PEOPLE, EVENTS AND RIDES
De-rusting your riding, Tenerife, three season gloves and more…
Ididn’t think I needed this training. After all, I did a similar day 18 months ago which went OK and I’ve had 25,000 incident-free miles since then. Peter Hickman won’t be losing sleep about my corner speed but I’m old enough not to be bothered about that – enjoyment and arriving in one piece are where it’s at. And riding 5000 miles through winter should mean there’s no rustiness.
‘Yeeeeaah, it doesn’t always work like that,’ says Ryan Decarteret from Rapid Training as we stand beside a B-road somewhere near Berkhamsted. ‘Riding all winter is better than sitting in a car, but when we ride in bad weather we tend to avoid the twisties and take motorways instead, and then you’re sitting on your bum letting the bike do all the work. You don’t need to hustle the bike along, put weight through your feet to let the bike move beneath you, and keep your arms loose. So even though you’ve done a lot of miles, you can still be out of practice come the spring.’
Though I’m tempted to argue the toss about this, I don’t – we’ve just had a brisk ride through some surprisingly good lanes on the first warmish day of the year and I felt creaky. Out front, Ryan was rattling along at a decent lick and it felt unsettling riding so fast. I realise I’ve been pottering all winter.
Like all Rapid Training’s coaches, Ryan’s trained to Police Class 1 standard and has that annoying ability of appearing to make zero effort while riding at indecent speed. I’m learning just by watching his lines and how he uses speed – very slow near hazards, much, much faster everywhere else. By comparison I’ve been riding a potentially dodgy middleground. And for reasons known only to my subconscious I turn in too early on right-handers.
Ryan’s evangelical about getting an early season refresher like this. ‘Why spend half the summer getting back up to speed when you can fast-track that and spend the whole summer on form?’ And what’s the area where people have most problems in spring? ‘Taking bends at speed,’ he says. ‘This is always number one. You go into a corner at a pace you managed at the end of last summer and suddenly realise it’s too fast. You might get round, but there’ll be a lot of “oh f*cks”.’