*** TRAINING *** Ian Pattie reviews his recent Bends course Last week we met Ian Pattie for one of our Performance: BENDS courses, and hes been generous enough to give us a ★★★★★ star review Ian writes: I took a bends course with Kevin to try to give my confidence a bit of a boost as I had been doing a lot of commuting and hadnt been on the twistys for a while. I met Kevin and found he listened carefully to my riding history and then he explained how the course would run. We set off and Kevin started by giving me a commentated ride, although there were a few problems with the radio link I was able to gleam the gist of what was being said. We then set out onto some lovely roads in Kent where I was able to put the theory into practice. Kevin was available on the radio to give me a breakdown of my riding throughout the route however this was not constant or annoying, for a lot of the time the radio remained silent and we just enjoyed the roads. Kevin stopped the ride regularly and he was able to give a detailed breakdown of the ride. In short Kevin has a wealth of knowledge, information and techniques he is only to willing to share and I found a few of his little gems extremely useful. All in all a great trying day with a thoroughly nice bloke. Hope to see you for the second day soon Kevin. Its terrific to see such a positive review of the day. Ians a member of Kent Advanced Motorcyclists Group but whilst chatting he admitted he hadnt been out with them recently, nor done any real recreational riding. All of these courses start with a chat over a cuppa which allows the trainee to take a break after their ride to meet me, an essential loo stop, plus a chance to discuss exactly what they want from the day. Once on the bike, its off for a quick assessment ride which allows me to do two things: - get a baseline on how the trainees riding, via which we can both gauge improvements over the rest of the course - identify any specific weaknesses or strong points so that the rest of the session can be effectively targeted, avoiding delivering a one size fits all course even on one of our courses like the Performance: BENDS course which has a lesson plan for the day, with a syllabus. The assessment revealed that Ian was riding to a good standard, something Ive been very pleased to see with other KAMG members whove come to me in the last couple of years for some top-up training over and above the IAM test. The only real weakness being a lack of see and be seen positioning for blind areas - Ian was prioritising the view ahead for bends over positioning to see into dead ground even if that put the rider a bit close to something like a driveway. Other than a sense on my part that the ride wasnt flowing quite as well as it could have done - it seemed he was having to work at riding well, rather than it being automatic - it was actually difficult to see where he was feeling any lack of confidence other than his own stated expression that at times he felt he could be riding more quickly . Ians generously glossed over my mistake with the radio on the assessment ride - I failed to lock down the press to talk button so ended up talking to myself for seven or eight minutes I was leading whilst we negotiated Canterbury centre and got out onto the twisty roads I use for the course. So I had to do a retrospective commentary on what wed just encountered - however, as Ian had been observant enough to see most of what I mentioned it wasnt too much of an issue, though its something far better done real-time. Our first stop was just outside the city and the first technique explored was countersteering. Ian was familiar with the technique but not really sure why we need to understand and consciously employ it if we can just do it, which is a reasonable question that trainees often ask given that they have arrived safely at the meet point round any number of bends. The answer is that knowing what we do to get round an easy corner allows us to use more positive steering input to take evasive action in an emergency or tighten the line effectively on a suddenly tightening corner. It will also come in useful later in the session when we introduce the late turn, quick steer point and squirt approach to cornering. For the moment though, we simply worked on the push in the direction you want to go technique and made sure Ian could feel the three stages of countersteering: - the push till youre at the lean you want initial pressure - the reduced pressure that holds the machine on line - the relax of any pressure that allows the machine to steer itself upright Simply being told to feel for how the machine responds to different amounts of pressure is usually an eye-opener even for riders who can steer accurately. At this point, we also went over the role of road markings, road signs and the surface itself in flagging up areas to which we need to be paying attention. Now, we are firmly of the opinion that road signs and markings are one of the great under-utilised resources for riders. Signs are not only for learners as one police instructor told me some years back on an internet forum, but a genuine aid to working out where hazards lurk. Many riders are very dismissive of what can be gleaned from signs but whilst well not go into detail on this point (weve covered it in-depth here before) well remind you of why they are there; other people have crashed at that point, usually with serious consequences and often repeatedly - which is why many of these locations also have anti-skid surfaces. Signs also help us see hazards you might find hard to spot in heavy traffic, poor driving conditions like rain, spray or fog, or in the dark. So if we can see that theres something