Jasonzilla

I wonder what the sea level stats are as a comparison.

Howdy. If that's your picture, I'm willing to bet you'll have plenty to contribute. Welcome.

You've got plenty of advice. I'm just writing to say hi. Hi.

Just for bike riding, midsection (abs and lower back) would greatly benefit you, as well as doing legs. A good all around full body workout would be just fine. The problem is that if you're going to be a sprinter normally and do a marathon once or twice, you're going to be sore. We have endurance riders on here, hopefully they chyme in, and I'll bet they're sore after a marathon. It's hard to train that regularly for something so taxing (marathon runners run marathons to train for it), but as the guy said, "more time on the bike."

Congratulations. Hope to see more of him. I'm always tickled at how most fans don't really understand it when a rider says "we" when describing how things went. It really is a team sport.

I don't use tire warmers, and on a 2.75 mile track I'm doing two laps just to warm up. One very slow and one with little throttle while over at all. After that I get a little more into it, but am hesitant all the way through. It is what it is. You've got to adjust.

I read you were going to be racing in it and was rooting for you to be up front. Kept watching for you. Good to see you did so well. Hopefully you can get yourself into more next season.

And you can use that mod on any bike. Welcome.

How did I miss this conversation until just now? Some great information in here. I can give input on the braking, seeing as how the rest has been covered exceptionally well. A few weeks ago at Inde I had one of the track fast guys, and one of the smoothest riders I know, follow me for some line tips. He told me he noticed that there were two corners where my butt was to the side and my legs were clamped to the tank. He said I looked uncomfortable and crossed up, but a little before I started my lean, my knee came out and I seemed relaxed and went into my turn. He's observant. When I start my hard braking, you're going to see me look exactly the way Gio described. I'm fine doing it, but he said I looked uncomfortable. My legs and back are tense from holding the pressure of the braking. There is some pressure on the bars, but it's unavoidable at that speed with that stopping force. Once the hard stuff is done and I'm more adjusting for speed than braking, my leg comes out and I'm already locked in putting that pressure on the outside of the tank. It's just lean and go from there. Already locked in, pressure off the bars, butt off the seat and looking through the corner.

What exactly are you doing during lean, Jay?

What about pushing the front, Jason? How does "in neutral (clutch in)" work for you?

Just as good to have you. Nice choice on bikes. Ask away.

I'm not sure that with the quality of todays average sportbike tire that you can go into a corner (on warm tires on a clean dry surface) off the gas and brake and be able to quick turn (QT) past the traction threshold of the tire. "How much, if at all, does turn rate affect the horizontal/sliding force and why?" I think it depends on a number of things that ultimately end up asking about where the tire traction limits are. If you have X amount of traction, you can put so much horizontal pressure onto it. Just like being up straight. If you whack the front brakes without flipping the bike, the slightest bit of turn is going to cause the bike to slide out from under you. You've exceeded the small amount of horizontal pressure the bike can handle with the available traction limits being used to stop the weight of the bike, rider and momentum. If you're trail braking into a turn, quick turning while chewing up so much of your traction limit is going to put you past what the tire can handle and it will lose traction. If traction limit is 100, braking to reduce speed takes up 60, you have 40 to play with in leaning. Any more and you've exceeded the tires ability to hold traction. The basics are to brake, come off the brake, turn, throttle once you've completed the turn. Turning while off the gas and brake is the time when you'll have the largest amount of available traction on the front tire. The front will get weighted by the deceleratory forces, applying increased traction. All is right with the world. During racing, advanced riders who trail brake into a corner aren't going to QT the bike. That's why it's said you have a qualifying line and a racing line. During their qualifying runs riders will come off the brake, get the bike over, and shoot through the corner. When racing, they understand they're using up that traction limit in braking and turning, and that force is using up their available traction limit. If they try to QT the bike, they're going to move their ratio past any traction requirements a horizontal tire will be able to handle. That's how someone outbraking another rider into a corner is going to lowside or have to pick the bike up going in. He started braking too late and the bike can't handle the added weight to the front tire and he either goes for it anyway or realizes this and picks the bike up. If a rider is undercut and uses the front brake, he's, again, going to quickly surpass the available traction limit, only with a sudden addition of weight and momentum to the front tire. Riders who are cruising through a corner and apply a sudden amount of gas have the potential to lose the back end suddenly. Too much, and you've disallowed the suspension to transfer the weight of the bike and momentum to the rear. If there is no pressure on the rear tire and you don't give the bike time to adjust, the tire alone will not be able to handle it. A weighted and unweighted tire will also have a different traction limit. That's where Throttle Control Rule #1 comes into play. Smooth. Let the suspension do it's job. Let the tire adjust to all the changes in pressure. Of course, too much throttle altogether and you'll still overload the rear tire. If you're vertical you'll burn out. That's the rear tire exceeding the traction limit. Overloading it in this instance simply means you're adding enough throttle on top of the amount of weight applied to the tire plus acceleration already applied to the horizontal traction limits causing you to surpass the available traction limit. THIS is where the pick-up drill comes into play. Reducing the horizontal pressure (by picking the bike up) adds the more available traction and allows for more throttle. If you go watch a newer rider at his trackday, you'll see they aren't wrecking because they're surpassing the traction limits, but because of control of the bike, or their lack of control. They don't slide the tires, they don't feel any slide. They don't know how much force they can apply to the tires with their available traction limits (which is A LOT MORE than they're already applying for their amount of lean). In braking into a corner, this is why the bike is going to be picked up and they're going to shoot off the course. They'll think they're exceeding their traction limits. They don't know that, they just think they're going to wreck.

