The truth is, perhaps I’d become a bit complacent, a bit too relaxed. You see, I hadn’t had a puncture in a long time, maybe two years, and stopped considering it as a possibility. I ride on the road, mainly, and don’t use tubeless, relying instead on tyres in good condition and the kind of luck that perhaps I could have bottled and sold. Not that my luck extends much beyond my tyres.
I’d been that person saying quite loudly how I never got punctures anymore, laughing in the face of fortune. Touch wood? No thanks. Well, fortune’s wheel span against me last week.
My complacency was punctured when it finally happened. I was riding along, in my own little world, when that sinking feeling came. As cyclists, we all know it, that slight change in ride quality as we start to notice the bumps a bit more, and the inevitable disappointment is there. Sometimes, this is a false diagnosis, the result of paranoia or a really rough road, but a quick squish test usually reveals the truth, the doom. It’s always more obvious when your front tyre goes, but with your rear one, there is a lot more hoping that your senses are slightly off.
News editor at Cycling Weekly, Adam brings his weekly thoughts on the goings on at the upper echelons of our sport. This piece is part of The Leadout, a newsletter series from Cycling Weekly and Cyclingnews. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. As ever, email adam.becket@futurenet.com – should you wish to add anything, or suggest a topic.
Good news, schadenfreude fans: I had a puncture. The culprit was a thorn, picked up somewhere along the Bristol to Bath Railway Path, found once I’d turned my bike upside down, taken out my thru-axle, then prised my tyre off with the levers I’d thankfully packed, and then felt my way round the rim. That stupid thorn. Stupid autumn.
There is something quite humbling about standing there, in your lycra – which off the bike returns to its ordinary state as ‘not enough clothes’ – fumbling around with an inner tube and a mini-pump which you hope still works. Maybe I’ve never got the right one, but there’s always a bit of a palaver around clipping it onto the valve, and then you can never inflate the tyre to a satisfactory level. What always helps, in this moment, is other cyclists or pedestrians passing and trying to be funny about the situation. It really helps.
This is, in some way, a bit of a mea culpa. Just a couple of months ago I was positing to friends that we potentially lived in a post-puncture reality, much to their chagrin, because we demonstrably are not. But I was in that reality, with thousands of kilometres ticking by without issue; not thanks to anything clever, but just because I have a good pair of tyres and I try not to do anything stupid. I didn’t need tubeless when I wasn’t getting punctures.
I maintain, as my colleague James wrote earlier this year, that punctures are decreasing. It’s rarer than it used to be for a group ride to be interrupted by the constant need for a new inner tube, especially if you ride with clever people who look after their bikes.
However, they still exist, and I think I deserved this puncture. It’s good to be reminded that you are fallible, and also a good exercise in checking you ride with all the right stuff. Fortunately, I had the tyre levers, the inner tube and the mini pump, and I even remembered how to change the tube, and it didn’t take me too long. Well, hopefully, I didn’t time it. The main thing in my mind, though, was how this was the inevitable outcome of thinking I was past punctures.
The puncture isn’t dead, but there are absolutely increasingly better ways to mitigate against it. This slip-up for me might be the sign I’m on the way to needing new tyres, or maybe my luck just ran out.
My flat tyre wasn’t ride-ending, and it shouldn’t be. I found a nearby bike shop to borrow a track pump, and went on my merry way. Next time you go on a ride, make sure you have the ability to fix a flat on the go, and check you have packed all the right tools. Don’t get complacent, like me, and accept that a puncture is a possibility. Now, I just have to follow my own instructions.
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