I was wondering if anyone knows about motorcycle gymkhana?
I did one of these a few weeks ago it was fun, although it also taught me that I still have a lot to learn about bike control!
Here's what I wrote about it on another forum...
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So why is it that, every time you think you're getting a handle on riding a bike, you try something new and suddenly realise again just how much you *don't* know?!
Ok, I'm not actually saying this is a bad thing (far from it!) but it's a little depressing when you think "yeah, should be a doddle" and then actually find out "bugger, this is harder than it looks and now I need to re-evaluate my skill set!"
As mentioned elsewhere I went to the
Motorcycle Gymkhana Experience Day event at Kempton Park today (which I only found out about last night) and thought that because I'd done the SAM Slow Riding and Machine Control courses and been practicing my U-turns and Figures of 8, I shouldn't have too much of a problem with this.
Alas it turns out that wasn't the case, but I did learn a lot of useful things which I'm now also going to have to practice...
The Experience Days cost £15 and are a chance to give these events a try and learn techniques, as opposed to the Competition Days where you're actually trying to win and improve your MG rating.
So I got to Kempton Park around Midday and booked in for the second session of the day which started at 12:30 and watched some of the people who had done the earlier session practicing on the warm-up track, although my confidence wasn't exactly bolstered much by a guy on a GSX 1400 who got it wrong, grabbed a handful of front brake and ended up sliding about 20 feet with attendant expensive sounding noises and a scraped elbow and knee (fortunately that was the only oops of the day!)
There were all sorts of other bikes there, another FZ6 like mine, an ER-6, SV-650, ZX-9 Ninja, a Blackbird and even a Vespa Scooter(!) to name a few, so you can certainly try this on any machine you own.
We started with an introductory briefing, some safety notes and an explanation of the cone system - Red cones go on your right, Blue cones on your left, if it has a yellow band around it you turn more than 270 degrees (and often full circle once or twice) etc, then we were shown the Warm-up track. This started with a simple 4 cone slalom followed by a wide zig-zag, then a left hand u-turn, and another wide zig-zag, this time with 5 cones.
We watched one of the Marshals go around the course, then we followed him around to see his lines, first one at a time, then two of us following him before being allowed to tackle it on our own. I found the slalom wasn't too hard, but the zig-zags were a different matter, even though I've done the Look, Lean, Roll exercise, it's different when you're trying to do it as a virtually full lock U-turn at speed!
After that it was the "GP-8s", a series of five figure 8 turns around two cones 12 metres apart and whilst it's all very well having practiced around 6 parking bays, when you're used to doing it at walking pace, trying to do it quicker isn't so easy. This was timed and unfortunately I was the slowest. I knew what I should be doing, ie gripping the bike with my legs, pushing it into the turn with my outside thigh and leaning the bike under me with my body upright whilst powering it through the turn, but I just wasn't getting it right
The last part was the full Motorcycle Gymkhana course where, from the marked Start Box, you had to ride up to a line on your left, set at 45 degrees to the direction you start, with a cone at each end, cross it with your front wheel, then turn back to the right, around the end cone before doing a 4 cone slalom.
This was followed by a right, left, right zig-zag, then around a curve to a series of cones where you had to do a full left hand circle around the first one, *two* right hand circles around the second and then another right hand circle around the last one.
Finally there was a two-cone gate you had to go through, turn left, around a red cone, back out through another gate and stop in the Finish Box.
I was a bit better at this and wasn't the slowest, although I didn't get a time on my first run because I missed out the zig-zag, but the second run was better and reasonably quick.
Everyone was friendly, the Marshals were giving helpful advice and suggestions on how to improve and apart from a couple of sudden heavy showers (it wasn't supposed to rain until the evening
: ) it was a very nice day.
So, in conclusion, if you want to practice your machine control and close quarters manoeuvring, I'd certainly recommend giving an Experience Day a try
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Topic: Motorcycle Gymkhana (Read 2661 times)
