Thoughts on a skid then a fall.

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Campbell

New Member
Location
Surrey
Pushing 40 mph on the road when my water bottle falls out after hitting a bump, i was disorientated because of the speed and wanted to stop fast. Un-clipped my shoe and braked but skidded and fell scraping the side of my pedal whilst running my cleats along the road waring it down. I was fine but annoyed i had scraped my pedal, cleat and bottle quite badly.
Anyone done anything similar or have any thoughts about what happened to me.

Thanks
 

yenrod

Guest
> Thoughts on a skid then a fall.

Ouch !

--------

Next time - brake THEN take foot out !
 

mondobongo

Über Member
Let the bottle go its not worth it. Came off last week pushing it hard into a corner 20mph hadn't picked up that the roads were becoming damp and helped with some diesel felt a big rear wobble time to think oh sh*t before hitting the deck. Pedal and bar scrape ripped retro wool jersey and tights 2 decent sized pieces of rash. My own silly fault.
 

woohoo

Veteran
Could be worse. As a teenager (way back when..) I used to carry one of these dumbbell spanners in the pockets of my denims until the day I came off (hit water on the blind side of a corner) and landed on the spanner. Now that was painful ;) Decades later, I still won't carry anything e.g. keys in any pockets that I might land on the next time I overdo it.
 
Campbell said:
Pushing 40 mph on the road when my water bottle falls out after hitting a bump, i was disorientated because of the speed and wanted to stop fast. Un-clipped my shoe and braked but skidded and fell scraping the side of my pedal whilst running my cleats along the road waring it down. I was fine but annoyed i had scraped my pedal, cleat and bottle quite badly.
Anyone done anything similar or have any thoughts about what happened to me.

Thanks

Do I read this as...?
- you were going faster than felt comfortable, in a 'stress' situation where things were happening to you rather than you being in control of events
- you were going too fast to avoid or maybe even to see a pothole, and you ploughed through it hard enough to jolt the water bottle out of its cage
- you then unclipped one foot, so your balance was all awry with only the other foot on the pedal
- and then you braked hard, locked-up the back, went down

Simple answer I guess is
- don't go too fast : going fast is great, when it's safe to go fast - when it's not, it's 'too fast'
- don't unclip and unbalance yourself
- learn how hard you can brake without locking-up
- don't do grab-the-brakes-hard emergency stops unless there really is an emergency, or you risk ending up in the road/in the hedge/under a car
 

peanut

Guest
Campbell said:
Anyone done anything similar or have any thoughts about what happened to me.

Thanks

Sounds to me like you became unbalanced when you removed your foot from the pedal on one side.
Its surprising how much we rely on our feet fixings for stability at speed

We grip with our hands and tension against our clipped in feet to stay balanced in the saddle. Removing your foot is akin to removing one hand from the handlebars at speed.:biggrin::ohmy::ohmy:
 

mr Mag00

rising member
Location
Deepest Dorset
im with andy, sounds to me like you were out of control. I too dropped a bottle last week, whilst adjusting my hold from top of bottle to body of bottle. i looked over my shoulder nothing coming, slowed down, swung around in road, rode up to bottle bent down picked up a, drank, in holder and off riding again, no dramatics required.

slow down!!
 
Don't do the mistake I did on the last forum ride. Visibility though my glasses was quite poor and I manage to hit a pothole and things came flying off the bike and there was a big thud so I braked and came to a stop. The 1st 2 people behind missed me but the last one didn't. It turned out the big thud was only my water bottle and apart from a buckled wheel and broken mud guards stays I would of been OK, it certainly would have been a better option than the following crash.
 
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