Originally Posted by F1_Fan
Oh man... you were doing so good until that last sentence
It's the same thing as riding up a hill except you're balancing friction, angular velocity and centripetal acceleration. What is changing is the direction of the velocity vector but its magnitude is still constant.
The magnitude does stay the same, or speed, as I stated. But since you're changing direction, it takes constant input of force to do so. You said it yourself, it's called centripetal acceleration, but acceleration nonetheless.