Howdy. I wonder how many people we get to this site AFTER they've gone through the school.

Our trackday "season" has started and I hit Inde. One thing that's always been an issue for me is quick turns. It was a huge point of frustration before, during, and since school, and I'm always working overtime to fix this. Watching video, reviewing lessons from school, practicing. Before going through school I had to take off too much speed to get into corners. Two step fixed that somewhat, but I was dropping the bike real fast and wasn't able to . Since school (and seeing Lenz in action a few times) I was working on getting the bike over as quickly as possible. I've seen few pros drop a bike into a corner as fast as Lenz could. But I wasn't getting full lean and was losing speed while concentrating on getting over as far as possible. I wasn't gaging the corners correctly, couldn't hit the corners at speed. This weekend I chose to slow it down and work on entry speed. I know the pro racers I've watched are taking defensive lines so they don't get over as quickly as when they do qualifying laps, but I figured I'd try it. Work on entry speed. It worked. In one trackday I managed to knock 15-20 seconds off my laptimes. I'm getting the bike over nearly as quickly as I was before, but am going into the corners with more lean and getting through the corners much faster, feeling more planted and able to get on the throttle quicker because I'm in a more comfortable position sooner. The quick turn session was pretty much useless to me during the school because the key to quick turning, the two step, wasn't taught until the next session, or a couple sessions, later. Did quick turning take this much work to catch onto for the rest of the people who attended school? Do people who didn't attend a CSS figure out quick turning, or was it shown in a way that is easily understandable. I help newer riders, and being able to effectively describe this, verbalize it, is the key to properly relaying info.

My guess is that you've been doing it so wrong that doing it the proper way feels weird. 1. I'm completely comfortable being off the gas and guiding the bike to full lean. I don't race, so there are few turns I trail brake in, but it feels just fine. 2. Maybe you're at a point of increased lean that is new to you and you have to get used to it? Just because you learn proper lean and getting the bike over doesn't mean it's going to be easy. It's still a new sensation. You could have changed your BP and feel like you're getting over more, and that could be causing it. 3. Adding throttle to halt lean equates to adding lean angle and throttle. Not good. You're going to get comfortable doing that and one day it's going to be just a little too much throttle on a little too much lean angle. I would recommend repeated off throttle and brake turning so you can get used to it and start trusting the bike. Bad things will not happen unless you're going to slow. There is no throttle to chop to front end tuck, and there is no brake to clamp on to that would cause a lowside.

Howdy Tuono. I'm sure you'll get all your points across.

