The Library of All Knowledge

Zen of Motorcycle Racing.

"A fast moving river flows quickly."

Racing is a mental game as much it is physical. You have to ignore the little voice in your head that wants you to quit and spend the rest of the day on the couch with a beer in hand. I talked to Guy Giroux, a Canadian that raced the Dakar Rally. He said the hardest part about the Dakar was try to keep the mental focus that he was in a race and that he needed to keep racing. You would be deluding yourself if there wasn't that same voice screaming at you in a little race like anything in the PNWMA series.

Most athletes talk about hitting the “wall”. The “wall” is the time when your body reaches complete exhaustion. The energy stores are drained and you body starts to shut down. The mind is also affected. Rational thought becomes a problem.

The trick here is to make sure that the “wall” is placed further away from you. There are several ways you can do this.

Learn how to ride to the best of your abilities. In comparison to junior riders, experts hardly expend any effort to go racing. They have learned how to ride with less effort. I could go on for a while about riding technique. But remember the key point, smooth is good, smooth is fast.
Start working out. I personally use a fitness regimen used by the Navy SEALS. I also like to mountain bike. Build up your strength and endurance. Even just riding weekly can be a benefit.
Start cultivating a racer’s mind. When racing and riding try to concentrate on the riding.

Cultivating the Racer’s mind.

Concentrate on the riding. By this I don’t mean that you should think really hard about riding. Just try to relax. Concern yourself with the bike and the way it handles. Allow your senses only to absorb the information it needs to go riding. Listen to the engine rev. Feel the bike move. Look at the trail ahead. Absorb only what necessary.

Don’t concentrate on winning or catching every rider on the course. Those are distractions. They just make you anxious and make you ride beyond your abilities. Just focus on twisting the throttle.

Once you’ve hit the wall.

Try to repeat the mantra, “The only way out is through the finish line.”

But don't get too serious. You're not racing for cash or something serious. Amateur racing is all about having fun and pushing you limits in a fun way.

"I believe that it is important to have fun while racing"
Jeremy McGrath.

Find some friends and have some fun rides. Racing is much more that just banging bars in aggression. I could easily spend a hours at the race shooting the breeze with most of my fellow riders.

Motivational Quotations

“Desire: This force, which is the best thing in you, your highest self, will never respond to any ordinary half-hearted call, or any milk-and-water endeavor. It can only be reached by your supremest call, your supremest effort… You must back up your ambition by your whole nature, by unbounded enthusiasm and a determination to win which knows no failure.”
Owen Swett Marsden.

Everything has a price. Whatever we want in life, we must give up something to get it. The greater the value, the greater the sacrifice required. There is a high price to pay for success. But we must realize that the rewards of true success are well worth the effort. The Highway to success is a toll road.

Do not fear the winds of adversity. Remember that a kite rises against the wind rather than with it.

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your mind off your goals.

The losers see difficulty in every opportunity. The winners see opportunity in every difficulty.

Be ready when opportunity comes… Luck is the time when preparation and opportunity meet.

You cannot discover new oceans unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.

Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision, the ability to direct individual accomplishment toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.

Success is a journey not a destination.

“Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success. No other element can do so much for a man if he is willing to study and make capital out of them.”
Dale Carnegie

“When your desires are strong enough, you will appear to possess superhuman powers to achieve.”
Napoleon Hill

Every great man has become great, every successful man has succeeded in proportion as he has confined his powers to one particular channel.

Bring all your mind and faculties to bear without distraction on the problem or subject at hand.

“Success: The ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one problem incessantly without growing weary.”
Thomas A. Edison

“You learn that, whatever you are doing in life, obstacles don’t matter very much. Pain or other circumstances can be there, but if you want to a job bad enough, you’ll find a way to get it done.” Jack Youngblood

The obstacles you face are mental barriers which can be broken by adopting a more positive approach.

Courage is a special kind of knowledge. It is knowledge of how to fear what ought to be feared and how not to fear what ought not to feared.

Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers, pray for powers equal to your tasks.

