100%

[Misti]

How do you find your 100% ? People are always talking about how they ride 100% on the track or in a race. Other people talk about how they ride at 70 or 80% on the street. So, how do you find your personal 100% and what are some of the factors that limit you, or prevent you from getting there?

 

Misti

[David]

1) When I start freaking out, I've hit my personal 100%. It's about mental ability to process, for me. Sometimes you get away with being hit with 120% of your ability to process mentally and don't go down, so to me absence of a crash does not indicate that I've been riding within 100% of my mental ability.

 

2) The specific point where I hit 100% changes as I learn to process things earlier and "see" a bigger picture.

 

3) When things get more automatic, I can use my limited mental abilities on other things. Thus the point of practicing.

[ShovelStrokeEd]

Although I have used the percentage method before, I believe it does not accurately reflect what is going on in our heads.

 

I since use a different rating. Casual, comfortable, very aware, a little scared, and OH CRAP!

 

I would define a little scared as probably 80% and OH CRAP at no more than 90%.

 

My usual attempts to find 100% result in my finding 110% of the bike's abilities and long since surpassing a similar number for my own. IOW, crashing.

 

I'm at my best running somewhere between very aware and a little scared with the fear starting to beat up my moment to moment analysis of my riding. I actually think all that analysis is a bad thing as well. When I am really riding well, I'm not thinking about what I am doing so much, or even thinking about what the bike is doing. Just workin' the road and letting it flow.

[Albert]

Ed,

I like your system. I've also found that the amount of "casual" riding one does has a direct impact on the amount of "OH CRAP" riding one does.

[tallman]

That would be the point right before you crash.

To me, 100% would imply that both the rider and bike are operating at a point where there is no more margin.

Can't go faster, turn harder, lean more, without losing traction, or some other negative outcome from exceeding design parameters.

If you can go faster, lean more, etc... that's not 100%.

 

This is different from my personal 100% which is a point that I won't go beyond because;

I'm scared, and fear is a powerful behavior modifier.

I'm smart, and know (possibly from a negative experience, see fear*) that I'm not capable, or I choose not to.

"A man's (and woman) got to know his limitations" as one character so accurately put it.

[Bruno Valeri]

That would be the point right before you crash.

 

Same here. For me, percentage (or riding intensity) relates to my ability to process and react to things as they unfold.

 

During a street sportride, I might ride up to 60% or so with possible bursts at 70%. On the track, either track days or school, I normally ride at about 70% with bursts at 80%.

 

Riding at 70% allows me to have processing power in reserve in order to learn from what I'm doing.

Which is why I find the no-brake drill so good.

So, I've got to be both the observer and the observed.

 

I don't race. But if I raced, I figure that I might ride at close to or at 100% during qualifying ie on a perfect, clean lap. During a race, maybe 90%. That leaves me a buffer.

 

 

Bruno

Montreal, Canada

http://pages.videotron.com/mcrides

 

Gerbing Cascade Extreme jacket review

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[leikam]

What prevents me from riding at 100% is my aspiration to ride at 5%.

[russell_bynum]

Simple:

 

100%

 

101%

 

 

 

Seriously...I'm more like David on this. I don't really have a percent idea in my head, but when I'm riding calm and collected, and finishing every turn the way I intended, I'm somewhere below 100%. When I start to make mistakes, feel like I'm getting mentally behind the bike, and can't put the bike exactly where I want it, then I'm over 100% and it is time to dial it back.

[RT_Pilot]

Since a 100% is more of a philosophical scale rather than typical or the same for everyone, I ride at 100% all the time, given the situation, conditions, and my mindset. I mean, if I’m thinking about my next meal… I’m riding at 100% of a “me” thinking about my next meal.

 

I’m actually ever searching for my bike’s and my reactions to the ever-changing environment and conditions I could happen into. I feel when I’ve come very close to my bike’s potential, the signs usually cause me to pull over and reassess life for a moment before I continue on… if you know what I mean. Then my personal scale is adjusted to my newly acquired knowledge and I change my underwear at my earliest opportunity.

