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Still waiting for others to step up, but I'm bored today so I thought I'd talk about turning...
If you've ridden more than five minutes, you know about counter-steering, so we'll ditch that topic. What we will discuss here is the basics of making a smooth,safe turn at speed.
The first step to turning (as well as doing anything else well on your bike) is body position - you should be in a relaxed seated position with your elbows slightly bent and arms relaxed. Most new riders (and some "veterans" - I occasionally find myself doing it) tend to support their upper body through the bars, evidenced by straight elbows and eventually numb fingers. This makes it harder to turn because you have to remove pressure from one side and apply it on the other. Support your upper body with your abdominal muscles - the 250 doesn't require much of an angle so this isn't difficult. This keeps you in a comfortable position, and will eventually result in a more "sporty" set of ab muscles.
It also helps with step two - not using the bar to anchor you to the bike. This is a job for your knees against the tank, your butt against the back of the seat, and your thighs against the seat edges. Keith Code will tell you to put all of your weight on the outside peg, and Rossi can probably do that - but I don't have his thigh muscles and I'm not dragging the other knee. The goal here is to relieve your arms of any duties associated with keeping your butt in place.
So you're cruising along with perfect posture and a nice sweeper comes up. You're doing the 12-second scan and the curve is clear. Most experienced riders will tell you that the best way to take the turn is:
If you've ridden more than five minutes, you know about counter-steering, so we'll ditch that topic. What we will discuss here is the basics of making a smooth,safe turn at speed.
The first step to turning (as well as doing anything else well on your bike) is body position - you should be in a relaxed seated position with your elbows slightly bent and arms relaxed. Most new riders (and some "veterans" - I occasionally find myself doing it) tend to support their upper body through the bars, evidenced by straight elbows and eventually numb fingers. This makes it harder to turn because you have to remove pressure from one side and apply it on the other. Support your upper body with your abdominal muscles - the 250 doesn't require much of an angle so this isn't difficult. This keeps you in a comfortable position, and will eventually result in a more "sporty" set of ab muscles.
It also helps with step two - not using the bar to anchor you to the bike. This is a job for your knees against the tank, your butt against the back of the seat, and your thighs against the seat edges. Keith Code will tell you to put all of your weight on the outside peg, and Rossi can probably do that - but I don't have his thigh muscles and I'm not dragging the other knee. The goal here is to relieve your arms of any duties associated with keeping your butt in place.
So you're cruising along with perfect posture and a nice sweeper comes up. You're doing the 12-second scan and the curve is clear. Most experienced riders will tell you that the best way to take the turn is:
- Brake to set your entry speed for the turn. Remember that braking destabilizes your bike, so get it done early. This doesn't mean you never brake in a turn: it just means you avoid it. Sometimes (animal, unexpected object, etc.) you may have to brake, just like sometimes (see list) you may have to break other rules.
- Set your lean angle by countersteering. Try to set the angle so you don't have to adjust it. This sounds difficult, and in turns where the radius changes it can't be done, but if you practice you'll find adjustments getting smaller and smaller - and in familiar turns your stance will not change.
- Get your eyes where they belong. A common mistake is to set up the turn and then keep your eyes focused on the line. You should be looking up: through the turn to your exit line, watching for anything that might cause you problems.
- Accelerate out of the turn. Adding throttle does a couple of things for you. As you lean, the effective diameter of your tires lessens - meaning that you are slowing down. Adding a bit of throttle will cancel that. Slight acceleration also lightens the front end, allowing it to focus on tracking alone. Third, the (slight) acceleration helps to anchor the rear wheel and stabilize the bike at whatever lean angle you have set.
- Avoid pavement markings: directional arrows, center lines, etc, are NOT your friends. They tend to stay slippery long after it's rained, and any oil or grease that's been dripped on them will stay there until its scrubbed or washed off - don't be a scrubber
- Avoid pavement discoloration: the black spot in the apex could be nothing more than the remnants of a long-ago-squashed squirrel. It could also be oil, tar, or antifreeze, all of which are things you do not want to run through. Ditto for potholes - they may look like nothing more than a black spot from 100 feet away.
- Save your advanced practice for familiar turns: You know that the nice curve down the street has no potholes, blind spots, gravel, bumps, etc. When you get the urge to grab a few more degrees of lean, do it there, at least initially.
- Think about a late-apex turn, especially if you can't see all the way around. Several of the schools in California teach this to give you a better look into a turn. Look it up, but basically you move to the outside on entry, wait, and then turn in late. The pros do it to give them a higher exit speed, but you can use it to avoid the idiot on the cell phone that is drifting over the center line.
- Watch the pros: watch how the forks get compressed from braking right before the turn, then rebound to full height on turn-in as the throttle is applied. Watch how the lean angle / body position is unchanged until they come out of the turn. No, I'm not advising you to ride like Valentino Rossi on the street. You'll never hit a tennis ball like Federer either, but if you play, I bet you watch to see how he does it.
- Experiment with shifting your body position in turns. Once you divorce your upper body from your torso, you may find that loading the inside of the saddle (no, not crawling down to the pavement) moves your CG lower and makes the turn more confidence-inspiring.
- Make it a goal to get better on every ride. Two of my favorite sayings come to mind: "The more you practice the luckier you get", and "The more thinking you do before things get exciting, the less exciting things are". I use these often in Fire and Rescue classes, but they're applicable to almost everything you do.
- Finally, Ride: it's been hot the last couple of days in Carolina, and I confess that getting the gear on was not a lot of fun yesterday afternoon. However, once the wheels were turning all that was forgotten. I hope it's the same for you.