“Confidence doesn’t come from nowhere. It’s a result of something, hours and days and weeks and years of constant work and dedication.”
Roger Staubach

“Very few persons comparatively know how to Desire with sufficient intensity. They do not know what it is to feel and manifest that intense, eager, longing, craving, insistent, demanding, ravenous Desire which is akin to the drowning man for a breath of air, or a shipwrecked man or desert lost man for a drink of water, of the famished man for bread and meat.”
Robert Collier

“Concentrate, put all of your eggs in one basket, and watch that basket.”
Andrew Carnegie

“Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing.”
Abraham Lincoln

The race is not always to the swift, but to those that keep running.

Some people dream of worthy accomplishments, while others stay awake and do them.

The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will.

The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.

“The mind is the limit. As long as the mind can envision the fact that you can do something you can do it: as long as you believe 100 percent.”
Arnold Schwarzenegger

Knowing that you have complete control of your thinking, you will recognize the power.

We can know what people are thinking by looking at what they do. Actions mirror thoughts. And by taking a good look at where we are and what we are doing we can understand what we are thinking. The thoughts we have chosen have brought us to where we are today.

“Every failure brings with it the seed of equivalent success.”
Napoleon Hill

It sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only it’s own opportunities, but it’s own talents.

Nothing stops the man who desires to achieve. Every obstacle is simply a course to develop his achievement muscle. It’s a strengthening of his powers of accomplishment.

“Through some strange and powerful principal of “mental chemistry” which she has never divulged. Nature wraps up in the impulse of strong desire, “that something” which recognizes no word as “impossible” and accepts no reality as failure.”
Napoleon Hill

“The starting point of all achievement is desire. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desires bring weak results, just as a small amount of fire makes a small amount of heat.”
Napoleon Hill

Repetition is the mother of skill.

“He who thinks he can and he who thinks he can’t. This is and inexorable, indisputable law.”
Orison Swett Marsden

“Courage is the resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.”
Mark Twain

“Where there is a will, there is a way” is an old and true saying. He who resolves upon doing a thing, by that very resolution often scales the barriers to do it, and secures his achievement. To think we are able is almost to be so. To determine upon attainment is frequently attainment itself.

The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender.

The first principle of success is desire, know what you want. Desire is the planting of your seed.

“Concentration: It is the process of diverting one’s scattered forces into one powerful channel.”
James Allen

“The jack of all trades seldom good at any. Concentrate all your efforts on one definite chief aim.”
Napoleon Hill

You cannot have the success without the failures.

“What I do is prepare myself until I know I can do what I have to do.”
Joe Namath

“He that would be superior to external influences must first become superior to his own passions.”
Samuel Johnson

“Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you are right.”
Henry Ford

"Nature cannot be tricked or cheated, she will give up to you the object of your desires only after you have paid her price".
Nepolean Hill

“It is not the critic that counts. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, who strives violently, who errs and comes up short again and again… who if he wins, knows the triumph of high achievement, but who if he fails, fails while daring greatly.”
Theodore Roosevelt

(Found this in a photography magazine.)

Kimo’s Rules

1. Never judge a day by its weather.
2. The best things in life aren’t things.
3. Tell the truth there is less to remember.
4. Speak softly and wear a loud shirt.
5. Goals are deceptive – An unaimed arrow never misses.
6. He, who dies with the most toys, still dies.
7. There are two ways to be rich, make more or desire less.
8. Beauty is internal, looks mean nothing.
9. No rain – no rainbows.
10. If you are in love with an idea, you are no judge of its beauty or value.
11. It is difficult to see the whole picture when you’re inside the frame.
12. After learning the tricks of the trade, don’t think you know the trade.
13. We hear and apprehend what we already know.
14. A dog that stays on the porch will find no bones.
15. Never state a problem to yourself in the same terms it was brought to you.
16. If it’s offbeat or suprising, it’s probably useful.
17. If you do not expect the unexpected, you will not find it.
18. Don’t get too serious.
19. If you hit the bullseye every time, then the target is too near.