[Misti]

good answers. I like Russel's simple definition (tee hee)

 

So, everyone seems to have an idea of what thier 100% is, whether they call it that or something else.....

 

Can that 100% change? What I mean by that is, are there things you can do to increase or "up" your 100% and what are some of the things that influence that ability to change?

 

David touched on it a bit when he said "The specific point where I hit 100% changes as I learn to process things earlier and "see" a bigger picture."

 

Cherio!

 

Misti

[Bruno Valeri]

Can that 100% change? What I mean by that is, are there things you can do to increase or "up" your 100% and what are some of the things that influence that ability to change?

 

If by 100% you mean your level of ability instead of the level of intensity, then sure. Every time your skills improve, your total level of ability goes up. At a given time, 100% of your abiity might have been equal to a 5. As your skills improve, 100% of your ability might be equal to an 8.

 

 

Bruno

Montreal, Canada

http://pages.videotron.com/mcrides

 

Gerbing Cascade Extreme jacket review

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[pmdave]

I ride mostly public roads. Over the years I've seen so many strange hazards that I ride at maybe 50% of my skills, to leave the other 49% for handling the expected unexpected. IOW, it's not just about controlling the machine, it's about controlling the situation.

 

What's interesting is that as skills have progressed, that "50%" is more aggressive than "99%" would have been ten or twenty years ago. And, even though I assume I'm much wiser about the possible hazards, I rarely need to take any sudden corrective action.

 

However, if your ego demands that you pass me and go zipping into that blind turn ahead, well, have at it. Remember, speed is distance divided by time. Crashing really ruins your speed.

 

pmdave

[Paul Mihalka]

I ride mostly public roads. Over the years I've seen so many strange hazards that I ride at maybe 50% of my skills, to leave the other 49% for handling the expected unexpected. IOW, it's not just about controlling the machine, it's about controlling the situation.

 

What's interesting is that as skills have progressed, that "50%" is more aggressive than "99%" would have been ten or twenty years ago. And, even though I assume I'm much wiser about the possible hazards, I rarely need to take any sudden corrective action.

 

However, if your ego demands that you pass me and go zipping into that blind turn ahead, well, have at it.

pmdave

Wow! I am in the best company! I was thinking how to describe my riding, and Dave did it perfectly for me. As a addendum, I can tell that the personal 100% can go up, but also can come down. I feel that my personal high point for public road riding was about 15 years ago, at age 60. From there it is coming down. First slowly, a bit faster the last few years. Thank Heaven there is still something left

[Bruno Valeri]

I can tell that the personal 100% can go up, but also can come down. I feel that my personal high point for public road riding was about 15 years ago, at age 60.

 

Same for racers. It gives full meaning to the term over the hill. When we are young, we are always improving ie we are on the upside of the hill. As we get older, we continue improving but our age reduces some of the net effect. We eventually reach a point where our age has a greater effect than our improvement. So on a track, you reach a point where you're getting better but you are not getting faster. Eventually you begin slowing down, even though you are still giving your 100%. That's why Formula 1 drivers typically retire between 35 and 38 yrs old and why any racer eventually loses competitiveness. They have more experience but they are on the dowhill side of the hill.

 

The consolation is that we're all in the same boat. I took my first California Superbike School in 1984 at Loudon, NH, the old configuration and had Wes Cooley as guest instuctor. I was lower down on the uphill side then.

