Do you ever get the feeling that the world doesn’t want you to have a good session? Last week I was back to work post-paternity leave and happened to be straight into a week away (Portsmouth this time). Having not trained whilst I was on leave – a newborn and 2-year-old take a lot of time and we are still trying to finish unpacking after moving house in the spring – I thought I’d make the most of being somewhere different and explore the South Downs to kick off this season’s base training.
Tuesday’s ride was fine, reasonably uneventful, although trying to find my way out of a city I don’t know, at rush hour, along dual-use cycle lanes / footpaths which are pretty poorly maintained in places meant the ride wasn’t as fun as I’d hoped. It didn’t help that I relied on Garmin to pick the route which led to most of my time being on major roads rather than the South Downs lanes that I’ve heard so much about. Regardless, it was a solid 35km at endurance(ish) power and I got home safely (which I guess is all that matters in the end).
Having had a less than ideal experience on Tuesday I thought I’d try something different for my Thursday spin. A good friend regularly posts rides through the New Forest so I asked for some ideas for a start point. After a little post-work route planning I jumped in the car for the 60ish minute drive to Hatchet Pond, the plan being another 30km or so of endurance riding (I know, 30km / 60-90min can’t really be called endurance but I’ve been off the bike for a long while so I’m trying to ease myself back in and deal with some positional / strength issues as I go).
Setting off from Hatchet Pond car park all seemed to be going well – albeit the light was fading a little faster than I had anticipated. The first 20km or so went by fairly uneventfully – the only items of note were a pheasant trying to kill me and my Komoot route taking me to Tanners Lane Beach rather than Bucklers Hard (I realise this was user error). By the time I had looped around to Brockenhurst (via Lymington) it was time to turn up the intensity on my front light and settle in for a dark but straightforward final stint (or so I thought).
As I approached Brockenhurst train station I missed a turn and so pulled over to let some traffic pass; however, as I slowed my front wheel felt very soft and, to my dismay, I found I’d picked up a slow puncture somewhere. Now, I’m not complaining, punctures happen and this is the first I’ve had in about three years of cycling, but as it was getting cold and dark, I was slightly annoyed. Having seen that I didn’t have too far to go, and that the tube was still holding air I decided to just put some more air in and nurse it home. For a while this was working fine – up until the point I started struggling to get air into the tyre. Finally, after admitting defeat, I pulled over on a particularly exposed stretch of road and set to work on my first ever roadside tube replacement (in the dark).
Now, whilst I’ve never had a roadside flat before I have swapped tyres repeatedly when putting my bike on and off of my turbo and so I was confident I’d be back on the road in no time. This confidence stayed with me right up until I put the valve stem from the new tube into the wheel and it didn’t come out of the other side. Turns out that the 50mm length valves I’ve been carrying around with me for years didn’t fit my 38mm rims – who knew!? It was at this point, faced with the prospect of having to find and patch a leak in the dark that I started to lose my sense of humour – this was supposed to just have been an enjoyable, straight forward start of base season ride after all.
I’ll spare you the blow-by-blow of trying to patch the original tube, suffice it to say that after 20 minutes of playing around I couldn’t find the leak but the tube was still holding air for quite a while so I was resolved to put the original tube back in, pack up the various bits and pieces that were now all over the embankment (#leavenotrace), and stop every 300-500m to add some additional air into the tyre. Five minutes later I was rolling again to find that all this time I had only been 300m away from the car, I laughed – eventually!
So, what lessons can you take away from my utter failure to make sure you don’t make a similar fool of yourself?
- Don’t rely on a single app to plan your route. Check a few heatmaps, ask friends / forums, do something to make sure where you are going to ride is the type of route you want (if I had only asked a couple of friends that live locally or checked Strava Heatmaps then my ride of Tuesday could have been FAR more enjoyable).
- Check your kit. I’ve got two wheelsets that I swap around depending on where I am / what I’m doing, some Mavic Aksium training wheels and a set of Felt TTR3s which came with my TT bike. As the TTR3s are only a 38mm rim I was sure my 50mm stem valves would be fine – to the extent that when I rode through France, Spain and Portugal last year I only had my TTR3s and the same tubes. If you’re new the cycling / have recently bought some different deeper section wheels, check!
- Check your head unit. If you’ve had a mechanical and you’re somewhere new, have a glance at the map (particularly if things are going wrong) It turns out the route I’d planned double backed on itself for 5/6km after I got back to the carpark which is why my Garmin was still showing 30min estimated time to go rather than about 3min! Had I had a quick look at my map I could have jumped off my bike and pushed it the final 300m rather than messing around with tubes in the dark. As it was, I spent way too long getting cold on the roadside and didn’t get back to where I was staying until way after 11pm.
So, remember: check, check and check again. I travel for work a lot and find myself riding in all sorts of places that I either don’t know well or at all, I got lucky this time and was able to get back to the car with nothing more than a story to tell and some lessons learnt but it could have been much, much worse. I always thought myself a well-prepared rider but you can bet your bottom dollar that from now on I’ll be taking more time over checking my kit and routes before heading out into the unknown.
Let me know if you’ve had any similar experiences / have some top tips on things I should be checking pre-ride which I might have forgotten!
WCT
West Country Triathlete 