Blue View - Falling Off a Bike Gracefully

If you’ve been reading our past few blogs, you might get the impression that we fall off our bikes on a regular basis. You’d be right… both of us seem to have difficulty keeping the rubber side down.

I think our personal best is three days without a fall. I’d say about a third of our falls are due to just clumsiness and inexperience, and maybe another third due to the terrain; pot holes, slick muddy spots, ruts, or gravel. The other third is probably due to… well, clumsiness and inexperience.

Fortunately, we haven’t broken anything, but we certainly have more than our share of bruises, road rash and scrapes. Marcie’s worst was a fall she took when crossing some railroad tracks at a pretty good clip. Her approach angle was just a little too acute; she caught her front tire in the track and went flying. She had a black eye, a scrape on her chin, and limped on her bunged up knee for about a week and a half. (I felt terribly bad for her, but what made it even worse was having to endure the glares of people who thought I was the cause of her injuries). Several of her subsequent falls were because of her bum knee - for about a week, she had difficulty getting her leg high enough to mount and dismount without falling.

My worst was coming down a steep gravel trail and getting my front wheel caught in a deep rut. I took a pretty good tumble, but only had a few scrapes and bruises to show for it.

Both of those mishaps were due to our inexperience. It’s doubtful that Marcie will ever cross a railroad track at a bad angle again, and I think I’m getting better at handling rough trails as well. Most of my falls, however, are just due to my innate clumsiness. A few times I’ve come to a stop and gotten my foot caught on the pedal; I’d find myself rolling over sideways before I could get it down. Another common form of crowd entertainment is to get my foot caught on my pannier as I’m dismounting and taking a tumble.

Thus, as I am optimistic that we’ll get better at this and won’t fall as much, I also suspect that we’ll never go too long between wipeouts. My clumsiness isn’t going away, after all. So, if we can’t totally prevent falling off our bikes, maybe we should learn how to do it better - how to fall, if not gracefully, then at least with minimal injuries. It turns out that even good bikers fall occasionally, and there’s lots of information about how to, and how not to, fall off your bike.

First, a couple of rules:

Rule #1.

Wear a helmet, for obvious reasons. Our older son, who is a much more accomplished biker than we are, takes a fall serious enough to crack his helmet about once a year, on average. That’s more than enough incentive for me.

Rule #2.

Don’t use your hands to break your fall. This is, of course, the instinctive thing to do, but you are quite likely to break a wrist or arm, or damage your elbow or shoulder joint if you do.

Now for technique:

Falling Sideways.

Remembering Rule #1, keep your hands on the handlebars, bring your chin to your chest, and lower the shoulder on the side you’re falling towards. Try to roll with the fall.

Falling Forward.

Going head first over the handlebars… what a terrible thought, but it happens. Once again, the instinctive reaction is to stick your hands out to break the fall, but this is most likely going to result in a broken arm, dislocated shoulder and/or a scraped up face. Instead, keep your hands on the handlebars, tuck your elbows in, and bring your chin down to your chest. As you go forward, round your shoulders up. By keeping hold of the handlebars, the bike will help you maintain a ball shape, and, hopefully, you’ll land on your shoulders and roll through the impact. Sounds good in theory, and while I’ll try to practice this technique in my mind, I’m hoping neither of us ever has to try it in real life.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any photos for this blog. After a fall, neither of us is ever willing to continue lying on the ground while the other one digs out the camera to take a photo.

I did, however, almost get some great video footage of the proper way to fall sideways. While we were in Cumberland, MD, we did watch another old guy do what I’m quite experienced at. While dismounting, he caught his right leg on the saddle and did a couple of hops on his left foot trying to recover before falling. Unlike me, he did a perfect roll onto his back, then continued rolling onto his knees. When he stood up, completely unfazed and unhurt, I was waiting for him to say “Ta-da” and take a little bow. A perfect ten in my opinion… Simone Biles couldn’t have done better. It was so graceful, I asked him if he would mind doing it again so I could take a video, but he declined. Just shy I guess.

See you next week…