Last month, I promised you some photos from the BMX Superstar clinic in Dayton, Ohio. Sad to say, I don't have any. The clinic was cut a bit short due to weather, and I didn't have the chance to photo-illustrate some of what we're going to discuss this month. However, I know I have a sharp bunch of readers, and you won't have any trouble visualizing most of this stuff.
So, let's pick up where we left off in August. As previously discussed, there are two kinds of major cornering mistakes: wash-out and tuck-under. Barring exceptional circumstances such as unusually high speed or bizarre track surfaces, these mistakes are due to incorrect weight placement. When your weight is too far back, you will wash out. When it's too far forward, you will tuck-under.
Have I left one out? Is there a third cornering mistake to be made? You might be saying, "Absolutely? You forgot to include a rear-wheel slide-out!" Nope, I did not forget the rear wheel slide. That's not a mistake. In fact, it's the only correct way to do it.
You see, most of us don't enter corners nearly as fast as we could enter them, because we're afraid to wreck. We're afraid to wreck because we don't know how to handle our bikes in the corner. That's a shame, because it's much easier to make up ground in the corners, where technique dictates speed, than on the straights, where power creates it.
On that glorious day when you do attain maximum corner speed, however, you will discover that your rear wheel will want to slide a bit. If you permit said wheel to slide, you will also that a sliding rear wheel helps you point your bike out of the corner, and that once the rear wheel hooks up, you will be able to immediately pedal your way out, perhaps five feet before your competition. I have seen old-school riders pick up three or four places in a turn by "burning in" - in a long-ago Superclass race, I saw somebody go from last to second in a single hairpin turn by sliding both wheels through the turn. I place two-wheel-drifting in the "pros only" category, because the only reason to risk your life drifting into a crowded turn is to make money.
How can we go about increasing our cornering speed? The first thing we need to do is listen to our bike. Anyone who drives quickly, whether on a track on on the street, will tell you that cars rarely just "spin out" or "wash out" - they provide plenty of warning before finally letting go. An effective driver knows when he is near the limit, and he stays as close to that limit as he can. An ineffective driver guesses at his car's limits and simply pushes the vehicle until he becomes scared, at which point he backs off. That's not the way to drive fast, and it's not the way to ride fast, either. We have to learn our bikes' cornering limits, and we have to learn to read the signs of an impending slide.
Here's how it's done:
Ninety-nine of a hundred riders will increase their corner speed significantly during this exercise. Most of you will also discover how much easier it can be to jump one of the NBL's patented "corner exit doubles" when you have this extra speed.
This would be a near-worthless exercise if all it did was teach you how to go faster in a particular corner. What is is meant to do is teach you how to listen to your bike, and how to sense the signs of an impending slide. Once you are confident taking your bike into corners "hot", it will only take two or three practice laps to learn the maximum possible speed for each corner, at any track.
Corner speed "pays you back" in a variety of ways. To begin with, if you are in first entering the corner, you will exit with more of a lead than you entered with. If you are not lucky enough to be leading the pack, however, the benefits are even greater. Most of the cornering tactics I have discussed over the years absolutely depend on having enough corner speed. This was demonstrated to me in disturbing fashion at the recent BMX Superstar clinic. During the portion of the day when passing tactics were discussed, the riders were sent into turns two at a time, with the second rider having orders to overtake the first. I watched over fifty pairs of riders enter the assigned turn. There were TWO!!!!!!! passes! These poor kids were so brainwashed by today's "racing myths" that most of them couldn't bring themselves to attempt a pass in the turn, even when they had been specifically instructed to do so!
I asked a couple of the young riders afterwards why they had not tried to pass the kid in front of them. Their answers were nearly identical - "I didn't have enough speed to waste trying to pass in the turn. It's better to try to pass on the straight." I would have believed them... if I hadn't seen most of them squeeze their brakes coming into the turn. Good passing technique depends on having some kind of speed advantage, whether you gain it by riding farther into the turn, by accelerating earlier, or easiest of all, by simply maintaining more speed.
There's another reason why riders slow down in the turns - fitness. Some of us, and I have to include myself, really appreciate having a second or two to rest coming into turns, particularly at the end of the track. We have to see that issue for what it is - a lack of power and/or aerobic fitness - rather than blaming our slow cornering on the bike, or the track. A lot of today's no-skill turns can be pedalled through from beginning to end - but that can be awfully tiring, and most of us are too busy trying to come to terms with the modern trail jumps to ever really look at our ability to maintain rpm's in the turn. Nobody's fault but our own when we lose, then.
There are a couple of additional issues to address before I turn you loose to work on achieving supersonic corner speed. The first concerns asphalt berms. Many modern tracks have at least one high-speed asphalt berm, and some - like Louisville's Grands track - have two or three. My advice to you is to treat these berms like straights - jam right through. You are unlikely to ever lose traction in these turns, at least not at typical racing speeds. You will, however, want to carefully watch your pedal clearance - I have only wrecked twice on asphalt berms, and both times my 185mm cranks were to blame.
The second cornering issue is one from our sport's deep, dark past - that is, putting a foot down. Some of my readers are clipping in, and for them, it isn't an issue. Joint damage and torn ligaments might be, though. Please all of, be extremely careful with your cleat tension, and it wouldn't hurt to take a good look at your knee position when you pedal. But I digress... For the rest of us, it might be occasionally useful to drop that inside foot, if only because it prevents us from pedal-digging. (You already know to keep your inside foot high in a turn, right?) Dropping a foot lets you safely slide the rear wheel more, but it does force you to pause a moment before powering out of the turn, if only to get our foot back on. I drop a foot now and then, but in reality, today's tracks are so "baby-bermed" that it's hardly ever necessary. It's really a "vestigal tail" from the days when about half of a track's turns were flat. I haven't seen a flat turn in eight years, because trail-jumpers and show-offs whine incessantly about them, and misguided parents listen... but I digress again.
Your homework for this month, should you choose to accept it, is to
ride turns faster. I guarantee you that, unless your local track is a
Louisville- or Evansville- style downhiller, you will increase your
speed more this month than you thought possible. Chances are that you
will also realize just how out-of-shape you are, as well, but I
wouldn't worry about it too much. The cure for being tired when riding
is usually riding some more - and that's never a bad idea.