You are reading a single comment by @shortclaud and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
London Fixed Gear and Single-Speed is a community of predominantly fixed gear and single-speed cyclists in and around London, UK.
This site is supported almost exclusively by donations. Please consider donating a small amount regularly.
@shortclaud
Might amuse my variation on this theme...
I raced a closed circuit 20 km time trial a couple of months ago. It was the tricycle world championships at Blenheim palace. Only being partly mad, I don't ride trike much: this must have been perhaps my 4th open race ever. No time to reccy the course, so lap one, took it easy. This is all in the absolute tipping rain, on poorly surfaced hilly perimeter road (3 laps in total). After pass start point to start second lap, me thought I knew the course, so began pushing to my limit. On a reasonably long left curving downhill swoop, I find me banked to my limit, hanging over the left side of the trike, watching my machine gently move from the oh-so-desirable left side of the road (where the camber is, in effect banked in my favour) to the right side. I had that moment of the title when I knew all was lost: me and my trike weren’t going to stay on the road. So off at a tangent I went, onto the rough ground for maybe 5 or 10 seconds, braking as hard as I could. But, as I said t'was raining a bit, so no retardation manifested itself at all, be it tyre skidding or brake block insufficiency. I could see the marshal I was heading towards at perhaps 20-25mph, scamper out the way, leaving me to admire the wooden fence behind him. I knew it was going to hurt. And it did. A theatrical/cartoon style flash and bang, and I slid down the aforementioned fence. I do the standard checklist to register damage: blood in mouth, right arm movable, neck movable, fair bit of blood around (being thoughtfully washed away by the rain), otherwise just scratches. I notice I'm still wanting to race, so twist the trike straight, ask the marshal if he'd push me back onto the course (in top gear: couldn't turn cranks on rough ground) and away I dripped. Finished in 7th place. No broken bones, about two weeks to get over the results of my unconventional stopping technique.
Great fun trikes. Their’s just something about them.