So my bike feels comfortable/stable, but I still feel like i'm on the brakes too much when going down hilly, twisty sections.

Is the technique just like auto racing, start high and aim for the apex? Should all of the braking take place before the turn, or during the turn as well?

I know experience is the best teacher, but is there anything i can consiously do to get more comforatble with cornering speed?

Thanks
B.

similar physics apply as in racing...

downhill you generally come on the inside and exit on the outside.

This is hella dangerous on public roads...I hope you know that.

Also try to "lean" in to the turn instead of just trying to turn the wheel. Talking from personal experience leanning in to the turn but keeping pressure on the outer side of the bar, allows me to take turns faster. Also I feel like I have more control of the bike.

Just get familiar with descents. I find that on familiar decents, I can go pretty briskly on the way down without scaring myself, just because I know road conditions and the like. On unknown ones though, I think that too slow is better than too fast

Cornering techniques...?

Go fast and don't crash!

Actually...



Lean the bik in the corners, don't steer, use couter steering methods as needed. Put you outside to the turn pedal down and put most of your weight there. Let your bike natrally lean. Use the whole lane, and unless you can see whats beyond the corner do not cross the center line. Watch out for the center in corners to avoid oil slicks which can make you crash. Brake before the turn and if ever in doubt, take the corner slower than you think is necessary. Finally fin how your bike decends well before the twisties... don't want shimmy in a corner...

Mandy

unless you're driving an F1 car, the BEST philisophical approach to cornering is very simple:

slow in - fast out.

there is no more important rule than that until you become familiar with the course, at which point, you can start to brake shorter and shorter. most important thing to work on is rythm - stay smooth.

just do it safely.

"The line" is the same...

However, unless you have a private downhill, kerb-to-kerb setting up high and apexing can be very, very dangerous with cars on the road. While trail-braking into a corner can extend the time you spend at max-speed on the straights, it's very minor. Bigger gains can be had by applying the brakes HARD at the last possible moment on the straights; that means the rear tyre is skipping on the ground and hopping in the air.

Unless your career depends on it, I'd suggest improving your downhills very gradually, always in control, and push it up to the limits slowly..... Better in slow and out fast than fast in and out... dead...

If you *can* brake during the turn, you didn't have to. To put it another way, if you are going so fast that you absolutely have to brake during the turn, then you have no choice but to give up on making the corner, set the bike upright and straight, and panic brake while you ride off the corner like the polka-dot guy did in TdF05. You only have so much traction to spend, you can either spend it on braking, or turning, but not both.

1. Keep your body weight low
2. Lean
3. Take the racing line
4. NEVER brake in the corner
5. Use the front brake in a straight line as you approach the corner
6. Counter-steer

And the best advice I got, from a guy who descends alpine passes on a weekly basis as a guide

7. Don't look at the road directly in front of the bike. Keep your eye on the road's 'vanishing point' as you turn the corner (the furthest part of the road you can see), this gives you much more prior warning of the lay of the road and also traffic.

When leaning into a turn, make sure you keep your head as well as your wheels on your side of the yellow line.

1. Look ahead down the road where you want to go Keep your head up
2. slight quick countersteer in the opposite direction will set you up for the turn
3. keep you "body core' centered over the seatpost and slightly lean your upper body & outer leg into the turn until you feel more adventurous and want to experiment with additional lean.
4. brake before the turn
5. smooth slow exit speed in the beggining to get the feel of your bike
6. be loose but have a firm hold of the bars by the brake hoods later for the drops
7. in some cases moving your weight slightly to the rear by sliding your butt back a little off the saddle may help
lots of good advice in prior posts
have fun

Here is the questions that always comes up. And I always forget what the experts come up with:

Lean your body with the bike

Lean the bike and keep your body more upright




I tend to do a little of both, but I usually favor leaning my whole body when going downhill. I can't get as much lean the other way. Which is the best way?

When you take a high speed curve correctly, it feels like you are on rails. From the upright braking position the bike gets thrown or countersteered fairly precisely onto your line through the curve, you're leaned over maintaining steady pressure on the inside bar and outside crank, and checking your approach and exit to and from the apex. It might look graceful from the outside, but is really an aggressive maneuver with a like mindset. You basically attack the curve. Centrifugal force is like an addictive drug.

Agreed. Especially the "rail effect" mentioned here.

I tuck down, get on the drops, rest each index finger on the bottom of my STIs just in case and lean with the bike keeping weight on the outside crank. Works well I think. Never normally need to brake, but the one finger does allow you to push the bike a little further I think.

