MOUNTAIN BIKE · Race Craft
RACE LINES: BRAKING POINTS, EXITS AND WHERE TIME IS ACTUALLY WON
13 min · Full library · written lesson, video in production
The point
After this lesson you can look at a technical descent and say where the time actually lives on it, then build a run out of braking points and exits rather than out of corners you happen to like.
Half the answer, free
The Technique
- The clock is measuring the straight, not the corner. The time you lose inside a corner is small. The time you lose because you left that corner slow is paid out over every metre of track after it, and it keeps being paid until the next thing that slows you down. So the value of a corner's exit is set by how long you carry the speed afterwards. Get into the habit of asking how long do I hold this speed before you ask what is the fastest way through here. A corner with a long open run below it is worth sacrificing an entry for. A corner that feeds straight into another corner is worth almost nothing on its own, and should be treated as the entry to the next one.
- Braking and turning are competing for the same grip. A tyre has a finite amount of it, and every unit spent slowing the bike is unavailable for changing its direction. The racing shape is therefore simple to say and hard to do: all the slowing happens with the bike upright and travelling straight, the brakes come fully off, and then the tyres do one job through the turn. Braking into a turn loads the front, stands the bike up and pushes you wide, which is exactly why so many riders brake harder and still run out of track. Do the slowing where the track is straight and where the surface will hold it, which is usually earlier and steeper than instinct suggests.
- Time is not lost where it feels bad. Riders assume their deficit is in the section that scares them, and it almost never is. It collects in three places: the ground immediately after a mistake, because a bobble costs you speed for every metre until you rebuild it; long sustained sections where you are a fraction slow the whole way through; and the places you brake out of habit when you did not need to. Finding your own requires something more honest than feel, which means splitting the track into sections and comparing yourself to a faster rider section by section rather than run by run. Two people with phones at a section boundary is enough. Almost everyone who does this for the first time discovers their loss sits in the open, fast part they thought was fine.
Still under the glass
- Braking hard not long, when the inside line costs you, and linking corners backwards
- 5 more technique steps
- The 3 mistakes that undo it, with fixes
- The drill that builds the reflex
- The safety non-negotiables
It opens when you book a trip that runs mountain bike - these are the exact drills you run with your coach out there. Your booking unlocks this whole library.
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