What to do when the sky is falling

[FreshAL]

..or how do I avoid target fixation?

OK, I try and anticipate hazards whether it's car drivers, pot holes, mud whatever and generally I don't do too badly so it's pretty rare I have to brake hard unexpectedly or swerve.

Tootling along one of my favourite twisty B roads yesterday, probably about 60mph: 'CRACK' - 'THUMP' and half a tree has just dropped out of the sky directly in front of me.

So I looked at the gap next to it, and smoothy but rapidly steered round the shrubbry and carried on my merry way. In my dreams.

What I actually did was stare straight at it, scream SHIIIIITTT into my helmet and grab the anchors as hard as I could. Ok, it worked but nowhere near as graceful as what I should have done.

How the hell do you not stare at something that's about to be that cause of your early demise?

I'm pretty good at looking through corners, but can you train youself to avoid looking at hazards in the same way? Especially when then appear out of the bloody sky!

[stinkwheel]

Practice.

The road is littered with markings that can help you overcome target fixation.

Make it your mission not to ride over the top of any arrows on the road. The approach to a slip road usually has three arrows, try going inside-outside-inside in a shallow slalom pattern as close to the arrows as you can without actually touching them (this is harder than it sounds because you have to look at where you weant to go, not at the arrow itself).

Also try always riding across the horizontal part of the 'L' on 'SLOW' markings.

Not an infallable technique but it helps you train yourself to look at where you are going rather than at the obstacle.

[map]