 

Bruno

Montreal, Canada

http://pages.videotron.com/mcrides

 

Gerbing Cascade Extreme jacket review

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[sgendler]

I'm pretty much with Ed on his analysis, but I could define 100% at the track to be

 

• 
  
• accelerating as hard as I can
  
• accelerating as early as I can
  
• braking as late as I can
  
• braking as hard as I can
  
• carrying as much lean angle as I can
  
• turning in as late as I can
  

 

If I am doing all those things (which I only do at the track, and rarely even then), then I am running at 100%, even if they bike is actually capable of more, since exceeding your own personal limits is a good way to make a mistake that you can't recover from even if the bike could (target fixation, inadvertent steering inputs, etc)

 

So to define a lower percentage for the street, it would be knowing that based on what i see ahead, I could start braking 100 feet out, but instead, I'll start braking a little bit farther out, then brake less hard, but carry less corner speed, so less lean angle, and then not hammering the throttle as far open as possible on corner exit.

 

By attempting to give myself some room to maneuver on all those variables, I can ride at a value that is lower than 100%. However, given that each of those variables effects the others, I don't need to modify all of them by 20% in order to get to a theoretical 80%. Since reduced speed and earlier braking mean that I will have more lean angle available to respond to unforeseen hazards by steering and/or more ability to brake in the turn if I should be required to, I can modulate each variable by a lesser amount in order to achieve a theoretical 60-70%, which is where I like to be on the street. but it isn't some well defined calculus, just a sense that I've got a certain amount of room available as a buffer on each variable. It would certainly be easy enough to miscalculate and find yourself over the 100% mark, but riding between 60 and 70%, you've got a fair amount of room in each of those 6 variables in which to find an escape from any hazards that present themselves.

 

I could include top speed on straights as another variable, but I don't tend to think in those terms. On track, speed is irrelevant, and everything is about acceleration or deceleration. On the street, my spidey sense kicks in well before I am at 70% of what the bike is capable of in a straight line, both because of law enforcement and the animal crossing thing. one of the reasons I didn't like riding my GSXR1000 on the street was that it was so easy to go speeds that I would consider insane on any other bike. You could get to 130mph or better in an eyeblink, and the bike didn't even feel like it was going quickly until you got to 120mph. If law enforcement didn't get me, some critter was going to.

 

--sam

[NEOHMark]

I like Lee Parks' take on this. He addresses it as combination of fear threshold and confidence. Can you change 100%? Absolutely - push out the envelope of your fear threshold. You do that by improving your skills and pushing yourself beyond your comnfort level. But this creates confidence.

 

Abiding by this, everyone pushes it past 100% everytime they attempt something they've shied away from previously. Early in the learning curve, it's easy to push a little more, and little more and then a little more than that. But eventually your curve plateaus into a 'summit' and it takes probably a little more specialized focus to push beyond the barriers to experience even slight gains.

 

At times, I suppose I have done 100% on the street - earlier in my learning curve. But now, I probably view the same skill set as being no more than 70% or 80%. I plan to find out a little more about myself come summer - at a track school (a first for me).

[Kinsley]

I can tell that the personal 100% can go up, but also can come down. I feel that my personal high point for public road riding was about 15 years ago, at age 60.

 

Same for racers.

:

 

And Paul Mihalka was one

[Todd_Z1]

I am just waiting for Nicky Hayden to chime in (I'm not holding my breath). I'd like to hear how he defines 100%.

 

Cheers!

[TN_R_Girl]

1) When I start freaking out, I've hit my personal 100%. It's about mental ability to process, for me. Sometimes you get away with being hit with 120% of your ability to process mentally and don't go down, so to me absence of a crash does not indicate that I've been riding within 100% of my mental ability.

 

2) The specific point where I hit 100% changes as I learn to process things earlier and "see" a bigger picture.

 

3) When things get more automatic, I can use my limited mental abilities on other things. Thus the point of practicing.

 

I like this explanation the best so far ... and would add that the 100% point may change on any given day, depending on what other factors are playing a part in the mental game: i.e., did I get enough sleep last night? is my gear fitting comfortably? am I feeling good physically?

 

[philbytx]

100% is merely a number.

 

You only discover the level of your best (at any given time) as the moment prior to you screwing up !

 

If you didn't screw up, that was your best...at that given moment .

