I had a middle sized off yesterday.
No major injuries, but there are enough bits of me that are bruised or grazed to suggest it was a decent effort. Most annoyingly, I have an uncomfortable graze on the point of my knee cap. I was wearing knee pads – Fox Enduro – so this happened trough the pads. I assume the pad moved and it’s a friction burn. I also imagine that things would have been somewhat more messy if I wasn’t wearing them.
Hive mind time – Is this the trade off for wearing lighter flexible pads (Enduro’s use a D3O insert) or is this a sign they don’t fit well enough and it’s time for something else?
Thanks.

I think it’s just a sign that you had a crash. As you say, it did it’s job and saved you from a proper injury.

Hive mind time – Is this the trade off for wearing lighter flexible pads

No. I’ve got a big patch on my knee from a crash years ago – wearing Fox Launch Pros, so certainly not lightweight flexy things.

Thems the breaks as they say, but a bit of a graze is better than what would have happened without them.

It’s only the last couple of years that I’ve taken to wearing pads for most of my riding. And almost every crash on to my knee has still caused a wound, which has left me wondering how much worse it might have been.

OK, thanks folks.
I’ll take that as a ‘carry on as you were’. At least pads are a whole lot more comfortable than they used to be, and yes, almost certainly better outcome than had I not been wearing them.

last time my knee crashed to the floor it put me out of action for six weeks. It hurt like hell and I could hardly bend it. That was courtesy of a supermarket special bike rider pulling out in front of me without looking, whilst wearing headphones. que, puts on dumb voice – ‘oh sorry mate I didn’t see you there’

You got off lucky with a graze!

I’ve had plenty of quite horrible knee injuries, most of which were not bike related. My knees are somewhat on their last legs (probably a pun there somewhere), which is why the knee pads were on in the first place. However, I don’t usually wear them to the supermarket. Perhaps I should.

Depends a bit on the surface you crash onto as well. I have some old 661. Non hard caped. Fell on a rough compacted stoney area last week and pad slipped as it grabbed the surface and grazed my knees but pad still took most of initial impact. Crashed yesterday at a skatepark and pad slid on impact. No worries.