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Turning a bike!

walsh416

Entry posted by walsh416

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Golly gee biking (cycling) is hard. Perhaps the hardest part of all is mastering high speed cornering. You see it all the time in the Tour de France; pros carving graceful arcs as they fly down mountainsides at 100kph. How do they do it? By maintaining an incredible awareness of where their center of mass is relative to their bike at all times, and adjusting it so that they can achieve the right angle of cornering.

By far the most common mistake any new cyclist will make is to turn their handlebars in the direction they wish to go. At low speeds this works to steer the bicycle, but at anything above a walking pace, all this does is cause one to eat asphalt. Instead, one must "counter steer," especially when beginning a corner. Counter steering is the act of pushing the handlebars in the direction opposite the one you want to go. This causes the bike to lean into the corner, moving your center of gravity lower and towards the inside of the corner.

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