I first got on motorised two wheels at the naïve age of 17 and was very quickly smitten by the whole thing. The next few years saw me doing things that now make me wonder how a) I still have a driving licence and b) I’m still alive! However, as can sometimes be the case, life shuffled along down the route of corporate transport and it was not until I was in my early 30s that I got back into biking.

Even in that short period of time – well, ok it was about 10 years, but I like to believe that as being a short time in the scheme of things – I am amazed by how much the level of skill required to pass the bike test has changed. When I first got a motorbike, the two-part test was in vogue. Part 1 was all off-road (and I don’t mean dirt tracking here!) and seemed to consist entirely of one’s ability to negotiate around cones, which at the time seemed all well and good but I had yet to hear of a serious accident caused by a cone that pulled out in front of a motorcyclist without warning or behaved erratically whilst putting it’s make up on / shaving / drinking coffee / talking on it’s mobile. With hindsight I know that the rationale for Part 1 was for bike handling skills but it worries me not a little that the government was prepared to let me loose on the road with L-plates on a CB-125 having only had experience of static cones in a school playground. For whatever reason I never did get around to taking Part 2 – which is where I would’ve found out about traffic. As a result, when I came back to biking I took my theory test, went back to “school” on a Direct Access course and am pleased to say that I passed with only one minor. (Goosenecking? No, no. Merely investigating the full width of my side of the road!)

Since then I’ve been lucky enough to have all sorts of riding experiences from UK track days to the National Rally and the regular pilgrimage to Nurburg. Each in itself has presented a different set of challenges and has improved my ability not only at riding but also in such handy skills as keeping alert enough to ride through the night boosted by nothing more than legal enhancements. Isn’t it amazing what a combination of caffeine, chocolate and energy drinks can do?!

Throughout these fantastic times I have progressed from my delightfully tame little SV650S to my current bike – a second hand GSXR750, which is full of attitude and opportunity.

Now, nobody loves my bike as much as I do, except perhaps it’s previous owner, however I know that I’m only riding to a fraction of both its and my abilities. How do I know this? Not by any one significant element I can assure you. It isn’t just a matter of having someone tuck in behind you on a track day, dive down the inside, take your line and then power off out of the corner in front of you. It is more complex than that. Suffice to say that following about a year’s worth of pondering I came to the conclusion that I needed to go back to school. Again.

There was no question about the kind of training I was looking for or probably more to the point what I wasn’t looking for. Everybody wants something that works for them personally and for me there was no appeal to go down the IAM route. Instead I decided to book myself on a one-day course with Rapid Training. I’ll be honest here and hold my hands up to the fact that having been on a number of the track days that they run, I felt comfortable with their approach and attitude and was confident that this would work for me in a more everyday environment on the road. Not only that, being a fairly straightforward person in my logic, it made perfect sense as all of their instructors hold a Police Class One certificate.

Now I have to say that Rapid are a very professional bunch (no surprise I guess considering their regular jobs) and this was apparent from the moment I contacted them about booking on to a course. Originally I wanted to have one-on-one training and although they will do this, they do strongly recommend that you buddy up with someone else. Despite initially being slightly miffed by this suggestion, I did as recommended and roped Caz, another of the MBT team who, it turned out, was equally interested in improving her skills, into joining me.

At £140 a head you may be choking on your coffee and thinking crikey that’s a bit steep, but thoughtful chaps that they are, payment can be split so that 50% is upfront on booking and the balance can be paid on the day. If you’ve booked a couple of months in advance as we did, it does lessen the impact on the bank balance somewhat!

As the instructors are liberally scattered across the country, there’s bound to be one near you or you can always go completely “off territory” and book with an instructor in a totally different area. A word of warning on this one though. If you are inclined to do that, don’t forget to take into account your journey there and back. It’s an intensive day of riding with full on focus required, which can be tiring.

