This is a school that I had been wanting to attend for quite some time. I’ve had the chance to work with a couple of the instructors at the races and track days, their advice was always well timed and useful. I had the a feeling that this school would lead me to a few breakthroughs and help me with some confidence issues I’ve been having. In short, it delivered!
The school got off first thing in the am when they picked us up at the hotel. The school gets students discounts at the Hard Rock Casino, for convenience, I decided to stay at the Hard Rock. (Yup, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.)
The instructors are the ones driving students to and from the track, it’s a great idea. The instructors are consistent from school to school. Varying on the number of students that enroll. You get Nick Ienatsch, Ken Hill, Dale Kieffer, with Shane Turpin and Mark Schellinger if the needed. Also you’ll get various guest instructors. You get to meet them without gear on and see who they are, talk to them and it gives them time to start talking to you about how the school works, things that they want to get you thinking about, how they approach coaching and it means you get to spend more time on bikes and less in a classroom. The other really great thing about this is they use the vans to help you learn the track. You get to ride around the track with them talking to you about it, them pointing things out to you, explaining cone placement and they also demo some of the issues that come up on the track with lines and braking. Believe me, you don’t really need coffee once they are done with this part of the morning.
Of course there is classroom parts, but they are kept to a minimum, on this I was a bit torn. They had so much information to give the students that I know I missed things and I’m sure there was a whole lot more wasn’t covered. Now, there are many ways to do things, and all schools have what they believe to be the right way, but they didn’t really approach it that way. It was from the angle of what will make you safer, crash less and go faster. Which is a different spin from the other schools I’d been to, and I’ve done a number of different schools. I’m sure it could have just be me, but I’ve gotten the impression at some of the other schools. That they feel after a certain point, you are as fast as you are going to get and they don’t seem that interested in getting any more speed out of you. I didn’t get that from any of the instructors at this school, it was actually the opposite impression. I had one tell me there wasn’t any reason I couldn’t go faster. There was a huge difference in my riding between the first and second days.
One of the great things about LVMS outside course is the number of configuration options that can be used. The school used a different configuration the second day. So once again we spent the morning in the van learning about the differences of this layout and discussing ways to make sure that you can figure it out new tracks quickly and get up to speed on them in just a few laps. This was a huge deal for me, as I like to travel to new tracks every year and I don’t want to rolling chicane.
For most of the people who attend this school. The amount of track time you get will be on the edge of too much. I thought it was great and could have spent more time out there, but I”m also used to control riding for trackdays and putting over 200 miles a day on the bike. There are well timed spaces during the track drills so that people don’t become dangerous and they really focus on the safety aspects of riding fast. I heard a number of students talking about sore muscles the next day, which is great. They learned new things and worked hard at them.
There were a number of drills that I can’t wait to practice on my own bike. I’m just a little concerned that I could end up practicing some things the wrong way. The braking drills for me made a huge difference, and they are ones that I still find my self going over in my head trying to make sure that I don’t lose any of the things that I learned. Practice makes permanent, not perfect, unless you practice perfectly every time you can do yourself a dis service. I’ve been an instructor for horses and the MSF long enough to know that you aren’t always doing what you think you are doing. It is very necessary to either tape yourself or have someone watching.
I wish I had the time to go back once again in the next few weeks to help solidify the things we worked on. I did both nights go back to the room each night and make additional notes so that I would have more to refer back to once I was able to get my own bike back onto the track. I will be going back this year, I’m really hoping to do that during my trip out to Miller for WSBK. What an epic trip that could be, take my bike out, watch WSBK, do the open track day the day after, and then 3 days of working with the YCRS.
Many thanks to Nick, Ken, Dale, Mark, Mark, Jill and Phil for making the school such a great experience.