Counter-Steering

After practicing on some trails today, I am now convinced that this, or rather the lack of this, is 9/10ths of the reason why I suck at cross.

Road racers don't really pay much attention to it, except in crits when you are trying to corner at 30mph. On a cross bike, it's much more important because everything is so floppy. The tires are floppy, the terrain is floppy, and so you really need to flop the wheel over in a turn. I can't believe I haven't thought about this before! I went through this whole cournter-steering thing before when practicing crit cornering earlier this year.

Why is it so important? When you turn, your center of gravity needs to be to the inside of your wheels. Now, if you are to turn at all, you have to counter-steer at least a little; it's the only way you can possibly stay balanced in a turn. However, if you set into a turn without an explicit counter-steer, you end up very upright and are essentially balancing your bike by moving your body around. SLOW. Any bump or rut and you have to physically shift positions on your bike to stay balanced. Not terribly stable.

Contrast this to setting into a turn witha good counter-steer. Your weight while your body is neutral on the bike is already inside the tires. To counteract any bump or slide, all you do is steer, which your reactions do automatically.

That's my theory anyway. We'll see how it works come Blind Date on Wednesday. It's very possible that I really do just simply suck at this.