On The Pegs VOL . 4 ISSUE 11 - NOVEMBER 2020 55
the actual thing itself that it ’ s doing for me . I have a good game of golf . It ’ s okay , but it ’ s like once in a while I have a shit game and it ’ s just like having a bad race , in a way . I ’ m too deep into winning and being successful to relax and have fun at something . So hopefully in a few years I can get rid of this sort of mentality and realize let ’ s focus on other aspects of life . Winning is not everything anymore .
How have you progressed over the years when it comes to testing and is that something you might want to get into in the future ?
Back in the day I wasn ’ t that good of a tester to tell you if my bike was good or bad . They threw a setting in there and I rode it . Nowadays I ’ m super finicky . A couple clicks this way or that way , I can tell major differences . Today we messed with my bike , the rebound , the high speed , the low speed on the shock and the forks . We made one-click changes all day for each test and I would come in and I could tell drastic changes just in that one click , nowadays . That ’ s another thing that it ’ s a benefit but it also is a curse in a way , for sure . Back in the day I would just go out and just ride the piss out of the thing and be like , whatever . It ’ s not supposed to do that . I don ’ t know what it ’ s supposed to do and not supposed to do . So now you ’ re hitting bumps and stuff and instead of just attacking the track and trying to go as fast as you can , you hit something and your bike goes up and it messes with you because you ’ re like , what is my bike doing ? It shouldn ’ t do that . It should feel this way and not that way . So it plays mind games with you . Almost not knowing is a better plan of attack than knowing too much and being too finicky to subtle changes . It ’ s crazy how that works . Back in the day , you could have taken my forks and throw them as far up in the clamps as they could go and twisted the rebound all the way in and I wouldn ’ t have noticed a damn thing , but I was riding to the line a couple races ago and I didn ’ t realize my forks were like a millimeter higher than my practice bike was , and I get to the starting line and I was like , “ Man , I think my bars are too far forward .” I couldn ’ t pinpoint it but I knew something was off . I could just feel it just riding to the starting line . So I got there and I rolled my bars back and it still felt like shit . I rode the whole race and I came back and I seen that instead of on the second line I was on the third line . I was like , no wonder I felt so bad for thirty , forty minutes because I was adjusted to it . It definitely is a curse . So there ’ s a fine line of being naive and not knowing and a good tester and knowing everything and being able to dictate . Definitely when you get going you can ’ t make changes in off-road . We don ’ t reset in thirty minutes . You got to deal with it . Like I said , off-road you got to be mentally tough to deal with your bike even when it ’ s junk . n