This is an excellent point, which I first encountered in motorcycling. Looking as far up the road as you can manage has the effect of slowing things down, psychologically. You feel like events are happening in slow motion, at a rate you can manage comfortably. When you're not panicky, you set up the proper line earlier and your body stays looser, which helps the bike track a lot better through the corner.

Another motorcycling tip -- unless you're racing on a closed course, keep enough in reserve so that you can deal comfortably with the totally unexpected. I like to imagine that a delivery truck has just hit a bump around the next corner and dropped a full size refrigerator sideways across the lane, and I always try to ride with enough control that I could stop before I hit it.

I've never actually seen a refrigerator there, but I've seen lots of gravel, more than a little glass, and the occasional stopped car.

The biggest thing i am scared of is, finding that their is sand or dirt on the road at the bottom of the curve. Which will wipe you out unless you maintain a relatively straight line thru it. Any suggestions on that???

All very good advice. I also notice a lot of pros sticking their leg out into the corner (i.e. they stick the knee out as they lean, with foot still on pedal). I do this myself and it seems to help. I think partly it gives a good weight distribution, and partly the leg acts like an air brake, slowing you down in the direction your turning into IYSWIM.

This is more or less redundant, but I thought I'd list the 3 simple things I try think of *while* descending... remembering 7-10 things seems a bit much.

1) Brake to a comfortable speed BEFORE the curve, on the straights. Don't brake in the curve - this is will create shimmy that can get out of control.
2) Place your weight on the outside pedal, which is (of course) down. This allows you to hold a more aggressive lean.
3) Counter-steer to choose and fine tune your line -- this is much more effective than trying to throw your body and/or bike around through trying to lean. Counter steer deliberately, and you'll find the lean and line far more quickly and accurately.

All the other advice is, of course, very good. But these are the 3 vital things that I have in my mind as I descend with speed.

If there had to be a 4th:

4) Look at where you want to go, not at what you want to avoid. This is related to the keep your eyes down the road lesson mentioned earlier, and a lesson that I learned from kayaking. It works...

my $.02

I've found this idea to be extremely helpful in improving my own descending skills. The advice I got is, "look where you want to go, not where you're going", same general idea.

But I think the best advice is from DannoXYZ, who said to work on improving your skills slowly over time. Descending is one area where you should not aim for rapid improvement, because of the danger involved. I've been at it for just over a year and I'm definitely getting better with continued exposure, but on unfamiliar roads or very steep descents I still get my doors blown off by guys (and girls!) who are more skilled and have more confidence than I do. Tempting to try to keep up, but I guess my sense of self-preservation outranks my sense of competition.

Keep a little something in reserve so that you can adjust your line and straighten up and lose speed *before* you hit the sand. You want to go through the sand with your wheels turning freely, not braking at all. I ride with some guys who don't understand that, and they scare the piss out of me when I wind up descending behind them -- because they ride their brakes on scary fast downhill curves on back roads with questionable surfaces.

I've been told to do neither, rather, lean your body into the turn but keep the bike more upright. The theory being that the tires have more traction when they're as vertical as possible. Not that I can ever really do that, so I just stick with #1.

There's an exception -- don't lean your body too far inside the curve if there is an obstacle there, such as a telephone pole. I nailed a support pole once pretty hard, *running* on a suspended indoor track. I didn't realize that you also lean inward when you're turning on foot. Surprised the hell out of me.

I'd second most (if not all) of what's been mentioned previously. About the only bit of advice I can add is don't strangle-hold the handlebars - you want to guide the bike, not steer it.

It's a zen thing.

One advantage of the "lean your bike more than your body" technique is that you can easily pull the bike up a little to change your line around an obstical. On the other hand, if you keep your bike more upright, then you can often plow through gravel or leaves without losing control. You need to decide based on your experience with that particular corner. If you've never ridden there before, slowing down might be the smart thing to do.

I don't understand the idea of trying to descend the fastest on public roads. What do you have to gain if you're not in a race? And even in races, the course might be cleaned of debris that are on public roads that might lead to your demise...and of course road races are typically closed courses, so even if you fall, you are not likely to get run over by some driver that might be tailing you too closely.

That just plain doesn't work. Merely leaning your body doesn't turn the bike, otherwise I wouldn't be able to do a rolling mount in a straight line. Either the bike has to lean, "curving" the surface of the wheel and causing the bike to turn, or the wheel has to turn.

They might have more traction when vertical, but they have no turning ability.