding season and I don't want to put it away like this. So what do you guys suggest? Just ride it out? Cause truth be told I'm a bit stumped.

Ease up on yourself first! Watching or experiencing any kind of incident with a bike can shake you. Right now you are on hyper alert. Take some time and do some refresh like when you first got the bike. Make it fun again. Take the roads you know will be light traffic. Go easy. You'll fall back in the groove before ya know it. In my experience, if I don't get right back out there and work through it , no matter how slowly, I'll never get over it. You know how to ride. You know your bike. You just need some self assurance that you do whatever possible to make your ride safe. Riding on the track and street are two different things to me. I can never go as fast, safely, on the street as I can on a track, so I put my mind in two different places for the two seperate rides. Good luck

Take it slow. You're rattled right now but that's natural. You had the ugly side of riding pushed into your face multiple times. Right now that's very fresh in your mind, directly between your desire to ride and the skills you've already accumulated.

Take easy trips, relaxed pace and through routes you know best. Don't try to push anything. Keep the trips short and just enjoy the ride. The familiarity and relaxed nature of the ride will begin to erode the nastiness that's obscuring your skills and confidence. Let it happen naturally and don't try to force your way through it. After lowsiding Yolie I was shook pretty hard. It just took time taking things easy to get through it.

Matt, the advise already doled out is all good, take your time, slow and gentle is the order of the day, the speed will come of it's own accord.

It's natural to be a bit unnerved by the events that have happened, just don't force it, or it may make things worse.

Lastly, it displays a great strength of character to be able to admit fear of this nature. I'm sure this strength will see you overcome this temporary set back.

Thanks for the input guys. gtcole you are spot on that track riding and road riding are two completely different things but I do have to admit my self esteem took a bit of a blow on the track as I was not only the slowest there, as I wrote on the other thread I felt like being in a mini on a freeway :D When I finally started to get grips with the track and gain some speed I found my friend limping at the side of the track with his bike laying on it`s side in the middle of a turn...

Guess I just have to jump back on the horns and try to slowly ride it off. It`s promised rain for the whole week but I do have to ride to work at friday cause our truck terminal is moving and I gotta load the bike to the truck so I can get home from the new place, I`ll see if I can work up a little detour on the scedule.

I thought about the track day and being very tense on the first run, almost to the point of being scared as the track proved to be much more tecnical with big hills than I thought, which has always been a bit of an issue for me, to know the turn is right behind the hill but not having the guts to take a riding line over the apex that seems to go out of the road until I actually see the turn and at that point already being wide. That, and the feeling that just as I am on the very edge of my tires, leaning in as hard as I dare, starting to feel the tires slip sideways a little as the rubber starts to melt, three bikes come roaring past me leaned twice as deep and at twice the speed... Guess that somehow stuck with me as the day got cut short or something. I do have a bum to pick with that track and come next summer picked it will get but first I gotta shake this stupid thing.

Doesn`t help either that I think I got a pinched nerve on my left shoulder as my left elbow hurts and my left hand spontaniously goes to sleep every now and then, currently trying to massage it "open" with a machine while writing this. A bit of extra challenge trying to hit the letters :D

I do have to admit my self esteem took a bit of a blow on the track
Everyone in motoGP except Marquez feels the same these days!

Did you really expect to be the fastest one out there on your first time? Those guys have been practicing for years to get that fast. What you need to focus on is improving on your best times and speeds each time you go. You have a lot to learn there....enjoy it!

We all have those moments that make us pucker. We have all seen others have them too. You gotta ride through them and work your way back to the relaxed state. I'm gonna guess that it's worse now that you're a dad. That's a very mature feeling and should keep your limits a bit lower than ever before.

It all goes with the chosen turf we chose to play on. My hat is off to those pro guys that can have a massive 150+mph high side then get back on a back up bike minutes later and set a lap record.

Of course not! They have countless practice hours, bigger newer bikes and track tires, no way I could have kept up with them, I was referring to the fact that even my friends wiped the floor with me! I knew I was going to be slower than the "big boys" for sure, it was the amount of how hugely I sucked even compared to my friends that ticks me off.

That reminds me of a scene from the movie "Rush", after their wedding Niki lauda says to his wife something like "love is the enemy, suddenly you have something to lose", where his wife replies "well if love is the enemy, then you`ve already lost"

Makes you think.

Just get on the road and I'm sure you will be OK. When I was having my license, I tipped the schools BMW. That really ruined the day...

When driving with your friends one of the worst things you can do is to compare your speed to them and get mad about it.

I am slow and I know it :icon_dance-twist:

You could watch "Talladega Nights. The ballad of Ricky Bobby."
If nothing else, it will put a smile on your face while you are working on getting comfortable in the saddle again.

Let's put it this way, sure as heck not gonna tape a bag of cereals inside my tail and call the cops for motivation :D

Been trying to ride for days but it's raining all the time... don't want to ride to work in rain cause the wet gear inside the truck cockpit keep fogging my windows the whole day...