[Paul De]

If you could see your own face when riding / driving you might be able to quantify this ability scale to a benchmark based on facial expressions which are pretty universal. The system quantifies things like how wide the eyes and mouth are open, and the overall look of concentration right up through surprise and fright expressions.

 

Wouldn’t it be great if this could be implemented for watching races on TV? It might be fantastic as a training tool for a track school.

 

You get to see the face with a bar graph of the computed percentage of the riders performance margin from these facial expression in a little window at the bottom of the screen with the main picture being the forward look…….You might even be able to refine the accuracy for readings over 100% with a microphone to catch a scream (automatic +100%) and a wetness sensor in the riders drawers (automatic +115%)

 

In a slightly more serious vein, the algorithm may go something like this.

 

< 75%

 

< 85%

 

< 95% (ala Micheal Jordan)

 

At 100%

 

from 100 to 105%

 

> 105%

 

No longer with rubber side down

[pmdave]

Perhaps we should also note that "100%" includes the situation as well as the rider's skills and risk acceptance.

 

If you have not yet learned all that there is to know about the situation, you can be hanging it out farther than you realize.

 

For instance, someone who has yet to hook a tire on an edge trap, might not understand the danger when the time comes to climb up onto a raised pavement edge, say during a repaving operation.

 

Likewise, cars emerging from alleys, plastic RR aprons, spilled diesel oil, or the lane crasher who cuts directly from the passing lane to the off ramp.

 

Speaking for myself, I have gotten a lot more pessemistic about the situation as I have gained experience (and, shall we assume, knowledge). My riding now is much less about controlling the machine, and a lot more about managing the situation.

 

pmdave

[Misti]

I can tell that the personal 100% can go up, but also can come down. I feel that my personal high point for public road riding was about 15 years ago, at age 60.

 

I like the idea behind this, that your 100% can go both up and down. Does everyone agree on this, that it can go down as well?

 

Or if you get to your 100% once, does that mean the bar is alway set that high and unless you get to THAT point again, you aren't ever at your 100%?

 

Misti

[ShovelStrokeEd]

That a personal 100% can go up and down should be self evident. Our physical and mental conditions are constantly changing during the course of a ride, be it at the track or on the road.

 

Fatigue is the enemy. It leads to mistakes. It is sneaky in that it doesn't really take much of it to remove that edge. Legs burnin' a bit after a couple of laps? You're not gonna be as light in the seat and your 100% just moved down the scale. Not to say you are still not giving 100% but compared to where you were 3 laps ago, you're not putting out the same pristine control of the bike. Ditto the bike. The shocks heat up, the tires do the same, traction ain't what it was nor is compliance.

 

To some extent, motivation and adrenaline can play important roles as well. Nothing like having somebody on your tail and closing to raise your level a bit except maybe being in the reverse situation. I don't think it is much of a mystery why a good percentage of the crashes at a race happen on either the first or last couple of laps.

 

I like to think of it as maintaining a high area under the curve. The really great racers are able to "bring it" from the time the flag drops till that checker waves. The rest of us mere mortals have to deal with the ups and downs as best we can.

[Paul De]

It is intuitive that the personal 100% can and does go up and down....that is why we don't have the same world champ year after year, decade after decade. This would be true in the less extreme but no less demanding world of street riding. The board here is full of SAFU posts where upon dissecting it is apparent one of the members was not at the top of their game and misfortune resulted.

 

I seem to remember reading eons ago something that Kenny Roberts Sr. said about racing and its impact on the racer. To paraphrase, it was something like that a person has a finite amount of the kind of concentration needed to compete at the world class level. Once that concentration budget gets used up the racer looses the edge that allowed them to go that fast. True or not, it speaks to the personal 100% being variable and not directly tied to the loss of physical skill Paul had pointed out several posts back.

