Cyclocross Lesson #3 - Cornering

Today Travis and I went to see Bill Elliston for a cornering clinic at 3pm in Easton. For me, I haven't had to do a ton of cornering on the road and the times I have, I usually have to slow down to a comfortable speed to avoid crashing. In 'cross there are very tight turns and you can't just slow down to a crawl every time you want to to or you'll never get anywhere. There is art to it and today we were doing to learn it.

We started off doing the hardest drill ever to work on our bike handling. In a parking lot, half filled water bottles were placed on the ground near a painted parking line (for reference) and we had to ride by it, slow down, and pick it up. Simple right? Not when you are 5'3" and got short legs and short arms. It was so hard to do and it took me several passes before I figure out my body positioning to get low enough to grab the bottle and not have my obliques cramp up or fall over, which I did several times. Once we picked it up, we had to circle back and place it back down in the same spot without it tipping over. Left and right hands. I was terrible while Trav was killing it. We then switched to shorter bottles (&%$@!) and I eventually did it with both hands. I never graduated to the empty bottle so I'll need to take a remedial class on water bottle pickup at some point.

Bill then setup a 90 degree turn on grass (ahhhh) using stakes and tape like in a race and showed us how to transfer weight, lean, point with our hips and approach and exit the turns properly. We practiced this for a bit and then moved onto the final drill. Bill setup a small 'cross course in some woods with some flat parts, 180 turns, 90 turns and some hills for us to do some laps on. He followed us and gave feedback for a few and then hung out at the turns and gave feedback from there while we rode. We did it clockwise and counterclockwise. Then we got to choose which way we liked best and had a race :) I was dying for some type of competition so this was exactly what I needed. I got a 10 second head start and was the "rabbit" and Travis took off in hot pursuit when time was up. She never caught up and I was victorious! To her detriment, she did crash once, but that is due to her being a bit more ballsy than me. After we both finished, I felt great fitness wise and learned I gained 15 seconds on Travis during the race. Yay! Bill said I was very tense during the drills, but was happy to see me relax in the race and really let it go and attack. The race did lack barriers and Bill said he almost ran back to get one and was thinking about putting on up on the straightaway without telling us to see how we managed, but in the end he didn't. Travis and I are almost equally matched - I have better fitness, but poorer handling skills while she has better handling skills, but lacks some fitness. Travis goes into the turns more aggressively and requires breaking while I enter, go thru and exit at about the same pace but it was pointed out that both styles work and are getting us around turns about equally. Should be interesting come race time. I just wish I knew how I compared to my competition right now. Travis and I now need to practice, practice, practice and find some races to enter. God I want to race to bad right now.

Afterwards we stopped at my sisters house a few minutes away (how convenient is that?) and she had a nice carb filled pasta and salad dinner waiting for us. Ahh, that was luxurious, my sister is the best!