One of the subtleties that is sometimes lost even on advanced riders is the need to perceive the road in a holistic fashion. To understand it as a single thread, a connected whole. Too many riders simply ride each corner as it comes to them, treating each turn as an individual entity.
This is easily seen on a racetrack, where a rider will sometimes take a deliberately sub-optimal line through one corner in order to better set himself up for a subsequent turn. The racer is interested in optimizing his time across an entire lap and is more than happy to lose time in one corner if doing so means he'll more than make up for it somewhere else.
Such thinking is not nearly as obvious in the complicated arena of the street, but it also applies there-where we're not just trying to maximize speed, but also to find the optimal balance among all the risk factors that exist. We do this subconsciously on roads that we ride a lot. We've learned through simple repetition what the road holds. And we've adjusted our lines and pace very subtly based upon that knowledge.
I'm going to suggest two things. First, that we think about this inter-connectedness of corners, that it becomes a conscious affect of our riding style. And, second, that we practice it in the hardest realm of all-on roads that we've never been on before.
"How do you do that?" is the obvious question.
The answer is that even strange roads give off faint telltales of what lies beyond the apex of the corner ahead. The rise and fall of the landscape, how the light touches the trees, and how the line of the horizon subtly moves in front of us all provide clues. And the road itself will impart a rhythm that, once perceived, provides a starting point for understanding what lies ahead.
The reason why all this is important, the reason why we seek to see what at first seems impossible, is so we can place our minds there, down the road. For, like a chess master, the good rider is always thinking a few moves ahead.
The benefit is that the time compression that occurs for all of us at speed is lessened. Our mental pace unwinds. The rider with his head down the road is better able to go fast on the one hand. And to deal with the unexpected on the other.
Just don't look in your mirror.