Traction traction traction…
Dec 16th, 2009 by Leo
The first three rules of real estate are location location location. The first three rules of winter riding (and competitive racing) are traction… Times 3. The thing is you really CAN ride on almost any surface… even one with as little traction as ice. And the liberating thing about riding on low traction surfaces is that once you get a sense of it, it makes all the mixed traction areas (patches of water or ice or gravel or steel road surfaces) more manageable because you know how much traction you have at your disposal, and you know the guidelines within which they are manageable.
A repost of a video I linked to last year
The most dangerous part of riding on a poor traction surface is when you’re going straight and you don’t know how much real traction is available. Are you going to fast? Too slow? Too close? The only way to be able to answer those questions are to test the traction on that surface.
The next step is being able to read how much traction a road surface will give you. So how much traction will that construction dirt give you? How about that patch of snow? Or the wet spot on the pavement?
How do you hone your traction-reading skills?
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