Last year, I challenged readers to identify the racing driver responsible for the following vivid account of what it feels like to be 'in the zone'.
"When I'm in that groove, I can go on forever. I wish I knew how I got into that state. I don't. I simply find myself in it...
"Then I drive out of that window in my helmet. I look through that window and what I see out of it is the sole and only thing that exists in the whole wide world; everything is happening out there in front of me. My legs and arms and every other part of me are just parts of a whole and doing what they're supposed to be doing automatically, so that I don't have to think consciously about gearing or braking or accelerating; that's all going on without any orders from me. I concentrate, intensely, on everything that's in front of me: be it a car or a corner, there's an invisible line extending from that window in my head to whatever's next. My body is in unison. It doesn't really exist; it's compacted, the whole of me is bunched up tight inside that little area of plexiglass. I'm entirely in my helmet and I think of myself as being the helmet, looking out. Everything, body or car, obeys that module.
"The sensation is not physical...I'm seeing more than I ever have before. My vision is enlarged and the sensation is purely mental."
Sadly, there were no correct suggestions, so I must now reveal that these were the reflective and introspective words of Alan Jones, 1980 F1 World Champion, elicited by Keith Botsford, and published in Driving Ambition.
Thursday, June 28, 2012
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1 comment:
At last! ;-)
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