Chicken-N-Curves

Image courtesy of Body Concepts, Inc.

One of the key skills we worked on at the Body Concepts Skills Clinic is cornering which was perfect as the only curves I’m good at handling are my wife’s.  I am pretty good climbing hills and I can descend fast as long as it’s straight but if you throw in some curves (in flats or hills) I chicken out.  So I really need to work on cornering as I get into racing. I have had a lot of tidbits of advice over the years but it wasn’t until the clinic that I got a clear picture of how to put it all together.

At first we practiced on the slalom by setting up cones on a road without much traffic (a business park on the weekend works well).  At first I wasn’t leaning the bike too much.  Rob had me follow a teammate that was really fluid at leaning the bike around turns and told me to mimic what he did.  After following the other rider several times, I got much better.

Okay, that was nice, but what about a real world situation?  We moved to another part of the business park that had a downhill with a sharp turn at the end.  With Rob monitoring traffic we all took turns applying the skills to a real life situation.  On the first try I tried to follow a guy down the hill that was hitting the turn aggressively.  As I approached the turn I felt the butterflies in my stomach and chickened out.  I hit the brakes pretty hard before the turn and took it at a fairly easy pace.  Upset at myself for hitting the breaks hard, I was determined to try again. 

On the next try I started to get nervous again.  I hit the brakes before the turn, but not as hard and told myself to trust the bike and tires.  Hey, the guy in front of me didn’t go down, so my bike should be able to do it.  Right???  I really had to lean the bike over, much more than I felt comfortable doing at that speed, but I did and I survived it.  Great!!!  Now I have something positive to build on.

I went down the hill and around the turn many more times.  At the end of the day I didn’t jump to one of the smoothest or the fastest riders, but I was much more confident in what I was doing and felt like I have something to build on. 

Key Points to Remember:

1.       Brake before you start the turn.  If you MUST break during the turn, feather the rear brake to take some edge off.

2.       Look at where you want to go.  Not the railing or the pothole or whatever else you are worried about.  Your bike will go to where you are looking.  If you look at the railing, you will end up there.             

3.       Counter steer – This is how you get the lean on the bike.  If you are going around a right-hand turn, you are pushing on the handlebars with your right hand, which actually turns your wheel slightly left.

4.       If you are a motorcyclist, this next part will throw you off a little.  Lean your bike over but keep your body upright.  A bicycle is super light.  If you lean with your bike, you take away from the downward pressure on your tires and increase the odds of your bike sliding out from underneath you.

5.       Outside-Inside-Outside – If traffic allows, move to the outside of the curve, hit the inside at the apex, and move outside as you exit the curve.  This gives you the straightest line.  If you are riding in a pack, throw that out the window.  You must keep you line otherwise you will run into the rider next to you.

With some more practice on cornering I don’t think it’ll be long before this chicken is plucked and I will be embracing even more curves than I already do. No how do I explain all this to my wife???