Skreemer posted:

Double U-Turn
What bike were you on? The Honda Rebels and the Yamaha Star 250s have a bit more rake to them than most standards. The front ends feel "floppy" until you get used to it. I can do the double u-turn with plenty of space to spare on every other bike we have, and including my Bandit 1250 and Bandit 600, I can do it on the Star and the Rebel, I just use more of the available space. Did you try the exercise in second gear? I find that first gear is a bit much and feathering the clutch while in second smooths that out quite a bit. The only other thing I can think of is using all of the available space. A bunch of folks after completing the first u-turn don't go all they way back to the line before starting the next turn. Constantly I see people put just the front wheel 6 - 12 inches on the other side of the line when they started two feet away from the opposite side.

Breaking Distance
You should have been told that it was an emergency stop and you needed to come to an immediate stop as quickly and as safely as you could. It's part of the instructions in the range course pamphlet.

The decreasing radius turn catches a lot of people out. Things to think about :
Were you at the "outside" when you started the curve? A lot of folks ride right down the middle to the breaking area and don't really "set up" for the corner by moving to the outside (to the left). The corner can still be completed but you're not giving yourself all of the available space and things feel "tighter".
Were you going faster than you felt comfortable? Combined with not "setting up" for the curve the feeling of "I'm going too fast and I'm running out of space", is the second culprit. Tipping into that corner everyone rolls into it like the 90* corner, and suddenly it's 135*. Instead of pushing on the bar a bit more and continuing to roll on the throttle a little, a lot of people let off the throttle and decelerate.