Notes/reminders from an ever getting older road cyclist.
1. In my humble opinion, High speed road cornering is a different skill set
than other types of bicycle cornering. Being great bicycle "handler" at
BMX, Track, Cyclocross, MTB, Polo, etc does not necessarily give you the
skills to safely corner at high speeds out on the road.
2. I would even say, based on my own experience, being an experienced
criterium racer doesn't make you safe at high speed cornering. I started
racing crits as teenager starting 1989... and 10 years later or so, my
thinking that I was great at cornering had my tires inches away at 50 mph
from jagged rocks coming down Mary's peak. I probably would not have
survived had I gone down.
3. In my opinion, a great way to learn about high speed cornering is to
take a motorcycle class. I did this in ~2007. Went into that class of
course not thinking about cornering, except when the the subject came up,
and then of course I am an expert. Well about the 3rd time around the
little practice course with the instructor yelling that I wasn't looking
into the corner (and me thinking "how am I Not Looking into the corner??")
finally made me realize that maybe she was right and I was wrong and that I
better start listening and re-evaluate where my eyes and head were pointed.
She wanted my eyes another 90 degrees over into the corner.
So not only did I learn that maybe I didn't know about high speed cornering
but also learned how to critique after bungling a corner (as I did once on
the motorbike going up Germantown.. right into the other lane with Thank
God no traffic at the time !, all it takes is once..).
4. The big thing is, you have to really work on looking hard / putting
your head hard over into a corner. If you just kind of look into the
corner / look at the road, or at an object on the road, probably NOT good
enough, you may bungle the corner. Even if you are going relatively slow,
and you panic and put on brakes, which can lock up your arms, making it
difficult to instinctively counter-steer, you may go straight off the
road, hopefully not into tree.
5. You have to trust that at almost _any_ speed you can reach on your two
wheel 'bike', if you look way into the corner properly, counter-steer, come
out of the saddle a bit to distribute weight on both wheels, your bike WILL
stick and you will make the corner. If you panic or shift your eyes to the
road, watch out ! You need to immediately: suppress the panic, get your
eyes way back into the corner / counter-steer and get your hands OFF the
brakes.