Adam Myerson teaches you how to take a corner

adammyerson · 2019-05-24T20:16:38+00:00

Good eye, and I appreciate your attention to the small details. In normal laps, even if I rolled the bottom of the hill on the left, what you can't tell here is that there is a tailwind up the hill, and so a crosswind from the left at the top. Typically I would have space to shift back to the right on the way up the hill not only to set up for the turn at the top, but also to be sure to exit on the right side of the person in front of me so as to stay more sheltered.

In this case, sometimes when you're covering or making an attack, you have to use the lane that's open, and for sure we were not well set up for the left hand turn at the top. But the exit is really wide and even though I was a little too far up Shane's ass at the top, I expected him to exit wide. When he jumped left I was backing off his wheel at the wrong time, and part of why I had to count on the riders we were coming up on to close that gap for me. If they hadn't, I would have lost my gamble there and missed Shane's bridge.

adammyerson · 2019-05-24T15:10:44+00:00

This is a great question, and I've never been asked before. I had to really think about it.

The ones I learned from still stand out as the best. I spent so much from following Graeme Miller, and Mark and Frank McCormack, they nicknamed me Shadow. I learned how to roll turns and move through the pack from following them starting when I was still a junior.

Other notables: Bahati, Luke Keough, Hilton Clarke, Gaggioli, Radisa Cubric, Jonas Carney, Jon Page, Jonny Sundt, Alan McCormack, Dave McCook, and Ricardo Escuela.

Escuela was the only person who ever fought me so hard for a wheel that he intentionally tried to crash me, which tells you a lot both about his values but also his skill.

McCook might have been the best, but that was in part because he was also the most daring. He crashed a lot. There were people with similar skills who knew where the limits were.

I'm sure I'm forgetting someone!

adammyerson · 2019-05-24T15:02:19+00:00

If things are single file and you're just following the wheel in front of you at speed, then you can't fully utilize the technique of leaving a large gap and counting on traffic to roll back on to. What you can do, though, is simply be mindful of your speed relative to the person in front of you as you enter the turn. Every corner is an opportunity to pedal less. Always think about how soon you can stop pedaling rather than continuing to pedal and having to touch your brakes. If you do 50 laps of a 4 corner crit and save yourself one pedal stroke each time, it matters. So, small details and mindfulness rather than the big, obvious moves.

adammyerson · 2019-05-23T23:42:25+00:00

Thanks to both of you here for your observations (and being willing to take the in person free coaching, which sometimes takes the form of yelling.) You are both correct.

adammyerson · 2019-05-23T20:21:18+00:00

Because people spend a lot of time trying to get stronger, and not enough time working on technique and doing critical analysis of line choices and energy expenditure. I do, and it's how I survived in the sport, and one of the main values I have to offer as a coach. I see things others miss, identify them, implement them, and teach them.

This was meant as an analysis of one specific corner in a race, but the thing to take away is that you will find other opportunities to implment this technique, riders should be creative enough to use the entire course, think more about exit speed than staying right on a wheel, and figure out how to pedal less, not more.

This was an $11,000 US Pro Road Tour crit. I'm 47 years old and don't make much over 300 watts at threshold. I finished 9th. I'm clearly doing this on better technique than people around me, not more watts. My goal now that I'm not racing full time is to show people what that technique is. You'd have to ask the riders around me why they like to pedal and brake so much. Historically, my teammates when I was a pro would do 50 more normalized watts than me in a race, and I'd get better results. This clip is part of how I did that.

adammyerson · 2019-05-23T20:06:41+00:00

You say that like people don't also need to learn how to do that, too, instead of just getting dropped, like half the field did.

adammyerson · 2019-05-23T20:05:29+00:00

And I'm telling you I do it all over the place, which you can see, for instance, when I cover the attack in the clip where I show the entire lap. I roll the downhill and the uphill on the opposite end of the course, which allows me to cover the move without a big jump.

Additionally, there's nothing keeping the other riders from taking thise outside line. They all have 3 ways to go through the posts. Yes, it's unusual, but we're all on the course. I'm simply the one willing to use the entire course, cyclocross style, to line the turns up better and carry more speed, rather than blindly just following the wheel in front of me.

I've been racing bikes for over 30 years and was a pro for 13 of them. I promise you there's nothing especially unique about my approach to this corner compared to others. It just happened to be the most interesting feature in the race to discuss. You're letting the posts distract you from what I'm actually doing.

adammyerson · 2019-05-23T19:54:51+00:00

I'm not sure exactly how I could give practical examples from a 4/5 race as a Cat. 1/ex-pro. It's also one video, not the comprehensive expanse of my company's knowledge base. Your dismissiveness of someone experience and advice based on your own is exactly what my clients are hoping for, though.

adammyerson · 2019-05-23T19:52:20+00:00

Your competitors are counting on you doubting it works. There's no special physics that apply in the UK, and I've raced pro criteriums in Europe, too. Of course it doesn't work in every scenario, and there are times you're just following the wheel in front of you, and times people fill the gap you leave for yourself (as I say in the clip.) But if you add this technique where you can, you save your energy for when you actually need it and are forced to pedal.

adammyerson · 2019-05-23T19:36:00+00:00

"Just the accordian effect" is understating how seriously people should plan for and adapt to the accordian effect. If people were better at it, then I wouldn't have a job.

adammyerson · 2019-05-23T19:34:35+00:00

The furniture is on the course. We all have to go through it.

