descending and cornering

aloha all,

I'd like to get some tips from crazy fast and confident descenders. I'm strong going up, but I freak out around curves going down, especially when I can't see through them entirely. I've been told not to break while going though a turn, so I try to break before, but I wouldn't even need to break if I was more sure of being able to take the turn at a high speed without flying out.

I know how to take turns on the flats pretty well. I push my inside hand into the drops, and kind of keep the bike straight while looking ahead to where I want to go. My outside foot is down. I know from crits to go wide, narrow wide, coming close to the apex of the turn in the middle. Should I make the same sort of arc when the turn is on a descent?

I really need to get better at descending confidently, cause I've come close to stopping up my back wheel on technical descents. Guys who try to practice with me tell me to hop on their wheel and then take off, so my skills don't improve. Also it's kind of annoying to ride past people in races on the climbing, only to have them pass me later after the turn around on the way down. (Mines rd. Livermore, CA, anyone ridden it?)

looking foward to any tips!! thanks

Get comfortable with downhill speeds. Then start working on your hairpin turns in steep descent. Get a feel for when the bike is about to skip out under from you. One way to get this feel is do hill repeats and come down the same hill and concentrate on improving the smoothness of your entry into the turn, through the turn and exit out of the turn. Practice makes perfect.

Also the technical rider who is leading you down the hill shouldn't drop you :(

BTW, practicing extreme manurvers on blind corners should be avoided! It can be very dangerous.

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Originally Posted by smilingcat

BTW, practicing extreme maneuvers on blind corners should be avoided! It can be very dangerous.

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+1. Motorcyclists have something we call the "fridge factor," after the experience of a rider who came around a blind corner to find a refrigerator lying in his lane - and stopped in the oncoming lane, the pickup truck that had just dropped it. Never take a blind corner or crest a hill faster than your skills would allow you to deal with that situation.

Now, to your actual question ;) -

In the flat corners, are you getting the bike leaned over? What do you mean by "kind of keep the bike straight?" Two-wheeled vehicles turn by leaning. All of them - it's just physics. With the short wheelbase and lower speeds of a bicycle, many people never learn this, but it's still true.

Your outside foot is down, but is most of your body weight on it? Your outside leg is your shock absorber, working to keep your rear wheel on the ground. Your inside hand isn't just pressing down on the bar to keep your front wheel on the ground, it's pressing slightly toward the inside of the turn, to turn the wheel away from the turn and initiate or maintain the lean. This is called "counter-steering."

Figuring out appropriate corner entry speed is a skill just like choosing a line, so don't expect it to come all at once. Try the corners just a little faster each time. Pick your eyes up - even if you think you're looking through the turns, almost everyone can benefit by raising their gaze five or ten degrees.


Last thing - when you do brake, use more front brake. On pavement with good traction, if you're locking up your rear wheel, it means you aren't braking enough with the front. Even without suspension, momentum and wheel rotation create a large amount of weight transfer to the front - that's why about 70% of your braking power comes from the front brake and tire.


Also remember that the ideal line through a corner depends on conditions. Obviously on perfectly flat, smooth pavement, the ideal line is to straighten out the corner as much as possible, as you describe. But in the real world, we have things like camber, holes, gravel and oil between the car wheel tracks, etc. It's generally a bad idea to cross the car wheel tracks on a turn you can't see all the way through, just because it's so likely there'll be gravel or oil on the road. Also consider that on two-way public roads, you need to choose your apex for the earliest opportunity to see oncoming traffic, but the best opportunity to avoid it if it should cross the center line.

Don't be shy about reading resources that were written for motorcyclists to learn more about countersteering and choosing a line through a turn. When it comes to cornering, the only real difference between bicis and motos has to do with weight distribution. (And since I've never ridden a hardtail moto or a FS bici, I really don't know how much of that has to do with suspension and how much has to do with the rider's weight in proportion to the total package. But having just got a very light commuter moto, I'm suspecting it's mostly the latter.)

I don't think I can give you any better advice than Oak, but I can commiserate.... I'm small and light. I can out climb lots of people, but I get easily caught again on the way down. I also sometimes have a hard time staying with the group on descents if I've climbed with them on the way up - at the very least I have to work crazy hard to go down as fast as the bigger folks, so the descents are no rest for me.

One piece of advice I might be able to give. I don't know about you, but I'm small and short with short arms. I've found that though my bicycle fits for all the other uses, my weight is not really ideally distributed for going down hill. If I scoot my butt way back - mt biker style, so that much of it is off the saddle and more over the rear wheel, I feel a lot more stable through fast corners. Now this of course doesn't help if I have to pedal, as in that position pedaling is not possible, but it does help when just freewheeling.

