Lessons for the day (YES...I crashed)

cooldad

There was that bird doing BKB on the Brompton once - she was rare. And quite hot.

ilovedirt

Andy Dobson wrote:

cooldad wrote:

WTF he was cruising through the carpark looking at his phone, and when he looked up realised he had two choices, hit the dirt, or hit a Golf. He chose the Golf. If the Golf owner is reading this, I will deny everything.

It was the way Ben nonchalantly he rolled off the side of the car into a seated position still looking at his iPhone and coolly started drinking from his Camelback as if he meant it all along that got me. The look on his face still makes me chuckle to this day.

brilliant

spankone

So you set out to do 6 runs :?: You crashed on your 6th run :?: well there's your problem, its the one more run syndrome. Its happen to me happen, to friends and will always happen. You're have a good time but fatigued and think its a great idea for one more run that's when it goes wrong

S-M

Agreed, its the "one more run" syndrome, this b*stard has f*cked me over a few times in the past and left me in great pain

And still i get suckered into it, i was out this afternoon for a nice 41 miler around the NE coast and i found this PERFECT practice drop off spot near the beach in Blyth, the further along towards the right you drop off, the higher the drop, simples!

I`m not good with ANYTHING that now has my wheels off the ground, its been months and months since i last had a huge crash, but i still have this fear about floating in the air

I did the drop about three times at increasing heights before i had a word with myself and kept on riding, looking back i count this as a lucky escape!!

popstar

I find that GoPro's and StopWatches ruin your rides. They are the biggest evil to spoil your ride. Your mind too busy occupied with targets you set, recepie for troubles.

Andy Dobson

popstar wrote:

I find that GoPro's and StopWatches ruin your rides. They are the biggest evil to spoil your ride. Your mind too busy occupied with targets you set, recepie for troubles.

I wish I could say that a glance at the bike computer to check progress was the cause of the crash. Unfortunately.....'twas my own lapse in concentration that tempted fate, plucked me from skills safe left t"t and dumped me earthbound in a hail of dust, blood and skin. In other words, I was going too f^(£!ng fast for my skill level.

sandy771

So where did the mental skill set that Jedi teaches let you down - what did you do wrong?

ilovedirt

popstar wrote:

I find that GoPro's and StopWatches ruin your rides. They are the biggest evil to spoil your ride. Your mind too busy occupied with targets you set, recepie for troubles.

The go pro makes me ride faster/cleaner, and if I manage to catch a crash on video, well that's a bonus!

Andy Dobson

Quite simply, I looked down, realised just how fast I was going and braked at just the wrong moment.

Had I been looking along the trail and therefore not braked, I may have not gone out the front door although you could argue that I was not in the correct mental state having just done 5 runs at the same trail. 1 too many? Maybe.

Jedi

andy, knowing why it went wrong is key

diy

When I used to teach advanced motorcycling I always got asked how far people should push their skill when practicing alone. There is no clear answer, but I tended to advise them to work up a traffic light system to self check.

Green - vision up, feeling relaxed, bike going exactly where I want it, lines perfect, doing good observations - no surprises, .
amber - having to make corrections, lines not 100% perfect, vision starting to come in
Red - lines only roughly right, concentrating hard, having to make corrections, needing unplanned brakes etc.

It doesn't translate well, but while there are always scenarios off-road, where everything is going fine - then splat, I think generally I notice when my riding slips from green to amber and occasionally red.

There was a great youtube which shows a rider riding in green-ish zone, then gets overtaken by a faster rider, tries to keep up and gets progressively vague with his accuracy. He ends up in red zone, using the whole road to try to keep, rounds a bend, misses one oncoming rider and ploughs in to the next - killing the other innocent rider.

the green amber red thing can be helpful to self diagnose when you are riding beyond your limits.

Andy Dobson

Jedi wrote:

andy, knowing why it went wrong is key

I know that from my road racing (motorcycles) years Tony. If you can't work out what went wrong then you weren't paying attention in the first place and you stand no chance of fixing it. I had to think about what happened for a long time after the prang but got there in the end.

I could blame the bike but that would be stupid because if the bike was at fault then I either didn't build/maintain it properly or I was riding beyond the bike's capacity, both of which come down to being my fault anyway.

No excuses out there guys.

Jedi

high5!

benpinnick

BIkes are a bit like horses in a horse race. If you could remove the rider, they would be faster, and more likely to get through something than with us on board. Its almost never the fault of the bike, only the pilot.

Anonymous

I know that only too well.