descending and cornering

[OakLeaf]

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

+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.)