A Stupid Riding Game to Develop Steering Skill

[Ray916MN]

Over the years one of the things I've noticed is that many new riders have a tough time riding a motorcycle around a turn at speeds that they would consider moderate and have no problems with in a car. It strikes me that the notion that motorcycles should use the entire lane to turn quickly and/or that an outside inside outside (aka race line) line is needed to rapidly negotiate a turn might over complicate turns for new riders as well as enabling them to make up for poor steering skills by using all the lane width possible. New riders not only have to learn to steer, but also need to learn to select a line through a turn. I also realized that the same might be true for me too, that using an outside inside outside line might be masking some of my own poor steering. With preceding in mind, a stupid game I play when riding is to see how fast I can go while maintaining a foot off the center line, basically riding as if my bike were as wide as my entire lane, like a car. Doing this eliminates the need to select a line and giving a rider less to think about. Rather than the short sharp steering input and line selection associated with an outside inside outside line, riding like this is an exercise in steering precision and adjustment, forcing you to constantly adjust your line. The game is simple, see how fast you can go while maintaining a constant distance from the center line. You lose if your distance varies, you win the more precisely you maintain a constant distance and the faster you go.

Lastly, given that the safest line through a gravel strewn corner is often to ride a tire track, the speed at which you can go through a turn and maintain a constant distance from the center line is a pretty good approximation of how fast you can go through a corner and ride within a tire track.



When your cornering speeds get significantly higher than this speed you start to lose the ability to use the riding a tire track approach to dealing with gravel and implicitly lose some of your safety margin. When you are unsure of what lays around a corner taking a generic line allows you to peer around a corner until you see whether the turn and road conditions are appropriate for turning more sharply with a positive throttle to get a late apex line.

[Plus_P]

Whether you knew it or not Ray, you and Nick Ienatsch were with me on my ride this evening. I committed to myself to only ride the left tire groove (24" or so, about 24" in from the stripe). I kept it up for the first 50 miles of my ride. But then felt that was enough "exercise time" and frankly it was feeling very restrictive, and requiring too much mental energy to keep projecting imaginary lines onto the asphalt, and counter to at least one of the reasons...freedom...that I like to ride. So for the rest of the ride I was back to giving myself permission to use my normal lane...ahhh...so liberating.
It did magnify a couple times I was not set up correctly for a corner, so it is definitely a valuable exercise.
Also, even after I was done exercising for the ride, I found that during longer corners, or sections of road I was paying more attention to speed limits, that it was easy/fun for me to revert to the tactic.
Next time I work on it, I will modify my game, to use the right tire track for left turns. a) I don't want any part of me (i.e. helmet) across the yellow stripe and b) focusing too much on imaginary lines in the road caused a bit of unintended tunnel vision, and in 90° lefts a couple times an oncoming car snuck through my peripheral vision and spooked me, which I think in my more typical out-in-out cornering, with both a wider vision sweep and more gradual corner entry angle, wouldn't happen.
I'm just sharing my experience, that in my case anyway, there is benefit to it, but like everything, it may not be right for all situations, enjoy in moderation.
+Wade