Anyway. On booking the course, Rapid do ask a lot of questions. Not quite as intimate as wanting to know your inside leg measurement, but detailed nonetheless and on hindsight with complete justification. For you to get the most out of the course, it is essential that they understand as much as they can, not only about the basics such as what bike you ride, but also if you have had any other training and what it is that you want to get out of the course. This is where your input will help to build the foundations of what can be a highly valuable session of on-road training. For me the main focus points were: better carriage and consistency of speed, smoother lines and a more confident riding style.

Together with the booking confirmation and directions on how to find the instructor, another document arrived: Advanced Course Pre-read. As with many things, this got parked to one side until nearer the time, but when I did pick it up again it proved to be rather insightful. Aside from giving you a pretty clear indication of what their attitude (positive) and humour (think Gobi) is like, it is a concise overview of what you can expect from the course. As I mentioned earlier, all of the instructors hold a Police Class One Certificate and have been taught to ride to what they refer to as “The System” of motorcycle control. Rapid have taken this and distilled it into a method that they use on the course, which they summarise into three factors: position, speed, gear. The pre-read explains in simple terms how this would work on the road and gives some prompts of things that we all know, but may need reminding of.

Now before I lose you completely with this preamble, it’s time to tell you about the day itself.

Scheduled to arrive at the instructor’s house for 9am, we set off through Monday morning rush hour traffic having allowed plenty of time to get there. No bad thing as it turned out with us landing on his doorstep just before nine. Slightly nervous about the whole thing, we sat down with Stuart our instructor for a pre-course briefing and a welcome cup a coffee. Having run through the general order of the day and confirmed what our expectations were, Stuart gave us the opportunity to clear up any questions / concerns we may have had before we set off.

Comfortable with what we were doing and wired up to radio mikes (ours without talkback – which transpired to be no bad thing later on!) we set off as quite an incongruous little group of me on my GSXR750, Caz on her GSXR600 and heading up the pack: a Hornet with Stuart astride.

First stage was an assessment of our riding, so Caz and I alternated heading up our trio with our instructor in the middle. Yes it was weird, before you ask me. I know what these guys do for a living and even though there was no uniform or official paraphernalia in sight, initially it was really hard to forget that right behind me was a policeman watching my every move. Apparently Caz was having the same problem. When we stopped for our first break following this assessment, Stuart was very direct and to the point with both of us: you have to relax. Added to that were some pointers to think about and we set off again on some more interesting roads.

Throughout the day, Stuart provided constant feedback about how we were doing and suggestions on what else we could do to help improve our ride. I’m not going to give you a blow-by-blow account of the day (you need to go on a course to fully understand what is involved), but there were some rather surprising parts to the day, a couple of which I’d like to share with you here.

Although a large part of our time was spent traversing winding country roads across the Cotswolds, North Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, there were a number of occasions when we were negotiating villages. Nothing surprising there, particularly as it gave our instructor a chance to check out our “around town” skills. Every now and then he would be talking us through what we would be doing on the next section of our training so we had got used to his commentary, however it was one of these runs through a village that particularly sticks in my mind. Our instructor had mentioned about general awareness and observation about what is going on around you – not just on the road itself – which to me is commonsense. Of course you need to be aware of the total environment and I like to think that I’m pretty observant. But it wasn’t until we got to this village and Stuart started to give a running commentary of what he was seeing in terms of potential hazards in great detail that I realised the extent of what an experienced rider will see. True, I’m sure a large part of it is borne out of the training and experience he has had, but it certainly made me take notice. Since the course I’ve been told that verbalising (eek, that sounds very American) what you see makes you actually digest the information properly, in the sense that it registers fully in your brain. An interesting concept and if you have no qualms about talking to yourself while you’re riding (something I do all the time), you may want to give it a try!

