I probably could hunt down all of cdr's posts (and YMCA and DannyXYZ...to give credit to all the old racers ), but given I'm covered in weeping patches of road rash, I'm not in the mood to sit that long.

Short story. Raced, tried to follow the two gents who were taking the super fast inside line through a 80-90 degree turn, I apparently did something wrong as my front wheel slid out and their's did not. Ow.

So, what things should I be doing? Bike setup? I'm running new ProRace 3s at 95 psi so I wouldn't think that would be too much of an issue (didn't look like there was too much wax on them and I had raced them the day before). I don't think I was in the drops, so that could be part of it.

Should I be focusing on moving my weight forward more? Staying in the drops? I can show a pic of my position on bike (system 6) - I've never really felt like my weight was forward cept when I was riding my Colnago with a 130mm stem and no spacers (though the current setup on her isn't too far from that...pics of that later).

Any drills to practice that have less likelyhood of donating more metal and flesh to the asphalt gods. My poor students probably won't be able to handle to many 'pissed road rashed teacher days'...

Much thanks...

countersteering?

+1 to consciously countersteering until it becomes an unconscious technique.

Press down hard on the outside pedal, too.

Where is your inside knee? Pressed against the top tube or pointing into the turn?

Pretty sure I countersteer...though I'll have to pay attention more the next time I'm out.

Pedal down on the outside, usually (though I was previously pedaling through the turn taking the wider outer line, so there's a chance I didn't - that said I didn't go down from a pedal strike, this was definitely more of a sad flop).

Much thanks all, please keep it coming.

+2

I don't know if this is your problem but I also find I corner better when I put more weight up on the front wheel to balance it out. Also stay away from your brakes while you are in the corner.

Do you know how to keep a bike upright through a turn? Most people try to see how far they can lean it over, but bd is actually pointing you in the right direction. You see riders sliding off to the right of the bike in a right hand turn for a reason-they are trying to get their weight into the turn while keeping lean to a minimum. The pressure on the outside pedal is part of this, leveraging the bike upright. You can also leverage the front end by putting pressure on the outside of the bars and picking up on the inside of the bars. You need to learn this in grass, gravel, or water. Practice going through a turn with the bike completely upright so you don't slide out in the gravel or water. Then practice moving your weight into the turn without leaning the bike. Practice, practice, practice. Eventually, you will naturally switch from seeing how far you can lean a bike to how upright you can keep it. Watch the motorcycle racers. They are trying to keep their rigs as upright as possible through the turns, even though they seem layed over on their sides.

try some aggressive cornering on a fixed gear.

the constantly spinning pedals not only teach you to stay pedaling through corners, but also the fear of pedal-strike keeps your body leaning into the turn but the bike as upright as possible... again all while pedaling really fast (as your cadence is not appropriately variable).

-L "been riding the fixed again" D.

Not what I was getting at. You need to weight your outside pedal very heavily. When I am leaned over at a severe angle, I will lift up on my inside foot and put almost all of my body weight on my outside foot.

What is with all of this "counter steering" talk. A bicycle is an inverted pendulum. You must countersteer to turn whether you think you are doing it or not. Still though it is totally unrelated to the OP's problem. Listen to bdcheung as he is the only one here giving you correct information.

If I'm doing any hard cornering I'm always in the drops. I'd feel very very sketchy cornering hard on the hoods.

You want to get your weight down low and over the front wheel. Pressure on the outside pedal pushes the tyres inwards, which is a good thing because it counteracts the fact that they want to go outwards...

I think it's more that weight on your pedal (the crank) is further forword than weight on your seat = more weight on front tire.

Countersteering helps you to better inititate and control lean. Doesn't stop you from washing out your front tire.

when i'm in the drops I have my weight down and forward, making it harder to slide out the front wheel. You slid out the front wheel, and were in the hoods, right?

Yeah...me thinks we have part one of what I need to drill into my head.

Nonsense, countersteering IS an unconscious technique, it's what you do every dang time you turn your bike. The OP didn't crash because he didn't countersteer. He lost traction. It's possible that his weight was too far back, but there's any number of things that can cause a crash. Did you hit a spot of gravel or sand that they didn't?

EDIT: Jynx got to it first, I see. I'm glad I'm not the only person who gets a little crazy when people talk about countersteering like it's some advanced technique that you need to learn for better cornering. Argh.

Seriously OP, take turns like that in the drops. It'll go a long way toward making you safer.

Wrong, wrong, WRONG. SO wrong.

Geez, does anyone here know what they're talking about?

Lean with the bike. You are most stable if your body and the bike make a straight line.

GAH.

Using this technique is a necessary compromise on a fixed gear. It is not optimal technique on a road bike, where coasting through corners is a huge advantage. Pedaling before and through the apex of corners is NOT faster, it is destabilizing and limits cornering performance. Getting through the turn with more speed is far, far more important.

There are lots of different techniques, in-line, leaning the bike more, keeping the bike upright, stomping on the outside pedal, relaxing in the saddle...

Are you sure your tires followed the same path as the others'? If you did follow the same path (not hitting more pain than them, for instance). There are a couple of possibilities.

