Well, it wasn't quite the weekend I was hoping for.

Saturday I just wasn't getting anything done out there - I had hoped to be 
doing 2:2x's by lunchtime but I never broke 2:31 all weekend. I've never 
been this slow before!

I was gridded 28th out of 33 and got a lousy start. As I was heading into
turn 2 I looked back and was dismayed to see that there was no one behind 
me.

"Wow, what's wrong with me?"

I managed to pass the back-pack in the first lap or two but the rest of the 
pack was so far ahead that I could barely see them and after another lap 
the slow pack was so far behind me that I couldn't see them either. I was 
all alone. Spooky.

So, the race was basically over for me. Out of boredom I started trying to 
get my elbow down in 13 and I felt like I was starting to get close when 
they threw out the checkered flag.

Oh well.

It seems that I bent my forks in last months crash and the steering is way 
out of alignment (when the wheel's straight the handlebars are at two 
o'clock), but I don't think that was enough to account for my lack-luster 
performance. The front end has felt really bad since it came out of the 
suspension shop last time and that coupled with my recent marathon crash 
habit has sucked out a good chunk of my confidence in the bike. At least, 
that's all I can think of.

It's just frustrating because I usually come home from these things feeling 
like I gave it my all no matter what happened and I don't feel that way 
this time. :(


UPDATE 10/25/02
After talking with the suspension shop it appears that my biggest problem 
may have been my fork height. The forks were raised 22mm above the top 
triple clamp and the suspension shop said that this would more than account 
for the bikes tendency to tuck the front wheel and general light front end 
feel. They strongly suggested keeping the fork height between 8mm and 15mm. 
I set it for 10mm and will experiment at my next track day.