When I was watching the Tdf this summer, on the day that Schleck’s chain came off and Contador passed him, the announcer started talking about how good of a downhiller AND curve rider Schleck is, so that got me thinking about how to improve my curve strategy.
OK, so there are curves, and there are curves. There are 90 degree angle curves, there are rolling curves, there are curves while going downhill, curves while going uphill, etc. But I am guessing there is a better way to take a curve. Sort of like race car drivers take, where the momentum can help sling shoot you out of the curve.
Q. I think pedaling before and after the curve are necessary, but do you pedal through the curve?
Q. Should you lean into the curve or keep your bike as upright as possible?
Q. Should you start wide, then hug the curve, and finish wide? These seems to add additional distance, even if it’s a small amount.
Slowman has a primer on this, search the articles.
A1 - depends on the curve. Pedal if you can. Do not break in the turn, do that before.
A2 - if it’s raining or loose you try to keep the bike upright, other times you lean the bike.
A3 - yes. always. (stay on your side of the line, and even more in areas with hard or blind turns where cars are likely to drift wide). This does not add distance, but rather subtracts it, as you are straightening the curve.
Pedal early and often. Break before the turns. Inside leg up, outside leg weighted. First turn is easy, plan for #2,3,…
The only way you will get better at this by riding fast through corners.
Having said that, there are a few basic rules. Firstly, don’t stick your knee out like a moto GP rider, you do not have a 300lbs engine to keep your center of gravity over the bottom bracket. Instead, tilt the bike but keep your ass planted in the saddle and your body position as square with the road as possible. Secondly, corner in your drops and make sure to lift your inside pedal to prevent it from scraping the ground causing you to eat it. Lastly, get some proper tires, you will notice a big difference between cheap bomb-proof training tires and a nice racing slick like a Pro3Race. Practice with no breaking before you race. But when it comes down to it, nothing will make you a better bike handler then time racing in the pack.
Once you are good, it becomes your duty to snicker when tri-geeks plow into hay bails on they $14k race rigs.
I don’t know for sure if this applies to bikes, but this is how 4 wheel vehicles work at least. The late apex line is what you generally want to take, you want to have braking almost done by the time you turn in, as soon as you start to turn in let off the brakes slowly (trail braking). You will not be braking or applying power through the middle of the turn, after the apex you can start putting down power. the radius of your turn starts small and progressively opens up. If you realize you are coming into a corner too fast and can’t brake enough without loosing control you are going to want to apex earlier to get more braking time, if this happens the radius you are turning will decrease as you go. this is a much slower way to o around a turn but it will keep you on the road in a bad situation.
When I was watching the Tdf this summer, on the day that Schleck’s chain came off and Contador passed him, the announcer started talking about how good of a downhiller AND curve rider Schleck is, so that got me thinking about how to improve my curve strategy.
That’s funny because at the same time on French TV, Laurent Fignon was going on and on on how bad of a descender Schleck was.
Do not pedal through the curve unless it’s a very large curve, or your inside pedal could hit the ground.
Lean your bike into the curve.
Start wide, cut at the apex, finish wide. The greater the radius, the faster you can go though the curve.
Ride fixed gear in training. Then you learn how to take a turn well. to keep going forward you learn how to pedal properly through a corner without slamming your pedal into the ground.
Ride fixed gear in training. Then you learn how to take a turn well. to keep going forward you learn how to pedal properly through a corner without slamming your pedal into the ground.
Take a turn on a fixed gear at the angle Jobst is holding and no amount of proper pedaling (what the heck is that, anyway?) will prevent hitting the pavement with your pedal.
Picking the proper line and managing speed into and out of corners is the bread and butter of auto and motorcycle racing and alot of it translates to bikes. There are lots of books and videos on car racing technique and they are a great place to start for a cyclist to get the basic concepts. The basic physics rules and even some of the actual techniques translate directly to the bike. If you’ve got $3000 to burn and want to have some fun, take a car racing class (Skip Barber, etc). You’ll get lots of instruction and practice on the specifics of how to get through corners fast.
A key concept that applies to bikes is exit speed. Ideally, you want to take a line through the corner that lets you exit the corner going as fast as conditions allow (ie slow down as little as possible to make the turn). Any car, even a race car, has a fixed acceleration rate so the faster you come out of the corner, the quicker you make it down the straight to the next corner. Bikes and riders are similar.
I don’t know if I can get those kind of pedals anymore to “do this”
Notice how his shoulders are not “square” to the turn? Or maybe they are - hard to tell from the pciture. Also, notice how wide he is on the turn - I think you (I) want to be hugging the curve at this point a lot more (without getting hit from a car coming in the opposite direction).
I was under the impression you want to have your weight pretty much all on the outside pedal, with your butt basically hovering over the saddle, not firmly planted on it.