about a particular hazard that seems to have caught others out, its well worth slowing down a bit whilst we try to figure out what it is. For example, an easy-looking bend could tighten up out of sight, and that could be the reason for the anti-skid surface. Several of the junctions we come across on one road are on bends. Outbound, its easy to see the junctions because they are visible on the other side of the road as we approach the bend. Heading back to Canterbury at the end of the day, they turn out to be on the inside of bends and one just AROUND the bend and over a slight crest. Its completely blind for the emerging driver, and guess what? Theres an anti-skid surface on the approach on the main road, as well as warning signs! One observation Ian found particularly useful was that a solid line around a bend on your side of the road will often break as the view opens up along the following straight - its where you can see if its safe to overtake. But if you think about it, you can also see that point from further back in the corner, so it also tells you youre coming towards the end of the bend. After just a couple of minutes of discussion and a short ride looking for signs, Ians responses to side turnings in terms of changes of speed and position markedly improved. We then talked about why we also need to spot driveways and other entrances, and what clues we get, and on the next ride Ian was also showing far more awareness of those hazards. The next stretch of road combines some really nasty blind junctions with some well-concealed driveways and Ians responses showed he was now spotting and adding those to his riding plan to deal with the country lane and that lines into bends would take account of these hazards. Ians throttle control was good so we only quickly went over the role of the throttle in stabilising the machine in a bend, and why getting the power on from the mid-point of the bend is a track, not a road, technique. Whilst it might have made sense on 50hp Triumph Saints and BMW R75s back in the mists of time, adding power mid-corner on a high performance machine pushes the bike wider very rapidly indeed as the speed picks up. Unlike a wide racetrack with kerbs and run-off, the average lane on the road simply isnt wide enough to do this safely, plus any change in road surface means we could lose grip - acceleration is best delayed till the machine is upright. We also explained that entering the bend with the throttle gently applied unloads the front suspension and lets it deal with the roads bumps and ripples. Turning with the forks compressed as some cornering articles in the bike press suggest might quicken the steering on a race machine but on a road bike theyll compromise the forks action on bumps. We also discussed the option of braking for corners. Some advanced riding groups seem to have taken up the brakes to slow, gears to go line but there are still plenty of advanced riders out there who say that if you have to touch the brakes, youve misjudged the corner because you should be able to use acceleration sense to adjust your speed. Our line is that any deceleration that would need a gear shift to achieve should have been done on the brakes. Ians bike offers a fair amount of engine braking, but that doesnt mean brakes are redundant. In fact, the brakes are a good default tool when approaching any bend or other hazard that might get worse before it gets better. If the brakes are set up by taking the slack out of the system (something an Aussie safety video called Ride On explained well), then with no delay we can swing straight into more positive braking should the developing situation ahead require it. But if were trying to do it all on the throttle, then once the throttle is shut we MUST use the brakes to slow further. Now theres a delay as we go for them, and then set them up. That all takes time and well now have to brake much harder than the rider whos already set them up just in case. We also mentioned that setting up the rear brake down hills allows us to deal more easily with steeper sections - the brake just needs to be pressed a little harder to do some work and control our speed. With machine control already well-developed, there wasnt a great improvement to be had here - all we really did was rationalise what Ian was already doing, and add the dodgy situation - set the brakes up approach to his riding. We also added a measuring stick to the vanishing point technique, by pointing out that rather than simply look at where the edges of the road come together, if we count the number of curved hazard lines we can see before they vanish, we get a far clearer idea of just how tight the corner is - and rather than try to figure out if the vanishing point is moving towards you, its far easier to see if the number of white lines is decreasing. One of the bends we negotiate does just this. Its not otherwise marked with signs and appears fairly unremarkable until you notice that as you enter the bend, youre seeing fewer and fewer white lines ahead. This helped Ian assess the sharper bends from further back and gave him more time to deal with them, as well as earlier recognition of the more open corners where more speed might be appropriate. Together with the improved awareness of where blind areas made a reduced speed appropriate, this ability to distinguish bends further back definitely helped Ian - to know where we COULD ride more quickly, we MUST know where to go slow! With that all sorted, we looked at how to identify the reference points for corners which tell us WHERE to do what we need to do. Where to finish braking and get back on the throttle (we use a point three straight hazard lines back from