If You Are Slow Through Corners

I’ve dug back up this topic as I went to a “road race training” session last week with some much faster riders and I was comparatively dreadful going around corners. At the best I would lose a bike length or two, at the worst I would “understeer” and be going too straight after the apex…
I wasted so much speed and too many matches in corners and want to improve.

Is there any substitute for practise and how is the best way to go about this (as I don’t have any group rides I can make it to currently)?

Cones on a grass field? Find an empty car park? Any drills or things I should specifically try?

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The key to progression is to keep the mental stress moderate. You want to challenge yourself but not panic. TR Instagram has a good snippet with Amber explaining this. You also want to get maximum exposure to the skill with little distraction.

Setup Cones in a parking lot, especially if you can find one with a slight slope.

Practice riding in progressively tighter circles for minutes at a time. Get your body used to the fully turning position instead of having to transition in and out for the straights.

Next do squares where the straight is long enough to have to transition to riding straight fully before the next turn. On the turns get your inside pedal as close to the cone as possible.

Then you can work on weaving between cones setup in a line. Then figure eights.

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  • No, there are no shortcuts to gaining skill other than doing targeted and structured practice.

As such, there are numerous videos on a range of skills and approaches to watch:
https://www.google.com/search?q=cornering+on+a+bike&rlz=1C1CAFA_enUS700US700&sxsrf=ALeKk00BPIF7sf5ARDT7j_RrrleWMaBbmw:1625234561151&source=lnms&tbm=vid&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj2k8bFxsTxAhUVHM0KHdh0D9sQ_AUoAXoECAEQAw&biw=1920&bih=1089

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I got my cornering habits from road racing motorcycles. Not that it is enjoyable on 25mm tires, but I have had numerous times where I have lost the front or rear (or both) mid corner from carrying too much speed and regained control.

Gwen Jorgensen learned from a motorcycle racer how to get comfortable at speed and how to read the road, brake, etc from former road racer Ben Bostrom (and also a cyclist, like most motorcycle racers):

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Ben is quite the character too.
(Just read the article, it was his brother Eric. i was a huge fan of Eric in his day).

Motorcycle racing has a huge crossover. Light on the hands, weight the outside peg (pedal), countersteering, looking through the corner, brake release, roll speed, etc.

Another thing you can work on when applying power is to stand the bike up onto the meat of the contact patch. You can see Jake Gagne doing that here out of the slow right hander:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CQB_2pINDDx/

Roswell Bicycle sponsors a lot of the US based motorcycle riders, for those who live near there.

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Try this one. You can’t see where his eyes are looking, but it’s still attached to his helmet, so you get that sense. As Eric said in that article, “horizon, scan, scan, horizon”. Your body goes where your eyes go.

Think of the throttle like pedaling. Also, most motorcycle road racers use the rear brake slim to none. Bicycle should be the same way, especially if trail braking.

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One thing that I think helped my cornering was living somewhere that had some good twisty descents that were in the 3-6% gradient range so that you could just coast and get some descent speed and then as you get more comfortable you can pedal and bring your speed up. Then you just session these descents and focus on setting up wide, eyeing the apex and exit, then putting all your weight on your outside pedal and leaning the bike in. Starting on corners that are straighter and you don’t really need to apex so that if you mess it up then you just straighten up and ride it out. Then as you get comfortable you up the speed and tightness of the corners.

If you don’t live somewhere with descents

Then as you get more comfortable you can start doing them on slightly flatter terrain and practicing pedaling into and out of corners, or when you can just pedal through.

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Thanks for all the responses.

A lot of advice talks about eyeing the apex and then exit. So on turn into the corner or before it should be the apex and then through the apex the eyeline moves to the exit? Are we talking like sighting 10m ahead at all times?

Does this mean that if I am in a fast moving bunch with wheels in front, left/right and behind I should only be watching what the other wheels are doing in my periphery?
Probably my recent introduction to some of this type of riding but this feels like something I’m going to have to work on… (having more trust in those close to me)

And if there is someone on my inside I should therefore be looking at “my apex” and “my exit”(where I think my wheel needs to apex considering I can’t hit the actual apex)?

Yes. You look where you want to go. So if you need to corner 10 feet from the curb due to others around you, then that becomes your new apex.

And you keep scanning ahead. You never look at the ground right around you, even in a pack. You look 2 to 5 bike lengths ahead (2 for slow climbs, 5 for high speeds).

You will see and be aware of those around you with your peripheral vision. Occasionally you will need to glance at your front wheel to keep it safe. I know it seems scary to not look directly around you, but you don’t need to. Your subconscious and spatial awareness will take care of it. This works in Mountain Biking where there’s a lot more things you need to avoid hitting.

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I think just one of those things to get used to and comes naturally over time.

