I faintly recall the Latin phrase "per aspera ad astra" from reading "To Kill a Mockingbird" back in early high school. I really liked the concept of "through the mud to the stars" or "through hardships to the stars". I hadn't thought about it much in automotive terms. It turns out I needn't have bothered. My recent automotive adventures bear a stronger resemblance to the Top Gear mantra - "ambitious but rubbish". Here's the story of how things recently took a turn for the worst.
Can driving on track be beneficial for your health? Can something "dangerous" actually be really good for you? Let's try to find out. Please note that I am a driving enthusiast, not a doctor or researcher. So your mileage may vary. I welcome all information from the medical community to expand on what I have found here.
As I mentioned in my last post, I've not been as focused on training and conditioning as in prior years. And that fact has made itself apparent. I've buckled down and have begun my training regimen once again, thankfully. I'm running moderate distances four or five times per week. And I continue to exercise caution in what I eat. Weight loss is still my primary goal, but I cannot ignore physical conditioning to get there any longer. So I'm finding out how to blend them.
As a part of tracking progress, I've purchased scales for the house that are a bit easier to read consistently and hopefully more accurate than the old metal one we had been using. Another minor investment in trying to stay in the game. I've also started wearing my wife's now-unused Apple watch. It's useful for reminding me to stand and for tracking some portions of daily activity (perhaps inaccurately, but better than no tracking at all). After all, you can't improve what you can't measure, right?
How much does your personal conditioning matter on the race track? The car is doing all the hard work, right? Wouldn't that be nice. As most of us have found out, it's all about the driver. And it's now also clear - what kind of shape the driver is in. My goal was to beat my record from last year. Could I do it?
Have you ever wondered how much faster than you a pro driver would be in your own car? I often have. But how would you ever find yourself in a situation where you could find out? Well, I found myself there just the other day. And here is how I did.
Photo of Lee Carpentier, Lamborghini Trofeo race driver, from his Facebook page
What a surreal weekend with the Porsche Club at Palmer Motorsports Park in Palmer/Ware, Massachusetts this weekend! I still can't quite believe it actually happened. We had Thompson Speedway's road course come online last year in this region and had the joy of working to figure out that new track. And now this! And this one is unbelievably complex. How you ask? Try adding about 150 feet of elevation change per lap!! Let's take a minute to explore why that changes everything.
A Driver's Education (DE) event with the Porsche Club has become one of my more favorite things to do. But it has been an evolution to get to that place. Despite my normal love of driving and, now, amateur car-control events, I'll admit that my first trip to drive my own car on a real race track in 2013 was a bit nerve-wracking. Everyone thinks they are the world's best driver, especially before they have ever been trained (where we learn we aren't nearly as good as we think we are...). So I at least had that going for me. Yes, I had driven other people's car on a race track before - Skip Barber High Performance Driving School at the historic Lime Rock Park track in CT - so it wasn't that I hadn't been on a track before. Tracks are certainly a bit intimidating, especially New Hampshire Motor Speedway with it's full NASCAR stands around the oval. You really just don't know quite what to expect.