cornering

photo by Veeral Patel

Crowie has some invaluable tips stored away from his lifelong experience as a pro cyclist. Most pro’s don’t know how to break down these skills and techniques to teach them properly to cyclists like you and me. This is why I love listening to Crowie so much. Here’s some great high speed cornering tips in Q&A style from a reader that I passed onto Crowie to answer.

For some other cornering tips that I wrote a few weeks back, click here.

TOP 9 Strategies To Maximaze High Speed Cornering!

By Rob Crowe - Ridewiser

Q: How soon after the apex should I be back on the gas? I’m guessing it’s the same as in my rally car, ie: ASAP.

A: Start pedaling again ASAP, without hitting the pedal. This is so much of an issue that riders have been known to execute these TOP 9 strategies to minimise the out-of-corner delay time for re-applying the accelerator!

  1. Go very fast into it ‘as the first rider’, lay right over but wait for longer to pedal (have a rest!), and then accelerate harder than everybody else when they start to come around in the sprint
  2. Put 170mm cranks on instead of 172.5 or 175mm (Crowie is usually on 172.5mm for criteriums for this reason)
  3. Take the corner as wide as possible & don’t stop pedaling (recommended)
  4. Enter the corner very ‘late’ which in turn means that the ‘lay-over period’ is quite brief and the angle of departure from the apex is tight to the inside gutter
  5. Use a higher built Bottom Bracket in the bike frame (lift the clearance another way)
  6. Use shallower pedals (slimmer models such as Speedplay instead of old bulky LOOK type)
  7. Get out of the seat & tilt the bike for each LHS (left-hand-side assuming you’re riding on a anti-clockwise course) downward drive-stroke so as to ‘miss’ the bitumen while starting pedaling sooner
  8. ‘Lay off the wheel’ of the guy in front; a pseudo-vacuum is created between riders during the corner, which means that the re-acceleration is late, but there’s less resistance to pick up speed again into the air-pocket behind your lead man
  9. Just dig in early, hit the pedal & try to hold her up!? (not recommended)