The problem with engine braking, I've found, is that your bike is dictating your speed. It's a bad habit to get into. Just before attending CSS levels 1-2 I was an engine braking fiend. I could do 1:08 around Firebird East repetitively. Time and again. What I found though, is that I wasn't getting any better, and anything I tried with shifting was having slower results. I'd downshift into turns 1-2 knowing I could go faster, so I'd be in 3rd for entry. But this gave me no power on the way out. What to do. I figured that I was riding with something dictating how fast I could go into and through a corner. Great for consistency, but not good since I was trying to improve my lap-times. What happens when you blip the throttle coming off the clutch and going in is that you give yourself control of how fast you're entering a corner with your brakes. It's not being controlled by the engine, but by your braking. Holding the clutch going in is tricky, and you'll usually find that your coming off the clutch while leaned over isn't very relaxing, and takes work. Lots of work. Everyone is talking about some hard engine braking, so I'm assuming that everyone is coming off the clutch while still upright, since, no matter how awesome slipper clutches are, they're still not great while you're leaning over. I practice blipping incessantly, and it's a work in progress, but around that same track, I've become wildly inconsistent, 1:07-1:11 (partially from the change in riding style I learned in the school shortly after learning to blip), but my fast time is 1:03. I could not do that with engine braking, no matter how hard I tried. I haven't ridden that track in some time, partially because I've been sick, and some because of two world class tracks opening near us over the last year, but I'd be willing to bet that I could more consistently get around that track now that I've had so much work put into blipping alone.

I'll share what I've taken from reading and studying lean angle and throttle. I'm sure once someone more experienced comes along they will correct us. When you're at static, or constant, throttle and you add lean angle, it decelerates the bike and loads a little weight on the front. As far as I know, this is OK to do. I practice it, and can be found using it at the end of a decrease radius turn. I pitch the bike pretty good sometimes, and have yet to feel any part of the bike sliding out.

I think on the initial post, this could be one of Rossi's views. He takes some strange lines when he's behind people, and it usually ends up with him in front of them. It sounds about right. On the heart rate (HR) thing, there have been plenty of experiments that have athletes of all kinds hooked up to machines. The findings are overwhelmingly consistent. They have much lower HR's during their sport of choice than your normal participant. I can guarantee that Biaggi's HR isn't consistently at 190 during a race, and that it's more normally in the Rossi range. I'm sure him having close calls or a close race with Haga gets his HR up, but an HR of 190 isn't consistent with proper perfusion of blood for a prolonged period. That's regardless of who you are. Trained athletes have lower resting HR's and it takes longer for those HR's to get up to max, but we all have the same ceiling basically. I'm sure being in second and stepping it up will get the heart pumping, but when they're pacing a rider or cruising up front, it's nowhere near 180-190. It probably has something to do with the wiring of Rossi's brain. There are plenty of times I've been shaken by another rider, and I'm sure my HR rockets up. The more close passes I've experienced, and I get passed a lot, the less shaken (the macho word for scared and I'll keep using it) I become. Maybe it's just that Rossi doesn't have that on a track. I'd be willing to bet that you take him out of his comfort zone, which is in control of his bike, and you'll see a difference in his HR.

Howdy. More info would be sweet, but good to have you on the site.

I met him a few times and have seen him ride. Sucks to see it happened.

I don't hard brake then pop off the brakes and dip it in or trailbrake. There is about a second when I'm not hard braking but still braking (while coming off the brakes) and adjusting to get where I'm comfortable with my entry speed. That's when my knee goes out. I know it's a long time and distance at 80 mph, but it's the habit I have.

I've ridden with both good and bad track organizations and have to say that they're not like that at all. Nicely paced sighting laps and you've got to get cleared to move up. When they watch you, if you're too slow, they'll tell you to move down into a slower group. A friend of mine had to remove his damper for some new plastics and, when they noticed he was way too slow, they moved him down. I DID have a friend who was told to move up into a faster group and he and a friend jumped back down, for some reason, to a slower group to record him riding, and his bike is still sitting in my garage with a busted radiator, some shredded rearsets and a broken clipon. A slower rider pulled up in a tight corner and he wrecked into the dude at a much faster pace. Too fast in a group is dangerous for the slower riders and stupid for the faster riders to be in.

I'm not a fan of the crotch to tank thing. I don't corner with my crotch on the tank, so if I'm going to lean into the corner with my crotch against the tank I'm going to have to slide around to get into the right position. When I'm coming off the brakes and adjusting more for entry speed, I stick my leg out and the pressure I can apply on one side with my knee out (stompgrip) I'm still off the bars. I used to put so much pressure on the bars that my left ring and pinky fingers were numb for a while after my trackday. It takes work to brake that bad habit, but it will really pay off.