Admit it. Everyone likes a good crash. It’s what makes you keep watching cycling in any form, whether it’s people sliding along a tarmac road in lycra or hitting a tree on a mountain bike, and coming back to TV shows which invariably feature some sort of failure to stay on a bike.
What’s even better is when it looks like it’s all going to fall apart and the rider stays together at the last minute. FMFT had our own moment like this over the weekend. Riding in the Chilterns where summer is in full swing and the winter doubletrack is now made into parallel singletrack bt abundant plant growth I was reminded of the danger of riding in ruts.
As I hammered down a flowing hill firmly in a rut my front wheel got out of shape and clipped the edge. Before I knew it I was making an unexpected and unwanted change of track to the other rut and was busy picking a spot to land on as it all went a bit sideways and wrong. Somehow this time it all held together and suddenly I was back on the bike in a way that didn’t suggest an imminent close encounter with the baked mud and course grass.
Apparently from behind it looked spectacular with the bike at a right angle tot eh direction I was going and a large cloud of dust as it all came back together. At the time, as my heart raced and I thought it was going to hurt, I wanted the moment to end one way or the other as soon as possible, not I want to go back and replay it over and over and enjoy the lack of control and the excitement of imminent skin-loss.
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