|
oh yeah. i guess i have done that a few times.
as far as braking technique, i have never had any luck being in the center of the bike when braking. every time, without fail, it winds up in me pushing down on the bars to keep from going forward which when braking hard means you are pushing out your front tire and putting in all kinds of crap input that you don't want into the bars which start slides or turn small slides into crashes.
these days what i do, is basically never ride centered on the bike, i always ride on one side of the bike or the other. its good for turning sure, but its better for braking. instead of having to use my upper body for support, the "in"-side of my torso rests on the tank while my outside leg braces the peg so that the inside of my thigh is pressed against the very back of the gas tank, which when combined with the outside leg pushing back keeps you from sliding forward and gives you lots of freedom with the controls up top. using the other peg push forward helps a lot too. i think someone told me this is called pivot steering. not sure why anyone would call it that.
but anyway about the actual braking part... theres 3 zones of braking in my mind. the "up" zone, which is about the same as rear brake... not much braking can be done, go too fast here and it just locks... really not much going on here. the "mid" zone, which happens after the front of the bike compresses. this second zone gets you most of your braking but you can still go for more this is where most people stop... doing things too quickly in this zone can send the rear tire in the air pretty easily. and then the "down" zone, which is really sketchy to get to and really wont happen without good, hot tires on clean dry asphalt. trying to brake this hard with **** suspension or **** tires or poor conditions results in a nice front end slide that sends you into the dirt... but anyway.... if you jump steps you slide. so take it one zone at a time... bite it to get it into zone 1, ease on smoothly to get a nice mid-stroke, then once its made it down far enough you can SLOWLY step into full brakes. depending on pads, this might not really be very much (stock non-sintered pads) but with good pads this will be pretty extreme braking... think close to 2 Gs.
granted, when you have lots of practice, getting that far only takes about 1 or two seconds. smooth is the key. you go smooth, you can brake like you have a parachute. do it wrong, and it feels sketchy as **** and you wind up sliding all around
|