 

Hell, for that matter, even the machine has something of a moving 100% potential. Wear parts wearing reduce the machine peak capability, a real factor on street machines where tires and brake pads tend to be run to their limit. Even weather conditions affect the total and the delivery of engine power although liquid cooling and fuel injection has minimized the impact to near imperceptible levels.

[BWS]

How do you find 100%?........Me or bike?

 

On the "me" side it boils down to lots of uninterupted,high quality practice.Heap on loads of determination.Throw in a good dose of education,both written and "schooled".A smattering of luck and a decent sized pocketbook.

 

The bike side's a touch more difficult.A racer is mainly concerned with laptimes and consistancy.Therefore any and all efforts will naturally be headed in that direction.A study'd street scratcher is more concerned with self preservation than laptimes so bike setup is gonna be a little different.Absolute grip isn't as important as longterm consistancy and milage.Regardless of what anyone tells you concerning tyre wear,on the street you WILL get tired of writing checks for rubber!Consequently grip is gonna suffer at some point.Where this can't be tolerated in trackworld,street riders better get used to it.So think of riding around a track on shagged rubber.........you know....sliding like a mo-fo.Thats the limit street riders have to deal with.So if I'm doin two wheel drifts on my 636 then am I runnin @100%?Maybe...I personally feel like its a very natural thing to be doing,and I'd better practice it.Do you practice your racing on wornout slicks?Probably not.Like I said,the bike part is more difficult to label.Best of luck,BW

[Couchrocket]

For me, it has become a matter of sight lines.

 

I realized at Torrey this last September that "speed," per se, didn't really have much to do with my comfort level, or to put it in this thread's terms, my sense of "percentage" of my ability being "used." Out on some of those wide open twisties, with sight lines that go on forever, I could really hook it on with little trepidation.

 

When riding in my old "home turf" in the mountains of "Far North" CA, where the sight lines are very much restricted, no matter how predictable the curve (or how familiar I might be with it) my sense of "used up percentage" rises rapidly, and I slow down to increase my sense of "reserve percentage."

 

So, for me it is as much a matter of "where I am" as it is of how fast, or how technical, the road may be. Except, of course, in so far as the really tight stuff is usually by definition a road with restricted sight lines. Not always, but most of the time.

 

So, when I can't see, I slow WAY down (from my already sedate pace). When I can see through the curves, I'm more comfortable riding at a "perceived greater percentage of my riding ability," even when I'm going much faster (for me).

[Dick_at_Lake_Tahoe_NV]

Wow! I am in the best company! I was thinking how to describe my riding, and Dave did it perfectly for me. As a addendum, I can tell that the personal 100% can go up, but also can come down. I feel that my personal high point for public road riding was about 15 years ago, at age 60. From there it is coming down. First slowly, a bit faster the last few years. Thank Heaven there is still something left

 

I like your post--sounds like you're about 75 now, and I'm closing on you at 71. I have a T-shirt that tells it for me: "The Older I get, the Faster I was!"

[philbytx]

Misti,

IMHO - You are WAAAYYYYY overthinking this (see my earlier reply )

 

Simply put : 100% is a moving target with too many variables.

 

Ever been in the situation where you wished you had more power or better brakes/tyres? Bet you have ...So, at those moments the bike/rider combo was at 100% because that was all you had AT THAT TIME!

 

There will always be the "what if's" and you can "what if" yourself into oblivion along with all the "woulda, coulda, shoulda's".

 

However, after some physical and financial scares on the track , I learned that provided I went in to do the best I could (under the circumstances ) enjoy the competition, ride the best I knew how and also the bike within it's capabilities (no sponsors in those days..It was me and my mate Chris's limited budget is all), some days it all came together. Other days it just simply went to sh#&....

 

Any day that you finish a race (even better, win, place or show ) and get off the bike, want to pat it on the tank and feel wrung out but joyful and, perhaps, wearing a wide grin, is a great day....that may just be your 100%. In the end, it is merely a state of mind....

 

Be safe....