the entry to the corner as our end of braking marker which means we get back on the throttle whilst still upright), how to sharpen our line at the turn in point (where we can see our way out of the bend down the straight to the next corner or other hazard) using a second and more positive countersteering input (remember the first exercise?) and finally the exit where the machine is upright and we can accelerate as hard as we need. This all pulls together into our own version of SLOW LOOK LEAN ROLL. The reference points seemed to me to be the second key development during the day. Ian had been (to steal a classic line from Eric Morcombe) playing all the right notes, just not necessarily in the right order. Ian knew what he was supposed to be doing, but didnt have the reference points to know precisely where to be doing it. Hed intuitively got it right far more often than not but by offering specific, easy-to-spot points that recur in every bend, suddenly the machine inputs were right on the money and well on the way to becoming automatic rather than conscious, thought about, decisions. Our final new technique was the Thirds system, which we understand to have been developed by Thames Valley Police for their driving school. The idea is that the rider mentally divides the next straight after a hazard into three - an acceleration phase as we leave a hazard, a steady speed assessment phase whilst we search for information work out whats coming next, and a deceleration phase as we adjust our speed for the next bend, junction, blind crest... whatever. Its not so useful on flat-out roads, and on a really twisty road youll rarely have much time for the acceleration phase, but on a road with a lot of short straights it works well, particularly in preventing us arriving too fast at the next bend. By making sure we get off the throttle earlier and dont try to accelerate to the mid-point of the straight, braking to deal with a tighter-than-expected bend can always be extended backwards into the assessment phase. The acceleration phase also happens to be the roll phase and the deceleration phase is slow from Slow Look Lean Roll, so it also links bends together nicely into a flowing system that works across sequences of corners, not just single bends. The final ride Ian took was over some very different roads. A stretch of A road from Sissinghurst to Biddenden that has a mix of fast flowing bends and some notoriously awkward double-bends (just check out the signage!), then some narrower but still quick unclassified roads via Smarden, a village which presents its own hazards of see and be seen, then a much twistier unclassified road that adds a lot of undulations and blind crests to the mix, finishing up with a climb up the North Downs out of Ashford on the A251, a climb that features a couple of bends that just seem to go on for ever. If youre not reading the road according to the entry, turn-in and exit points, this climb WILL show it up. Ian handled it faultlessly and flowed effortlessly round the turns! And then just to make sure Ian wasnt doing anything silly, we concluded the course over a couple of miles of single track roads. There are two usual faults - forgetting that stop in the distance you can see is clear is no use on a single track road (youll simply meet the other guy half-way!) and trying to apply the position to the right to see round the bend technique (where all youll see is the front of the tractor half a second before you end up as a bonnet ornament). The sharper the corner, the less a wide position shows you, and the narrower the road, the greater the danger from an oncoming vehicle, so the answer on tight left-handers on narrow roads is tight to the left and slow enough to stop very quickly. We then had a final chat. One of the key points that we make is that were not trying to turn out clone riders doing the same thing in the same place as me. Thats not advanced riding, thats simply monkey see, monkey do. Obviously we believe there are good reasons for teaching what we do, but what we want more than anything is for riders to adopt the techniques they see as adding to their own toolbox of skills because that means they are thinking about what weve shown them. Then at around 3:30pm, it was time to go our separate ways. Back at the PC, its an hour or more writing up our review of the course and our assessment of how it went, plus suggested areas to continue working which dovetails in with the written syllabus for the day we delivered via email before the course took place. We actually deliver this final debrief a week or so after the course because we understand its a better time than immediately after the course; the debrief then acts as a memory jogger rather than just a confirmation of whats still fresh in mind. As you can see, we pack a lot in on our five hour Performance: BENDS course! If youre interested in taking our one day Performance: BENDS course, you can find out more via the link below. Were progressively adding more in-depth looks at our training courses in the Notes section of our FB page - youll find it on the right hand side, just under the About information. Were still taking bookings but from now on, itll be with one eye on the weather forecast to make sure that we can take advantage of the nice days. We definitely hope to see Ian back for the second day of our Performance: SPORT course where we look at even more cornering techniques, including revealing our secret hairpin bend! And if you want to see what others have said you can see the review section here: https://facebook/SurvivalSkills?sk=reviews)
Posted on: Sun, 05 Oct 2014 10:15:06 +0000
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