What do you consider hard riding?
 

The "Do I have a Chance?" post got me wondering what members here consider "hard riding." It would be interesting to know what your ages are as well.

I'm 40 and have been riding for over half my life, but I can't imagine riding to the limits of my '03 SH. I live Kentucky and would put our twisties up against almost any other area in the nation. That being said, I've yet to feel safe enough on our public roads to get up to knee scraping speed. I've broken 110mph, but can't imagine maintaining in that range.

I'm not asking about extremes, or how stupid you got one afternoon ten years ago. I'm wondering how members define a challenging, yet controlled ride.

well for me its defined first by my chicken strips if there is not one on the rear, and about 1/4 to half in on the front, I was riding "hard". As far as control if I keep it between the lines and don't have any "pucker" moments because of my entrance speeds I had a "good hard run":D. I don't usually blast the straights. I really like the twisties.

Age 24

if you're scraping the hero pegs and don't have much or any chicken strip, you're riding hard.

I'm good with their descriptions. Next summer, it will be again no chicken strips on the rear, and some tire lifting as I exit the twisties. If I can get the front chicken strip to disappear, that would be hard riding.

Because of the profiles of the tires it is doubtful if you will be able to get rid of the front "chicken strip." I see well ridden race bikes with strips like that on the front tire. Getting rid of it would likely necessitate crashing.

The hero feelers are permanently gone and I'm working on grinding of the thread for them, corner by corner... No chicken strip in the rear, little in front...

On a good run I definetly get my ass moving side to side, and knee down, but usually won't scrape the pads on a public road... I'll reserve that and scraping metal for tracks... I prefer a healty margin on open roads... Cagers are big, mean and hard...:(

Altough "riding hard" for me means track... pure and simple... And there "hard" means I stop pushing when the rear starts hopping under breaking and the chassie is squirrely under me, on power in mid corner... And at that point the bike most certainly have more to give, altough I'm at my limit...

Age? well... about 6 or so...:D (*5)

Or a belt sander, but that's cheating.;)

If you drag the exhaust mid pipes and kick stand (while retracted) without crashing, that's riding hard. I manged it @ spring Mountain Motorsports park (racetrack)... THAT was hard riding. I don't go anywhere CLOSE to that on the street.

Gee, pretty much like what was said above. But you have to pick your spots.

First & foremost it's about being in control; keeping it in my lane. It helps to really know the road if you're gonna run hard. Visibility: is there a driveway around that corner? Within those limits, as long as I'm on a really good road out in the middle of nowhere, I like to ride as hard as possible while still feeling in complete control.

I scrape the pegs regularly but the little nubs on the front tire never get worn off the edges.. rear they do, but never the front.

Up in the mountains, anything that's double the posted speed limit I consider "hard riding". I don't even get close but I've seen plenty pass me up that do. I've done it in a car, but even with super soft tires I was still sliding.

With balls like that on a mountain road, I'm not exactly sure how they get on their bikes. I'm 31, and think I'm a pretty conservative rider.

Riding Hard: Finding ones limits(the point of you screaming at yourself under your helmet "Oh my God I'm gonna crash if I don't slow down") and riding just under that threshold. After all there is no standard. Just you and your bike and what ever level you care to ride at. Age 41.

I'm 26.

Not sure what "hard riding" could be here in Florida.
I only have a handful of roads that can claim contribution to the "holy knees" in my riding pants. I get 'er up to around 155 or so on the interstate, then my twisty turny adventures are normally ridden at around 100-120mph. Self admittedly, some curves have me slowing a bit more than I normally would, but the bike IS fast...and I'd rather not trash it lol.
Hard riding for this here florida dude is anything that gets me outta 4th gear and sends me on an turn angle of harder than 45 degrees. (keeping the rpm's in the 10-12k range adds to it too)

LMAO!!


Na it's not that hard. After a while, we learn to just lug our right nut over the tank to where it sits comfortably in a riding position.
Usually the left ball hangs a little lower (next to the choke) but gotta watch out, sometimes it catches road rash around those corners.

Have you seen the dyno charts? not much point in revving it past 9200 IMNSHO. And the redline is there for a reason, ya' know?

I am 57 and started with a Honda CL90 in 1968. I am in shape and workout so that I can ride hard; on a race track riding hard is using all the tire with inside boot scraping the pavement. If sport touring ,riding hard is covering 890+ miles on my VFR in one day (i did this again last summer and felt strong even though before I started I was not sure I still had it in me).

i think any ride where you get the blood pumping is hard enough. and i wouldnt waste my time street racing. im still learning to ride and get better every season. i know that a pretty tame ride now would = heart pounding excitment in my first season. i believe that if you have no chickenstrips riding on the road you are probally riding very close to getting hurt.

