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I'm just back from 2 weeks in the Alps and have a cornering issue.
A couple of the guys I was riding with were much faster than me on a particular type of corner - medium tight switchbacks, the kind that in theory you can just carve round, but that you can't see round - usually rooty and rocky, maybe 8' diameter outside to outside, flat or gently off camber. On the supertight tech stuff I was usually more capable and on the open fast stuff we were all about the same.
Thinking about it more, the corners I always struggle with are the ones where I don't have a clear enough line of sight through them for the speed I'm going. I'm basically not prepared to commit to something that I can't see a line through. In this instance some of the lines the other guys were taking were truly apalling - I was picking "better" ones, but they were still putting 2 or 3 bike lengths into me every corner. They weren't crashing either!
We were all on similar bikes, similar tyres and flat pedals. I think part of the issue is that I'm quite a controlled rider. Even on flats I very rarely take a foot off, and I find it almost impossible to make myself deliberately skid/drift a medium slow corner (can hold a 2 wheel drift at speed on fireroad though!).
Corners of similar tightness, but with a clear view through them and/or once I know the line, I'm much faster at.
So any tips? I know it's mostly a head game, just staying off the brakes and letting the bike deal with stuff that I can't see, but I don't understand how to make that extra step. It just seems to be asking for a monster crash over the edge of a cliff when you tag a root wrong. Alternatively how do you speed up your reactions, so you don't need to see so far ahead...?
Cheers,
Jon
Unless you're racing and know the route is going to be a) rideable and b) clear I'd say that taking a cautious approach to blind corners was a good long term strategy for anyone?
I'd accept a 2-3 bike length loss of distance to the rider I'm following and take the view that one day they'll come a cropper.
Would you have ridden them faster if you'd ridden them before, so short of a random branch or walker having appeared, you'd known exactly what was round the bend?
what wwaswas said
think being able to see where you are going is a sound principal to stick to
Unless you're racing
Of course it's a race - put 2 or more males on the same piece of trail and you automatically have a race! 😉
I've ridden all the trails before (last year), so know that they are "rideable", but don't know them intimately enough to know that the 3rd corner has a root 4" from the apex...
I think it's mostly about where I'm looking. I look at the "vanishing point", which on a tight corner is pretty close to you. I guess the faster guys are looking at a non-existant point, theoretically further round the corner, then relying on looseness and good balance to make it work out?
I'm not sure I'd take a corner at warp speed when I don't know what's coming next. I'll happily exchange a bit of distance lost on a corner when I know I can make it up. The question though is of relative speed. Is your technique dialled? Are you turning your body around the corner (akin to using your belly button as a torch light)? I find this makes an enormous difference making cornering smoother, controlled and increasing speed in real terms. Nb, I'm no riding god so please feel free to disregard!
Sounds mostly like a sensible risk management issue then! Having broken my ankle at the end of last year I'm taking a similar judicious approach - the price of failure can be way too high to justify guessing where the limits might be...
Jon, iirc you are 10st wringing wet, could it just be a momentum thing ?
I'm trying to make the whole 'look round with head and point you beer belly on corners' as a natural way to ride, at the moment its not become 2nd nature but when you get it right its a very very good to make your tyres grip & corner fast.
Slow in fast out
Having crashed into riders coming the other way on trails, I'd also say you are doing the right thing. Hooliganism has its place, but blind corners aren't it. You could easily plough into a family.. not that I've almost done this before of course...
Last weekend Alpin trounced me soundly on the techie descent, but that's cos the risk of failure was just too big for me!
Odly I seem to have developed a 'bad habit' recently.
Just moved to a new area and I keep stoping at the top of techy bits and looking at them. Which is probably a good thing. But previously I'd always follow someone down a trail and assume "If they can ride it so can I". Now I bottle everything, put my feet down, kick myself for botteling it and set off again riding it just fine.
This mainly apllies to super-steep roll-ins rather than anything actualy technical which is whats really anoying.
same as blind jumps, you simply learn the line and commit.
some people are naturally better at this than others.
for gettin upto speed, walking a DH track and spotting lines is worth more than a few practice runs.
you need to learn every single stone/root/hole etc. of some sections, others not so much.