I don’t know if I can get those kind of pedals anymore to “do this”
Notice how his shoulders are not “square” to the turn? Or maybe they are - hard to tell from the pciture. Also, notice how wide he is on the turn - I think you (I) want to be hugging the curve at this point a lot more (without getting hit from a car coming in the opposite direction).
Probably because it’s not important to have your shoulders square to the road. I think that your body position doesn’t actually affect the vector forces on your tires’ contact points.
You can’t tell how wide he is because he’s not actually on a road, IIRC. His point was to show how much lean one can get (more than 45 degrees) on a bike.
I was under the impression you want to have your weight pretty much all on the outside pedal, with your butt basically hovering over the saddle, not firmly planted on it.
Again IIRC, the reason to weight the outside pedal is mainly to provide the ability to absorb road shock: you need to have your inside pedal up and your outside pedal down for pedal clearance, and if you hit a rock or a hole or whatever you want as little weight on your saddle as possible to keep the bike from bouncing and losing contact with the ground. You lose that outside leg as a shock absorber.
I came into riding bicycles from sportbike(motorcycles). The techniques applied to riding sportbikes in excess of 100 Mph also apply to riding bicycles.
That is:
hit your braking marker
sit up, open your legs and chest, use the airflow to brake
apply both brakes in smooth progressive manner
lean over, & trail brake into the apex
trail power out of the apex.
I find it amazing the number of trained, experienced riders that I pass on a corner. I’m a beginner. They should be mowing me down, but they won’t get into the corner, they won’t get off the seat, and they wait until they’re straight up, or nearly so, before adding power. I routinely gain 2 to 3 places in the corners. They power past me on the course for sure, but even so.
Btw, If you’re doing it right, you can actually get into a light power slide coming out of the corner (gotta have the quads to do this)
When I was watching the Tdf this summer, on the day that Schleck’s chain came off and Contador passed him, the announcer started talking about how good of a downhiller AND curve rider Schleck is, so that got me thinking about how to improve my curve strategy.
OK, so there are curves, and there are curves. There are 90 degree angle curves, there are rolling curves, there are curves while going downhill, curves while going uphill, etc. But I am guessing there is a better way to take a curve. Sort of like race car drivers take, where the momentum can help sling shoot you out of the curve. No turn increases your speed. It may feel like it at times but there is no ‘slingshot’ effect. A turn will always decrease your speed somewhat.
Q. I think pedaling before and after the curve are necessary, but do you pedal through the curve? If the curve is gradual enough that you can pedal without clipping the ground then yes, keep pedaling if you need to. This is seldom the case in a longer time trial, but in a criterium or at the end of a road race it is. It’s up to you to know what lean angle is safe.
Q. Should you lean into the curve or keep your bike as upright as possible? the bike must lean. In some cases you might want to remain more upright than the bike. But rule number 1 is to put 90% of your entire body weight to the outside pedal (this is assuming NOT pedaling through the turn of course.
Q. Should you start wide, then hug the curve, and finish wide? These seems to add additional distance, even if it’s a small amount. This does add distance, but gives you the line through the turn that allows you to maintain the highest speed. That means less braking before the turn, through the turn faster, less reacceleration needed after the turn. So it’s best even if it’s a longer line (by 8 inches). But the course, the other riders, your speed and the turn radius may dictate that you take a different line and you must know the safe way to take whatever line you need to take.
The biggest skill you need is experience. Every turn is different in some way so one set rule just doesn’t do it.
When cornering, you’re really talking about traction/friction/grip. The classic example is the dollar bill idea. You have a $1s worth of grip going into a corner. Cornering correctly will take almost the full dollar (97c). Anything less, and you could have gone faster. There are lots of sportbike books and classes that can help you here.
A1. You should keep power up til the last possible moment, when you MUST apply the brakes or go off the road. As you get better braking, this point moves closer and closer to the apex.
A2. lean angle is a product of speed. On bicycles, the only reason to get off the seat would be if the traction on the tire is less on the shoulders than on the center track. With most tires, this isn’t the case, especially with the nice attack tires favored by the roadies. On motorcycles, the tires are actually built with MORE grip on the shoulders. Wet, sandy or dirty conditions affect entry speed and thereby affect lean angle. Brake hard going into the corner, easing up as you lean over, coast through the apex (just a little), pedal when your shoes will clear and smoothly apply power as you straighten up out of the corner. Easy.
A3. The science will tell you that the ideal cornering line is simply the same line as the outside of the road, offset so that the line passes through the inside apex of the turn. Thats phyisics and it usually is true. However, road conditions and traffic will dictate the case. In the case of motorsports, the “line” is the only clean portion of the track, and if you stray, you may have to deal with debris, which can slow you down.
Find a safe place to practice this. public roads are too dirty, too dangerous, and too rough to learn the fine motor skills required. find a nice parking lot, and practice it again and again.