Riding Hard
 

:peepwall: 29 yrs


well, well, well

I see most Gents here agree that the twisties at high rpms is the ideal picture of riding hard.:horse:

Me personally here in south georgia with tons of back roads with lots of straights............and open country highway my thing is keeping an eye for ol ga state patrol..........and from there "superman" hold throttle and make the heart beat.....120 and let off the gas to make the v twin make the jardine's bark..........break back down to 75- 80 and ride...............then a few miles out side the next town....'Superman":wheelie:

just a lil fun.......................not going around curves at 150 trying to scrape medal and to remove a chicken strip......I guess I'll be a chicken After all what is a HAWk...lol:draggin:

speed burst here and there in a pack of 3 or 5 riders maintaining distance and displacement........120 mi all around trip.

this is what i called "hard riding" on my monster.

I raised the back of the bike 2 inches to aid turn in. I made rearsets that moved my footpegs up 1.5 inches and inward 1 inch.

I made a new kickstand mount to tuck it up and out of the way better.

With the balls of my feet on the pegs I would wear through the rubber on the toes of my boots in about 20 miles of so called "hard riding".

I no longer have knee sliders on my leathers as i cant afford them, but my knee has touched the ground on accident with my other leather riding pants.

When my rear tire would get semi worn i could feel the rear end stepping out under hard acceleration in 2nd and 3rd gear. Adjusting tire pressure didnt really help.

I miss that bike, i had it set up perfect for the never ending twisties that im surrounded by.

And if you wanna drag hard parts doing about 130 ill show you where to do it.

I'm with RPV-Hawk.

When you drag the kickstand on the left and midpipe on the right, you're riding a Super Hawk hard. You will only get there on track days.

Once you do that, it starts looking silly to try it on the street.

I'm looking forward to riding a real track bike!!

I was riding pretty hard - not that hard. Still don't remember what happened. I hear it was black sand. I cut to the inside of the outside tire lane.

http://i43.tinypic.com/2nqfomb.jpg

OOF!.. RCVTR, how long ago was that... and have you come back to 100% yet?


On a lighter note: Hard riding vs Riding hard... Hard riding is in the rain at night in a hurricane, with high winds for three hours. Riding hard is riding anywhere near your limits for an extended period of time.

Sept. 28, 2005.
Yep, made a 100+% recovery - amazing!
Impacted at my left shoulder. Broke 4 ribs and a collarbone. No other injuries! Body armor is the shit!

I was unconcious for 20-25 minutes. everyone thought I was dead. Except my buddy Steve. he's a paramedic and was riding 2 bikes in front. My buddy Zach hit the sand in front of me and recovered. I probably hit the sand he pulled out and lost the front at ~80 MPH. Bounced off the embankment and pinwheeled along the road, ending up in the ditch.

I woke up and saw Steve holding his thumb in the middle of my forehead to keep me from moving around. Nex thing I knew I was in the chopper.

It had been a long day of hard riding (rain, snow, dirt, gravel), then the weather cleared and we had hours of incredible twisties - super focused, on it. I got a SoBe and was having a sugar crash, I could feel myself losing focus. We were on big sweepers on th Klamath River. I thought "shit, we're going to fast." that's all I remember.

VCVTE - I had the same kind of injuries - collarbone, ribs, Punchered lung and was unconcious, this was in 1993. I think these are common injuries (painful also).

Yeah punctured lung too. The Ortho looked at the X-Rays and just shook his head.

Pain - lots of it - for a long itme. I thought the damn ribs would never stop moving around. The ends were just kind of floating in space. Ughh. it was a full 10 weeks of misery. But I only missed 1 week of work! I must have been a sight, driving over Kingsbury Grade, dosing on Vicodin, with one arm.

As soon as the Doc gave me the all-clear, I started at the Gym. I was skiing by January 1st.

Now, if my wife would just get over it...

27 yo
Hard riding- long ride in adverse conditions (over 500 miles) such as unfamiliar territory in the dark, rain, snow, or spirited sport riding on a race bike.

Riding hard- constant elevated pulse with frequent spikes, a pace that is not maintainable for more than 20 minutes or so, a pace that could put me in jail, a pace where other riders are crashing behind me (happened 3 times), a pace that I am losing traction in near perfect conditions (that's how you get rid of the front chicken strip- you slide it around).

This is not riding hard, just fun and smooth. I am well under the 55mph limit with a perfect line of sight. Someone earlier said somthing about keeping it in their lane...if y'all only knew the truth :evillaugh:.
Attachment 30061
Attachment 30062
This is riding too hard...
Attachment 30063:evillaugh:

Lot of interesting perspectives.I'm 50 and been riding all my adult life.To me "riding hard" is pushing to the edge/beyond my own "comfort zone".That can be anything from trying to beat a personal best time on a favorite road,to staying in the saddle that extra 50 miles on a long ride,or even trying to scrape parts I never scraped before.I do find that the older I get,the stronger the sense of my own mortality becomes and therefore the fewer chances I take on public roads.Never done a track day,but hope to remedy that next summer at Brainard...:shock:

well addressed TOPic......from all angles and from all age groups.

