I was talking to a fellow riding mate in the pub the other night and during our wide ranging discussion on life, riding and the woes of our respective children one of the subjects we touched on was the occasional instances where the inadvertent separation of bicycle and rider occur, and during this discussion I remember commenting about how although having minor ‘offs’ on the Mountain bike isn’t that uncommon (especially when your as bad off road as me!) I hadn’t come off my road bike for a very long time which was a good job as the consequences of a crash on the road are often much worse due to the speeds involved, the unyielding nature of tarmac and the thinness of lyrca bib shorts.

This of course was a very silly move as karmic retribution bit me quite hard the very next day. Yes very predictably I crashed, it was (and still is ) painful but not life threatening, it was naturally a bit embarrassing and lastly was of course 100% my fault, let me talk you through it.

I reckon you can break these unpleasant little interludes in a cyclists life down into several distinct stages: 1/ The Mistake (yours or someone else’s) 2/ Despairing Avoidance (you know its going/gone horribly wrong but are still in denial) 3/ Acceptance and Pain (this is the part where skin loss occurs) 4/ Post accident silence (usually a short period of staring at the sky or the ground depending which way up you’ve come to rest) 5/ Is getting up a good idea? ( initial assessment of post crash pain/limb function and blood loss) 6/ Oh God how’s my bike? (is this going to hurt my wallet more than my body?) 7/ Post crash embarrassment + feigning nonchalance ( only applicable if witnesses are present)

Stages 2 – 5 are usually condensed into a time span of about 5 or 6 seconds but somehow time seems to slow down as the crash unfolds, but more on this phenomenon later.

Stage 1 – The Mistake Every mistake comes with a good excuse and this is could be a common one, its all Strava’s fault. Yes the ill advised pursuit of of shaving seconds off a segment time nobody else cares about was the route of my downfall. You see there’s this segment near me that I’ve been hovering just outside the all time top ten of all summer. I needed to find a couple of seconds to get me onto that list and I even had hopes of making the top five if I really gave it the beans. The start of the segment the way I was approaching it meant a right hand turn off the country lane I was riding along and I was hopeful that carrying good speed around the corner into the junction would shave off the seconds I was chasing. The road ahead was clear so I wound up the pace and hugged the left side of the road in preparation for leaning the bike over in a majestic sweep around to the right, and so preparing for glory I snatched a quick glance over my right shoulder to check there was no rapidly approaching Range Rover about to overtake and splatter me across the road … and in the 1/2 second my view was rearwards rode straight into a pothole.

Stage 2 – Despairing Avoidance Hitting the pothole at a fair old lick didn’t immediately pitch me off the bike but because it took me completely by surprise by sneaking up on me when I was looking the other way it did momentarily knock my right hand off the handlebars which sent me left into the grass verge. It’s at this point which time (at least for me) seems to slow down, or does the kick of adrenaline speed my aging brain up? not sure which but I do remember this rough train of thought flashing through my cerebral cortex as my wheels left the tarmac :- ‘shit, damn, no I’ve got this, oops, don’t panic, better hit the brakes, shit I’m going quite fast, oh no a ditch, no drama I can deffo style this out, shit, stay upright you fool, no I’m losing this, bollocks this is going to hurt, lets unclip, oh look here comes the ground….’

Stage 3 – Acceptance and Pain If Stage 2 above took about 3 seconds from start to finish then Stage 3 was over in a flash, the moment my desperate attempts to keep the bike straight and upright ended with my front wheel washing out and me hitting the ground pretty hard on my left side and sliding to a stop on the side of the road were over before I knew it, the nano-second the front wheel started to slide out I knew the ground was coming up to hit me pretty hard, and yes crashing fast still hurt as much as I remembered it.

Stage 4 – Post Accident Silence I could wax lyrically about some post crash euphoria experience I had while lying half in the ditch at the side of the road admiring the green symmetry of the blades of grass caressing my cheek with my heightened by danger senses, or I could just admit that I lay there for a couple of seconds wondering what the hell just happened while mouthing several epitaphs I’m not going to repeat.

Stage 5 – Is Getting Up a Good Idea? Pretty sure that 99% of peoples first reaction after a crash has stopped happening to you is to lie there and cautiously send out some messages from the old grey matter to all your extremities and see if they all still move and ask for a damage report. Lying there looking at my lazily spinning back wheel in my peripheral vision I quickly ascertained that all my limbs seemed to still be functional and although various bits of me (especially on the left side) were reporting damage it was safe for me to sit up and start the damage assessment. In fact after cautiously standing up and inspecting myself the damage appeared remarkably light, falling off onto a roadside verge of mostly grass had saved me from the extensive skin removal and torn lycra that usually accompanies a quick slide along the tarmac. I’d a nice collection of scrapes on my arm and shoulder which had taken the majority of the impact and my back and hip felt like I’d been kicked by a mule with a hatred of cyclists, but overall lady luck seemed to have cast a benevolent smile on me.

Stage 6 – Oh God How’s My Bike? A bit like my slightly battered body my faithful steed seemed to have escaped with only peripheral damage. The left shifter hood was now at a rather jaunty angle and the bar tape that really was past its sell by date anyway was now most definitely going to need to be replaced, and after re-centring the front brake calliper which was rubbing on the wheel it looked like riding off pretending nothing had happened was back on the cards.

Stage 7 – Post Crash Embarrassment + Feigning Nonchalance Luckily for me my little faux pas seemed to have had precisely zero witnesses, there was a dog walker in the distance who didn’t seem to notice my unscheduled trip into the undergrowth and apart from that there was nobody to pass judgement on me unlike the classic failure to clip out crash I’d suffered as a callow youth right in front of a bus stop full of concerned senior citizens (but that’s another story) , and so the feigning of nonchalance whilst manfully hiding the pain was not required this time.

Post Crash Epilogue Seeing as I’d managed to plough a middle aged man sized furrow into the verge barely 10 minutes riding time from my front door and as it promised to be one of probably the last nice sunny days of what passes as an excuse for the summer in the UK these days it seemed in view of the comparatively light damage to both myself and my faithful steed a shame not to continue the ride I had planned. So after dusting myself of and the aforementioned adjustment of my front brake I remounted and trundled off down the lane.

Three hours and about 80kms later when lying on my bedroom floor struggling like a landed fish to extract myself from my bib shorts because it felt like somebody had been using the left side of my torso as a football I was forced to question the wisdom of that choice. Forty Eight hours and several hot baths later it still feels like I’ve been Kung Fu kicked by Eric Cantona if I move to quickly or heaven forbid cough, and I cant sleep on my left hand side due to the rather spectacular bruising on my left shoulder and upper arm but at least I’ve been spared the sticking to clothes and bed sheets experience that comes with large sections of gravel rash.

So the moral of this story? don’t boast about how you haven’t crashed your bike for ages, and look out for potholes in front of you before looking behind you …..