Originally Posted by
otismedina
When I'm racing/drafting, where do I look? At the tire of the person in front of me? At his front wheel? Ahead, somewhere in the pack? Thanks for your help.
As mentioned above, you look in front. You can do this two ways:
1. Look through their legs, sort of above the rear brake. This is if you're shorter than the rider in front (my case most of the time). I look past the rear brake, so the rear brake is not in focus.
2. For those tall folks, you can look over the rider's shoulders. I've rarely been able to do this.
Finally, as an alternative, you can ride slightly to the side and just look in front of you and the rider you're slightly behind. Choose the protected non-wind side if you do this.
Practice this technique while driving. Look ahead around corners etc. If it were legal I'd say put a 6" high strip of limo tint on the bottom of the windshield so you can't look down too easily. Get used to seeing obstacles or conditions, mentally filing them, and avoiding or driving through them appropriately without having to look at them.
Originally Posted by
92degrees
Guys crashed while soft-pedaling on the cool-down lap last week. How much slower does it have to get for sketchy people to be unsketchy?
Folks stop paying attention when cooling down. But it can be a delta in speed that makes a difference too. If everyone is going 25 mph, it's safe. Ditto 15 mph. But if some folks are going 10 mph, and there's one or two folks that are still going 25, not safe. I'm not saying that's what happened, but I've seen some really bad crashes on the cool down laps (one rider goes straight at a turn, everyone else is turning, and lots of folks crash; rider makes a u-turn on the course; someone is still maintaining some decent speed but was off the back, and someone else slows/turns/etc in front of them).