Molgrips - years back I had to barge a kid out the way after meeting a family walking straight up the main line behind a flat out blind summit on an old DH track in the Alps.
before some PC **** comes along.. none of us should have been there and because I was quick enough to actively choose how I hit him the kid was not hurt.
you're not going to be able to go anywhere near as fast as that round blind switchback anyways.
[i]none of us should have been there[/i]
well officer neither the bullet nor the person who it hit should have been there so shall we call it quits? 😉
exactly the sort of ****
It's not a bad idea to walk a section of unknown trail to get the lay of the land then session it until your confident there'll be no nasty surprises. Move on to the next bit and do the same. Then it's just a case of connecting the dots.
It's not always appropriate though so I tend to trust in the rider in front. He if makes it round, hopefully I can too (although having an obscured view can throw up some surprises on technical stuff).
Jump gaps/drops on unfamiliar trails can also be tricky. I find judging the speed required is the hardest bit. I usually go slightly faster than I think on the first go and take it from there - landing flat is better than hooking up in my book.
OK, some clarifications.
We were at the back of the goup - leaving a few minutes, gap, then ploughing on down. There were *very* few walkers on this mountain (in fact I don't think I saw any) and 99.999% of riders would be travelling in the same direction as us. With the fastest guys being at the back, it's pretty safe to nail it without regard for other users.
As far as following the guy in front goes, that's fine if you can stick with him, but by the time we've done 2 corners, he's out of sight.
Broadly, I can look after riding safely quite happily on my own (that's largely the problem!). What I need is advice for riding FAST!
And if that rider just out of sight in front of you is now lying across the track?
To go fast just pedal and pump more and brake less. 😆
brake less. commitment.
muscle memory and bottle innit? if you can ride fast when you can see you can ride fast when you cant but you arn't because you are being cautious.
if you are not happy catching an unplanned slide, or sliding on a trail, then thats where your caution stems from. im the same when i ride clips. im not great at the best of times but the clips make riding rooty corners really buttock clenchingly scary.
druidh - Member
And if that rider just out of sight in front of you is now lying across the track?
Run him over.
A) More grip.
B) Mind over matter, I don't mind and he doesn't matter
C) If he isn't in pain the pain of being run over will serve as a reminder not to crash or get in the way on my trail.
😆
I was picking "better" ones, but they were still putting 2 or 3 bike lengths into me every corner
then your line wasn't better was it?
And if that rider just out of sight in front of you is now lying across the track?
manual.
manual to hop if you're feeling kind...
Jon - in what way were your lines "better"? Smoother? Avoiding obstacles? Fastest line around a corner is usually the mathematically "best" one (i.e. in wide, clip the apex, exit wide) even if that means riding over all sorts of crap along the way. Going off this line to avoid something is almost always slower, even if it's smoother.
😆 @ toys.
I don't know about you Jon, but I find smoothness more satisfying than outright speed. Do you really care if they are a little faster on corners than you if you are picking smoother lines and riding well, rather than being mega ballsy? Maybe you do, but I know I wouldn't. You sound like you are a really good rider already. I imagine just keeping riding all the time would increase your speed more than anything else.
are you sure it's not a setup thing?
do you have a slacker head angle? slower compression? harder tyre? have you tried it on one of their bikes?
.
riding wise, you should be braking into it, not through it, take a high line in and out, apexing the corner, getting on the power/ releasing the brake as soon as you can without fouling the pedals or overshooting
get your weight over the front of the bike, bend your elbows more, so it turns quicker and you get more grip - don't sit back and try and pump out of it with your legs like you might do on a faster bermier corner
I have discovered its a belief thing.
For example you approach a corner, its bumpy and rooty and maybe has a massive hole in it. I used to brake, and then get scared, brake over the bumps and generally do about 0.05mph over and round the corner..
But gradually you discover if you look around the corner and let the bike/legs/arms do what they automatically do, you just trundle over, in fact the faster you got he more grip you have. In the end you learn that you can hoon in as fast as anything, stick your bike on its ear and you have tons more grip than you ever dreamed possible. You might slide a bit, but sometimes that's handy. Essentially the faster you believe you can go, the faster you go. Same with jumps really, if you don't believe you can do it, then you can't. If you believe you can then you probably can.
And then you get overtaken.