Part 17: Don't let a blink blind you.

Yesterday was my third and final track day of the year.

I didn't die, and, I got a new personal best.

You must be stoked with that, right? 

Don't let the thumbs up fool you. If you look carefully you can see that I was not feeling especially stoked:

Why wasn't I stoked? To remind you, my target time for these track days has been to get round the Hampton Downs national track faster than 1:26.00. My best time of the day was 1:26.01

I missed my target not by 1 second, not one tenth of a second, but ONE HUNDREDTH of a second. 

10 milliseconds. That's literally ten times faster than the blink of an eye.

I should have been delighted with my PB time, and with the track experience in general. But I was feeling a little disappointed, frustrated and annoyed with myself for not doing better, and with the other participants who frequently disrupted my hot laps.

I've clearly become too fixated on achieving an arbitrary goal to the detriment of fun. In the grand scheme of things, will getting round the track two-tenths of a blink of an eye faster be the difference between not fun and fun? This is not One Minute Twenty Five Quest. Stupid man. I established long ago that Rally Quest means having fun in motorsport and living my dream – not to 'win' (especially to win imaginary competitions with myself). I also think I'm meta-annoyed that I forgot that so easily this time out.

Focusing on a number also detracted from celebrating the significant steps I have made.

• For starters I set a very decent PB – one to be proud of. And, as I reminded myself of later, a massive 3.24 seconds faster than my first track day last year. 
• In the final session I set 4 lap times in a row that not only matched my previous PB, but fell within a tenth of a second of each other. Consistency is nearly as important as overall speed in racing.
• I've become really comfortable with the flow of the day, and with driving at speed with other cars on the track.
• I was driving really well. In one session I was hassling a Lotus Exige, in another I destroyed a BMW 135i and in the final session I was able to closely follow a souped-up track modified GT86 for the entire session, only trailing them by a few seconds by the end.
• I discovered that the cafe at the track does a mean Eggs Benedict on Rösti.

Targets can be really helpful and important to spur you on to achieve things – but don't let them blind you from celebrating wins of all shapes and sizes, and from learning unexpected lessons. More importantly, always remember to keep the bigger picture in sight. Oh, and don't forget to have fun.

In my case the bigger picture is simple: driving race cars is really fun and really cool, and don't you forget it. Yee-haw!