Later on when we were on a break for lunch, our instructor outlined some of the areas he wanted to cover off for the rest of the day and promised that it would be fun as he had a game in mind that we were going to play. Both Caz and I were definitely intrigued. With bellies refuelled (excellent choice of venue Stuart – thanks!) we set off again and it wasn’t long before our instructor decided it was time for a game. In essence, one at a time he wanted us to ride for as long as possible along roads we didn’t know in as smooth and consistent a manner as we could. Nothing controversial there surely? Oh I forgot to say: without using our brakes. At all. Well, as you will appreciate, personal safety should always be paramount so I will tell you that we were given the caveat of “unless you need to in order to avoid having an accident”. Neither Caz nor I quite managed to keep off the brakes completely with the occasional dab here and there, but we both found how much it focused our minds on what we were actually doing in terms of position, speed and gear. Ah. The System. Interestingly, we both found it less daunting in reality than concept. Maybe we had picked up a thing or two throughout the earlier part of the day and were starting to build them into our riding styles.

Optimistically I would like to think that my riding got progressively better during the day and that by the end of it I was leagues ahead of where I had started out. However, in reality I found the day to be very tiring and although I tried hard throughout, I reached a peak in improvement around mid afternoon, which started to tail off as I got more tired. Frustration started to set in as I was becoming less smooth and I distinctly remember uttering a string of oaths at both our instructor and myself as he reminded me that I could do it so why wasn’t I? Told you it was just as well I didn’t have talkback! This is also the point at which I realised why Rapid prefer to train two people at a time. You spend the day alternating between being in front and observed and being behind and observing. The upside of this is that it gives you time to take a step back and digest what you have been learning without feeling under pressure 100% of the time.

From experience, I know that when I start getting frustrated and my riding begins to get a bit ragged, I have reached my limit so it was quite a relief when we started to head back towards home. Once our instructor had headed off and we were left alone for the first time that day, both Caz and I were eager to share our thoughts and observations about how the day had gone. Even though we were both fairly exhausted – we had covered about 250 miles – we had been left with a very positive attitude and belief in what we thought we had learned. Conveniently our instructor had deposited us off near the bottom of probably our favourite B road. Fabulous! We couldn’t think of a better place to try out what we had been practicing all day, but now on a road we knew really well.

Meeting up for a bit of a debrief (and a calm down!) on arriving back in our home town we were pleased that we had both found the run up our favourite B road much smoother than usual and had found ourselves making better use of the width of the road. This has continued to be the case and although I am still consciously doing a lot of the things Rapid taught me, with time I hope they will become more second nature. Perhaps more peculiar is that a road, which is so familiar, actually looked different. Or maybe we were just looking at it differently now?

There is nothing earth shattering that they teach you on a Rapid Training course. It’s not some highly complex formula of skills that need to be used to ensure bike and rider are in perfect harmony. It is more to do with a best practice commonsense approach to riding that will work for anyone. Although you may find yourself having a minor epiphany as the penny drops about something that seems obvious when it’s explained to you, but it either hadn’t occurred to you before or you had forgotten! I know I had a touch of this and as a result, I now have a much more confident and consistent riding style with cleaner smoother lines. Not perfect by any means, but significantly better. Added to that we now have an extended repertoire of delightful twisty roads throughout our region that we didn’t even know existed combined with some fantastic pubs for lunch. Now I would say that’s a bargain for £140!

I’m not a hardened motorcyclist with years of experience and miles and miles of biking under my belt, but I do believe that anyone would benefit, even if only in a small way, from advanced rider training. You will be taken outside of your comfort zone on roads that are unfamiliar and really made to think about how you ride. As a result you may only make one little change to what you do, but I bet you’d be a better rider for it.

If I were to give any tips about going on an advanced riding course like the one I took with Rapid – apart from the obvious things like taking enough money to fill up your bike when needed and making sure that you drink plenty of fluid – it would quite simply be to go along with an open mind and be prepared to have your views about how you ride challenged. Oh and don’t forget your wet pack. We are in the UK after all and who knows what the weather will do – even if we are in middle of a heat wave at the moment!

CG

Editor's note: You can reach Rapid Training on 01296 630638 or at www.rapidtraining.co.uk. They also do excellent trackdays. The contact details are the same.