You know that your front wheel lost traction. How does that happen? You exceed the coefficient of static friction. This happens either when the turning force is too high or when the normal force pushing the tire down decreases.

So, I think it's one of these: you over-compensated to tighten your line, you hit a minor bump that you didn't absorb properly, or you were just too far back.

Standing on the outside pedal helps because it unweights the saddle and provides some shock absorbtion. (Intentional) countersteering helps because it smooths out your steering inputs.

It's tough for me to quantify how I corner and why I don't go down. Somehow, in every crit, I catch pedals, slide tires, and I don't go down. I've never crashed in a crit. Just practice the countersteering and try to be "light" on the bike in corners. I actually think MTB descents could help -- practice banked dirt and rock turns, and get comfortable dealing with what goes wrong. Also, MTB in the grass can be good to practice crash landing: just get up some speed, start a turn, and push harder and harder on the inside bar until you slide the front.

Regarding "everybody countersteers on a bike," duh. The point is to internalize it so you can master the handling of a bicycle. In a recent race, a guy tried to bump me off a wheel, and I instinctively pushed on the handle bar closest to him. This banked me into him hard, stood him back up, and I held my position. On top of that, nobody would **** with me the rest of the race.

Similarly, in a corner with a varying radius, it's really easy to tighten up your line as necessary if you know exactly what inputs will do it, and you can keep it much smoother.

So, while we all know how to countersteer, mastering it makes a huge difference.

are u sure u kno wat ur talkin bout?

u can turn sharper if you lean the bike while keeping your body relatively upright (yet still slightly leaned but not as much as the bike). inside knee should be touching the top tube.

Why would that be?

he doesn't.

I'll chuck in my credentials. I'm on the bicycle, I'm too lazy to dig up my actual GP pics, but I looked pretty much the same as the Moto GP guy back in my terrifically underfunded pro days. Won a bunch on both.

Not really:



The cornering forces at work a virtually the same between motorcycles and bicycles, the former just on a greater scale thanks to a variety of factors. I modify my stance on the bike because there's some drawbacks to hanging off a bicycle in a full Moto GP, but the weighting and steering dynamics are the same. Muscle memory being what it is I swap out my brakes levers so the right controls the front brake BTW, you'll notice two fingers feathering that lever.

Cornering in a nutshell:

Look your line (where you want to be), not the wheel in front of you, or two inches in front of your tire. A lot of crashes happen when riders are trying to follow the wheel in front of them and are subconsciously making line adjustments mid corner (never ideal and sometimes terminal). You should be head up and looking well up the road.

Stay loose and calm. A lot of crashes happen when riders get tight and unknowingly feed input into the bars (see above).

Look your line, not the wheel in front of you.

Crank position as shown. Knee out a bit if it's a fast corner and you're on the edge of traction (I'm on a brick strip in the pic so I'm being prudent). See BD's post about weighting the outside pedal.

Shift your upper body weight to the front (you might inch up on the seat) and inside (bias your upper body towards the lean) and stay low. This does a lot of things but in quick layman's terms it uprights the bike a bit and gives you usable contact patch on the tire should you lose traction. It also provides pedal clearance once you start turning the cranks.

Look your line, not the wheel in front of you.

Practice somewhere safe where you can chalk or cone out a course. "S" turns are great confidence builders.

Hope this helps.

Countersteering can mean a few things. Technically (I'm taking this from the motorcycle world) it's the act of initiating the turn. It won't do very much regarding traction during a turn, but it will allow you to "set" into your turn arc much quicker if you counter steer intentionally.

The debate of leaning body more/less than bike will be eternal. I think the reality is that pretty much everyone leans a touch more than their bikes, but their sensation is that they are leaning the same as their bikes. I used to think I never lean more than the bike, except in exceptions listed below, but pictures don't lie - I lean a touch more than the bike. But this is not intentional.

I've never felt comfortable leaning my body more than my bike unless there were extenuating circumstances, i.e. loose or low traction surface with knobby tires (mtb - leaning the bike relative to the ground is terminal more often than not). I lean my body less than my bike when a different situation pops its head up - I need to quickly maneuver my bike around something that is on the ground - like a crashing bike rider, his/her bike, or maybe a little animal. This latter example is true only because your body's weight is so much higher than you bike's weight that it's difficult to move your body around that quickly.

However, leaning the body the same as the bike gives you a lot of stability, not because you're leaning more or less, but because your body doesn't have to do any extra work to hold yourself up. You're relaxed, you can absorb bumps, etc. At cycling's low speeds (under 50 mph), low weight (bike adds what, like 20 lbs to the equation?), the amount of body lean is not really an issue unless the rider exaggerates it one way or another and therefore upsets his/her overall balance.

If I were to guess what happened in that turn where the OP fell, I'd guess the following:
1. OP entered turn really, really hot, just like the other two guys.
2. OP didn't have the confidence to make the turn.
3. OP did one of a couple things in reaction to #2 -
- unconsciously push back on the bars to push body back
- unconsciously feather a brake
- unconsciously move out a bit to reduce cornering arc, then moved back in
3A. OP might have made a simple error.
- run over something in the road which the first two riders studiously or luckily avoided
- drop of sweat fell under front tire, causing it to exceed limit of traction
- someone yelled "YEAH YOU GOT IT BABY" in OP's ear, causing him to flinch a bit
- etc
4. Something from #3 (even something I didn't list) causes front tire to exceed limit of traction.

