A skill I learned as a young rider, is best explained by an anthropology text discussing the relationship between research and imagination. It spoke of “soft vision, hard focus”. Ones hard focus is on the road well ahead, this is maintained while also allowing oneself soft vision out in the periphery of ones vision.
on your bike this means that one remains actively aware of what’s going on outside the focus of ones attention. Thus although my focus is often ( on rural roads) two corners ahead watching for oncoming vehicles, landslides and road debris. In my soft vision is placing me on the road, alert to surface and random animals walking out in my immediate viscinity. In terms of cornering it is my soft vision that marks my arrival at the turn in point already. I can tell by three or four inches whether I hit my mark. When navigating blind corners. The hard focus varies between 2000-300 metres ahead to the next corners, right down to 30 metres on those nasty closing radius blind corners. On those corners the eye follows the vanishing point alert to the need to radically change my chosen line. But.soft focus deals with all the little details of road placement. It is all very active and meditative, especially when I’m fully in the groove. Dodging unexpected sheep, and oncoming trucks that cut corners is handled almost entirely by the soft vision aspect. The hard focus in those instances looks to those avenues of escape that I spotted previously: hunting and tracking the gap. Hard focus turns my head. Soft vision looks everywhere else.
another comparison is player of ping pong, or boxers neither focuses on the ball, or the fist, they look hard at the opposing player, and rely on soft vision to hit the ball or block the fist.
hope this helps those who get lost vision wise.