+1 ... the level is pretty dramatic. i've pushed mine pretty hard on both. i do prefer the track though... :). i remember reading peoples comments about the faster you get at the track the slower you are on the road. for me it's true. just no reason to push that hard.

tim

Q: What do you consider hard riding?

A: Ask your sister.

Sorry.

Out.

The hardest ride on my SH was 1550km (a bit over 960 mi) of backroads in one day, though all in daylight hours. Not a motorway in any of it, plenty of variety in elevation and bends, a bit of gravel....brilliant.

On the racetrack a hard ride is one where you are on the limit the whole time, drifting or sliding tires in every corner for the whole race. I haven't done that for years, having learned over 38 consecutive road racing seasons that there are still dumbclucks on the track, just as there are on the road, and you have to leave room to evade them.

PS it's over a million miles since I last fell off on the road (I was 17).

I refuse to ride hard, by my standards, on road, but I still get from A to B as fast as anyone and have yet to have been passed in a corner :fawkdance:.

It seems that I define "Hard riding" differently that the rest of you.
I can pust the Super Hawk pretty far. I have confidence in my riding ability, and I never push past what I think I can handle. My chicken strips were gone 15 minutes after I picked up my brand new 05 VTR.

How I guage how hard I'm riding is by how far I'm reving the engine.
I also want to be as smooth as possible and as easy on my equipment as I can. But still riding hard means that I must red line it a few more times that I like.
I don't mind red lining it once in a while. But when I look down and see the needle 1,500 past red, I feel bad about my riding.

And I feel like I rode the bike too hard.

If my heart skips a beat because I've entered a corner too fast or the front wheel starts to slide, I just tone it back a bit. But not much.
Some rear wheel slide is acceptable in my world. If under power in a corner the rear slide a bit, that's ok, as long as it predictable.
Backing her into the corner gets me high, and I aim to do that many times.

If you cross the centre line, you should just park the bike or go home.

Presumably you have not been riding very long.

And you won't continue, too, either, if this is how you ride on the street.

So, have you red-lined it in top gear?

PS you can get rid of chicken strips really fast by taking incorrect cornering lines. Just a tip.

take it to the track ...

http://www.pacifier.com/~trinc/images/mc811_2.jpg

can you get it over farther ?

http://www.pacifier.com/~trinc/images/pegs.jpg

not much ...

http://www.pacifier.com/~trinc/image..._trackday5.jpg

the left mid pipe takes a beating before the peg :shock:

http://www.pacifier.com/~trinc/image...day_photo2.jpg

this is a great shot that shows my puck on the deck ... if your consistent in your body position you get a good sense of when hard parts are going to touch down.

http://www.pacifier.com/~trinc/image...day_photo4.jpg

the only problem comes when taking a different line and you try & flick it in quick and bounce off the pipes - but when you have as many miles as i have you get a good 'feel' for where the bike is.


she'll take a lot & is very forgiving but there is a point you don't want to cross and her shortcoming will bite you in the a$$.

tim

Everybody seems to have their own definition of "hard". I ride rather fast on public roads, sometimes faster than rather fast. I don't think of it as "hard', I think of it as challenging and fun when I'm up in the mountains, but I never ride racetrack "hard".

I once rode a Yamaha 500 twin from Ft. Lauderdale to College Park, Maryland straight through (about 1100 miles I think) in January. Didn't have the money for a cheap motel. Just stopped for food and fuel. Couldn't stop for more than about 30 minutes 'cause the battery was near dead, the electric start wouldn't turn the engine and I feared the kick starter wouldn't fire it if it wasn't still somewhat warm. It was cold and raining from north Georgia to Rocky Mount, N.C. No big deal 'cause I had a Hefty Bag on each leg and one on my torso, secured against wind rip with a half roll of duct tape.

By Rocky Mount it dropped below freezing and started to snow. When I hit the first traffic light off of the D.C. beltway, I had to guide my left foot to the pavement visually
'cause it was too damn cold to have any feeling left in it. I arrived at my destination on reserve with a grand total of 26 cents on my person. That was indeed a hard ride. Kinda fun too.

I've been riding for 36 years. Is that long enough?

I took the chicken strips off in the first 15 minutes to get rid of the slippery covering on the tire. Not because I was riding fast around corners.

I don't think the bike will hit red in 6th gear.

I would love to have you out on one of my rides.

I'm very safe. You would be surprised how safely I ride.

it will. i bounce it off the rev limiter ( or course i'm running -1/+2 ).

tim

Stock it won't hit the limiter though...:)

I just want to ride again.

I don't care about winning a pissing contest...