This by no means is a diss on the OP. I list those reasons because that's what I do when I get scared in a corner, and I've gotten unconscious habits pointed out to me by experts.

Pushing back your body is a natural reaction to diving into a turn too fast but it's the wrong one. I fight this even now (fear is great at stopping the thinking process). I did this just a couple weeks ago at the track. But unweighting your front wheel is the worst thing you can do if you go into a turn hot.

Feathering a brake is also a natural reaction if nervous about going into a corner hot. I did a short autocross type thing with a pro driver sitting in the passenger seat. His comment after I drove? Well, other than something along the lines of "you must like driving fast". He pointed out that whenever I braked hard I'd push the clutch in a bit. I had no idea, so now I consciously put my foot on the dead pedal when braking. I only move it when I feel like I'll need to shift. I never knew I did this but I imagine I've been doing it since I learned how to drive a stick (15 years old) or I learned how to heel/toe (17-21). Either way it was a shock to have someone point it out.

Doing a stutter turn (I don't know what it's called in real) where you move out a bit and move back in, is not good if you're already at your limits. I work on cornering smoothly, i.e. not changing my arc. This is in my car and on my bike, and it is all the time. Changing your arc in a steady turn will only stress your tires a bit more, and if you're at the limit, something will give. Usually it's traction in the front tire/s. (In the car throttle is also important, ditto brakes, and those have other effects, but you get the idea).

Lastly, f you just touched something that the other two riders either noticed&avoided or didn't-notice&were-lucky, that'll push your tire over the limit right away. I think this one is obvious.

No matter what, if you reduce the traction on the front wheel (unweight it or change the coefficient of friction between it and the ground) and you're at the limit, the tire can slip. If it slips, you will probably go down.

Anyway, that's my take on things. There are some things that should be a given when cornering, as some of the others have pointed out.
- corner on the drops to weight front tire more (you mentioned this too)
- unless you have really long chainstays or really high rear tire pressure, scoot forward on the saddle (to weight front tire more)
- check tire pressure (you are aware of this - 95 sounds a bit light for a tubed clincher - how much do you weigh?). Too low and too high and you'll lose traction, but in the dry, if it's pressure related, the culprit is almost always too low pressure.
- look ahead, even if it's by a bit. If you're right on someone's wheel, look up to their front wheel. I get fixated on cogs and that's not good. This avoids mid turn corrections, the "stutter turn".

Finally, if possible, revisit the corner, on foot. Walk around, look at the cracks and crevices and dips and such. You may find something significant. In the Hartford Crit there is an "invisible" dip in the last turn. In the dry no one notices it. In the wet people almost always crash on it, usually when they're going really hot (i.e. last lap). The first year I raced it I went back to the turn to see wtf was in that turn that I couldn't see. I found the dip, realized I couldn't see it while riding (it's a very shallow dip), and made a note of it. When it rains I go way inside or way outside, and doing the latter I've ridden around last lap stack ups to place in the race.

Also, in case you haven't read the thing on road rash:
https://sprinterdellacasa.blogspot.co...rash-care.html

Hope this helps, heal fast,
cdr

You are doomed now.

I have a slightly different view of 'counter-steering' and weighting the bike than those I've seen posted thus far.

If I am setting the line through a tight corner I will always flick my front wheel out a tad before diving in. This allows me to get my bike into a steeper lean and results in a tighter line. I can't even count how many gaps I've open when being followed by a less than seasoned rider by doing this. It's a great way to slowly wear down other riders with no extra work required.

If the road is wide, and spills onto another wide road, then I set a line that allows me to pedal all the way through. This allows me to carry the most speed (despite a previous post claiming otherwise) and doesn't require me getting out of the saddle to accelerate out of the turn. Smooth and clean all the way through and out the other side. Sometimes I'll even crank it up a bit more as I exit just to add a bit of pressure to those on my wheel. If I go in at 50 I want to come out the same way.

Weighting the pedals, to me, isn't about putting weight anywhere. It is about unweighting the saddle and dropping my center of gravity. I have done many crits where I am convinced my center of gravity is passing over the sidewalk while at the apex. I may be wrong here but I think of high jumpers where their center of gravity actually passes under the bar.

If I am really hanging it, I drop my body as close to the top tube as possible and the nose of the saddle ends up in my belly button. In this position my weight is as low as possible and I can let the bike bounce around underneath me if there is any rough stuff. I am, of course, in the drops and as relaxed as I can be.

I'd be interested to hear from the BF gallery as to what I'm doing wrong.

To the OP, there are a host of reasons why their tires stuck and yours didn't. Most have already be mentioned. As much as it sucks right now, don't over analyze it. There is a good chance that you did absolutely nothing wrong.

Crashes happen when you are pushing the limits.