I do the same as Eden, scoot way back. It gives me balance and the feeling that even a total brake-lockup won't send me over the bars.

Thanks for all your comments :) I'm definitely cautious with the blind curves on descents because I'd like to be racing my bike in the years to come. My parents continually remind me about the dangers of cycling, speed, and cars, and I try to be conservative with all of the above.

I'm practicing 3-4x a week on small sections of a mountain behind my house in the afternoon when basically no cars are coming up or down. I can see how with countersteering I need to put more weight on my outside foot, as Oakleaf said, and how the inside hand should push slightly toward the inside of the turn. Today, at slower speeds, I saw how I could lean my whole bike over toward the inside of the turn, with my body remaining more straight, by weighting the opposite hand and foot as said. I have felt the effects of countersteering with weighting my inside hand at the velodrome, when I'm coming around the turns at the as close as possible to the inner edge. I'm trying to apply this to turns in the hills, but at the track I'm pedaling, and on descents I'm working more with gravity.

I'm confused about what Oakleaf said about using more front brake. I understand it has more power than the back, but might it also throw me over the handlebars if I try to use it more than the back? Should I just tap it or what? I know my most stable braking is when I have my feet level, I'm off the seat and push my weight far back, and my hands are in the drops with my arms almost locked out. But I save this for emergency when I'm going very straight and fast.

Also I'm going to look into resources for motorcyclists, because I'd like to know more about choosing a line and such. thanks for the idea!

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Originally Posted by lightfighter

I'm confused about what Oakleaf said about using more front brake. I understand it has more power than the back, but might it also throw me over the handlebars if I try to use it more than the back? Should I just tap it or what? I know my most stable braking is when I have my feet level, I'm off the seat and push my weight far back, and my hands are in the drops with my arms almost locked out. But I save this for emergency when I'm going very straight and fast.

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Of course you never want to *slam* on the front brake. That is a recipe for going over the handlebars, but by the same token you don't want to apply too much rear brake either. Too much rear brake and the rear wheel tends to fishtail, which is bad too! As long as you use slow steady pressure you can use your front brake without fear of throwing yourself over the handlebars.

if you really need to "slam" on the front brake at high speed while going downhill, you can hit the front brake pretty hard and not go over BUT, you need to do few things.

1. Scooch way to the back of your seat. Nearly off the seat.
2. Be in the lower drops and get low on your bike to lower your CG (center of gravity). This makes it harder to do an ENDO.
3. you tuck your elbows so its at the same width as your shoulder. You don't want to have your elbows sticking out cause you WILL BE SUPPORTING YOUR BODY WEIGHT AND SOME in your two arms.
4. apply brakes on both front and back at the same time. Then "slam" the front brake. If your rear wheels begin to lock up then reduce the braking in front.

Locking up of backwheel is a real good indication of how much weight is coming off the rear wheel as you and the bike are wanting to do an ENDO from slamming the front brake.

Seriously, I can't think of a time when I needed to do this in earnest. I've hit my front brake really hard at high speed on a very steep grade without even coming close to an ENDO. And my arm wasn't happy to support all that weight.

Amount of braking I do? It's mostly in the front brakes. pads on the front are down about 50% while the pads on the rear brakes are still looking pretty fresh. Braking power on the rear wheel is minimal. It's important to learn to use the front brakes cause most of the braking power comes from the front.

Great advice from everyone but just another thought is check your gearing.
I don't have as many issues staying with the men descending on corners b/c I weigh so much less (= slower speeds) I don't have to hit the brakes as hard or as often. As soon as the road straightens out the clydesdales win EVERY time. I got soo sick of it :confused:I started to do my homework and now I have three different cassettes on three different wheelsets.
To show the difference a cassette can make (I am assuming you have a compact).
50/34 -12/27 in the 50-12 position @ 80 rpm you will max @ 26.1 mph
50/34 -11/25 in the 50-11 position @ 80 rpm you will max @ 28.4 mph
This is math for flat terrain but the principal applies to descending hills as well. So the 11/25 ensures I usually don't run out of gears. Note I only weigh 125lbs so I pedal ALOT!!!:mad:
So a good climber may not be using their 34/27 or "granny gear" so I would swap the 12/27 for an 11/25 and gain the top speed descending gear.
The point is to understand what gears you have and which ones you actually use or don't use.