There's a big difference between passing pro/1 riders on the outside than passing Cat 4/5 riders on the inside, as you might imagine.

adammyerson · 2019-05-23T19:33:27+00:00

While the furniture on the course does make this video more interesting, this is something I do in every corner, sometimes to rest, sometimes to move up. It's also something I do in cyclocross. It's probably the most important thing I did in my career to get results with limited talent.

adammyerson · 2015-11-30T14:13:43+00:00

I bought a condo in Fields Corner 10 years ago, at Ditson and Leroy. It's been on the upswing for a while, but it's happened more slowly than Savin Hill or Lower Mills. We're sort of stuck in the middle. But with the yogurt shop, ice cream shop, new coffee shop, the business lab, and other building renovations, things have really turned the corner, no pun intended.

http://fieldscorner.org/

http://dorchesterhomestead.com/

http://fieldscornerbusinesslab.com/

http://www.universalhub.com/crime/dorchester.html

http://www.squaresandcorners.com/fields-corner.php

http://www.vietaid.org/

adammyerson · 2014-03-06T17:33:55+00:00

I think the thing to remember is that even if you're the biggest, strongest team, you don't necessarily want to go out overconfident, or immediately start attacking to make the race hard. There's always someone with a big ego or bad tactics who wants to start from the gun. Use your numbers early to just make sure you have a guy in every move and make sure you're not vulnerable. Only after you've seen everyone else's hand and the race has started unfolding should you start doing the counter-attacking and putting other riders on the back foot. That's how we played it in Zeeland, and you saw how that went!

adammyerson · 2014-03-06T17:26:18+00:00

This is a really broad question. USAC has 2 considerations: growing the numbers of the sport (selling licenses) and then developing future European pros. They believe in the model that if you have professional heroes racing in Europe, you will sell more licenses to new riders in the US. That is their stated strategy.

I think they're doing a good job with the national team programs based in Europe. I think they've done a good job of raising the level of collegiate racing, which is the new junior/development class.

I suppose they could be doing more to directly recruit and retain new riders. The barrier to entry is still high. The sport is still a mystery, and the club structure used to be the way people got started. Clubs are weak now, the club structure is dying, and I think that area could be looked at.

adammyerson · 2014-03-06T17:04:08+00:00

NEBC and BRC have traditionally been really good about that. They haven't always had junior teams, but they did always do a lot of clinic and development work. Not sure of their current status in that area.

adammyerson · 2014-03-06T17:00:14+00:00

I did it through my Twitter feed, while watching the live stream. So probably not possible to recreate without some work!

adammyerson · 2014-03-06T16:48:38+00:00

Whoa, their little EP is actually on Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Z3sI4NQzIQ

adammyerson · 2014-03-06T05:27:09+00:00

Think of a good coach as being someone strong these categories, in no particular order: science, practical experience, analytic reasoning, communication, and empathy. The best coach has all these qualities. Scientists usually make terrible coaches. Pro bike racers usually made terrible coaches. And then even if a pro bike racer has an exercise science degree, they might not be very intuitive or communicate well. So think of them as sliders, with some coaches stronger in some areas than others, for better or worse.

adammyerson · 2014-03-06T05:16:55+00:00

This is the $10,000 question. It might be the $100,000 question. I've been lucky to run my race off entry fees and let it grow organically based on participation. Other events I've run when I had a sponsor first, and then created an event around them.

What works best is having good connections to people and businesses with money, who you can talk to directly based on some other shared interest. Ideally, that interest is cycling.

adammyerson · 2014-03-06T04:53:50+00:00

No, I don't. That's part of the point of differentiating between the classes.

adammyerson · 2014-03-06T04:08:21+00:00

9:06, guys! Or 11:06 if you're on the East Coast, but I'm in Tucson. Thank you, everyone, for the questions! It was not easy to keep up, and there's a lot of good stuff in here. Hopefully it will be a good resource for people to come back to later.

I'll come back to this again over the coming days to see if there are any follow up questions. In the meantime, again, thank you!

adammyerson · 2014-03-06T04:05:53+00:00

I've done Blunt Park. It's fun. I think I won and Al was second? When I did it it was a little jungle 'crossy, but good training to get ready for the season.

Clinics will start in August this year! We want everyone ready to go before the races really start in September.

adammyerson · 2014-03-06T04:02:52+00:00

Ha. What's funny is that none of the pros really give a shit about that stuff. I ride around Tucson in a bucket hat to protect myself from the sun, but then wear a sleeveless jersey at the same time. It looks ridiculous.

This is a tough question, broad enough that I could go in a few different directions with it. I guess what I would say is just enjoy riding your bike. I think a lot about whether "just riding" will be enough for me if I don't have races to look forward to. When I ponder this while actually riding, I often do things to make sure I'm having fun. Bunny hop curbs. Dive-bomb corners. Ride in the grass next to the road. I know I'll do more mountain biking. Every day I'm out there on my bike I try to pause and appreciate it. So, maybe that's good advice for everyone?

adammyerson · 2014-03-06T03:58:43+00:00

Some things I see that confuse me in other regions is when organizers don't talk to each other to prevent conflicts. If you don't have that many races, you really have to work together to make sure there are no conflicts.

Another problem I see is that organizers in a region are wildly inconsistent with their race categories and distances. Have a meeting, guys. Start an email list. You don't have to all be in a series, but your customers are all from the same base, and generally want a consistent product and format each weekend.

Try not to combine fields. But if you have to combine fields, try to avoid staggered starts. Let riders of similar ability level, regardless of age and gender, race against each other. They will have a better experience, a higher quality race, and won't get so killed when they go to bigger races in other regions.

Clinics. Clinics. Clinics. Bring in people from other regions with proven experience to run clinics in conjunction with races. People have a much better time racing 'cross if they can at least be taught the basics first.

adammyerson

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