The first two days at Dirtfish were a pendulum, swinging back and forth between success and struggle. I kept getting caught up in old habits, then getting lost in my head trying to analyze or understand them, and then because of that, being unable to really be in the moment.

All of that changed once we got into the woods.

I think that the earlier things that we did, they were exercises. Lift-turn-wait, lift-turn-brake, pendulum turns – all of these were done in isolation on a single corner, and through repetition, you’d improve on your technique. But it also meant that you could do it “wrong” and you could do it “right”. So you practiced to try to get it “right” every time. Or at least, that’s what it looked like it should be.

In reality, one of the things that the instructors try to get you to understand is that every corner is a new challenge that includes some element of the unknown. Cars push gravel out of the way, so every time you go around the corner, even if it’s the same corner, the surface is a little different. Sure, you get more consistent, and you get better able to understand & adapt to the traction. But you never really get it right.

So being trapped intellectualizing what I did wrong was a mess, and the wrong approach. Trying to understand what I did wrong, sure – but that the thing I needed to get out of it was the feel. And the other thing was that it’ll always have room for improvement, the main thing is, once you’re through the corner, there’s another one coming.

We took these exercises and linked them all together into a course called the Boneyard. It’s only 6-7 turns around a small pond, but it’s all the things you learned in practice. The problem for me is that the Boneyard is a course, but it’s also determined by the cones on the course – and so I kept “driving the cones” trying to look at them, but not at the road. So I’d use them as reference, as though I was on a track, but when you needed to do things kept shifting, so I’d do everything too late, and end up in the slop (which is very slow).

Instead, I should have been looking at the road, and braking earlier and (while firmly) less. Giving myself more time to react if things went unexpectedly – but always watching the road, not the cones. If I don’t end up directly next to the exit cone on exit, that’s alright. But still, for my time in the Boneyard (and the Link, which is basically Bonyard+), I thought of it as a series of exercises.

Then we got to courses that weren’t a series of exercises, but a whole lot of linked corners, and more “driving” not just “corner corner corner”. And there, things started to feel like something. You got to drift out of a slightly under-rotated corner on the gas, and it was fine. You got to correct oversteer, and maybe it wasn’t the fastest way out of the corner but it sure was dramatic, and it was also fine. This is where my brain started turning off, and where I’d just started to establish enough unconscious attachment to the new (not track) way to drive that I got some better results.

But my brain didn’t fully “turn off” until the last track – The Mill Run. 2.6 miles, no demo run, you only learn it through the instructors giving you rally-style pace notes. Because you don’t really know what’s coming, you get a note (Right 3), and I had to scan the road to figure out where the next corner was, knowing it was a 90 degree right. There was no time to dwell on mistakes. The next thing was coming! And because of that, I finally was able to just drive by feel. Better corners, more aggressive, earlier on the power.

In retrospect, there were a lot of corners where I didn’t get on the gas fast enough, or took the wrong line through the corner and ended up bogged down. But this was where it went from “challenging” to “mindbogglingly fun” and all the things that you’ve learned over the last few days come together into something that feels like magic.

Everyone in the class made this kind of progress. I think the non-track folks made steadier progress & didn’t have their confidence smashed the way we did. But whether a 17 or 67 year old, every single person was kicking up gravel sliding through corners at speed by the end. It was absolutely wild.

I’m going again. Probably the 3-day RWD course in 2026. If you’re interested, drop me a line.