As I said in my first post last week on this thread, this was my first “road race” training session and so lots of nervousness on my part (new people, higher speeds, new corners to learn etc).

One other question regarding pack riding which I think I know but want to double check… The rider with handlebars in front has the “right of way” so to speak?
So if I’m 2nd wheel and want to pull out and pass 1st wheel but someone is coming up at a faster speed from 3rd/4th wheel on the outside can I pull into his line so long as my movements are smooth and I’m not causing them to have to slam on the brakes or take emergency precautions? What is the limit/line here?
Any rules of thumb or standard practises?

There’s human rules and there’s laws of physics. There’s one main law that matters to physics and that’s “protect your front wheel”. If you do that, your way less likely to crash. When sometime bumps into you it’s usually fine as long as you keep control of your front wheel. But if your front wheel gets knocked to the side, you are going down 99% off the time.

“Don’t overlap wheels” is a part of that, but obviously you do have to overlap if you pass anyone or they pass you. But if you make sure nobody touches your front wheel then you will be OK.

Having your handlebars in front of another rider means your front wheel is more protected and if you touch the other rider is more likely to crash than you are.

So basically, your priority is to not crash and not cause crashes. Ride predictably, which means move sideways slowly and don’t brake suddenly. Don’t cut sideways hard and be aware that your back wheel sticks out a ways. If you need to brake quickly say something to alert those behind you (and you should be looking far enough ahead to really avoid that).

One more note. Don’t ride right on someone’s wheel. Leave a foot in between and look past the rider in front of you. You still get a great draft but you are so much safer.

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One aspect to consider is confidence. I used to absolutely rail down hills, to the point my friends would get properly dropped every time even on short hills.

I had a hit-and-run RTA last year (ironically on a flat quiet dry and smooth road just noodling along) and since then my confidence has complete disappeared.

I’ve lost my ‘bottle’ so much that I am constantly over thinking cornering and / or downhills to the point I’m out braking myself and get anxiety over 25mph.

Just goes to show how much of a mental sport cycling can be. I have no solution other than to keep on trying and hope eventually I will relax back into it a bit more at some point.

Buying a Garmin Varia did reduce anxiety a little and give some reassurance and things have improved a little over the last few months but I doubt I will (based on current progress) ever get back to anywhere near the levels of confidence I had before.

Clearly my physical bike handling ability hasn’t diminished by such a huge margin so it’s almost certainly all in my head.

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Might be worth talking to a sports psychologist for this. Even if it doesn’t brin you back to past form it would probably ay least speed up the progress.

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Look as far ahead as possible to get an overall sense of the turn ahead. 10m is less than a second when you’re descending at 25mph or more, so if you only look 10m ahead, that’s not enough.

The reality is that you don’t just look out far ahead, and that you should be continuously scanning - from far ahead, to closer to your bike - the latter to avoid hitting anything in front of you that you don’t want to hit. This scanning technique is critical in MTB - but is also really helpful on the road.

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I think this is important. People always say “look as far ahead as possible” and stop there. So when I first started doing that I just felt so blind to what was going on right in front of my bike. After reading about the scanning technique I’m maybe doing a 80/20 split. So 80-85% of the time is spend looking down the road/trail getting a wide view of what lines to take and what big obstacles there are and then 15-20% looking close to my front tire to avoid small stones, ruts, cracks, etc.

So you spend a large majority of the time looking far ahead but you do need to look closer to make more micro adjustments.

The faster you go, the further ahead you have to look.

Look where you want to go.

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The other thing, and this applies to descending more due to the speeds involved, is you sometimes compromise a corner to carry more speed through the next because a big straight comes after it.

The saying in auto/moto racing, is the most important corner is the one before the longest straight. It’s more complicated than that, but you get the idea.

Like for a right hand corner with a left hander after, I might scrub more speed through the right hander which allows me to accelerate / carry more speed through the left.

You have the most brake traction in a straight line with the bike straight up, so that’s a good rule for most. If you have a lot of experience and good brake feel, you can trail brake the last bit, but this is a pretty advanced skill for most.

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A younger rider on the hour of power this morning did what I talked about way up there^^^. But, man, he was almost willing the bike to go right by twisting and getting both shoulders way off to the inside of the turn. Wish I had a video. It was painful to watch as I glided by on the inside. Kids. :wink: :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: :boom:

Just want to say a big thanks to all who have given me help here over the past couple of weeks.
Went back to the same training session today and straight away felt better going through the corners just taking on board some of the simple advice given above.

Still plenty to work on but the whole session was more enjoyable once I felt I could relax in the corners more.

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hahahahaha

Eventually I got myself kind of sorted out, but I remember Emile getting pretty fed up with me in a break that lapped the field in the crit. I was a motor on the straights but an anchor on the corners…

I needed that podcast about 20 years ago.