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Rear wheel fail
Oh man, I’m sore today. I had a bit of an incident last night while out on my bike. Really, it’s the back end (hopefully) of a long story about the back wheel of my bike.
I bought my Trek 1.5 racing bike about 14 months ago now. In that 14 months I’ve had to have the rear wheel back into the shop five times to be fixed. Four of those times have been with a snapped spoke, the other time I’d managed to stop just before the spoke went. The wheel’s been completely rebuilt with new spokes twice. After the last time I snapped a spoke (at the top of Sutton Bank with @shunty75 - a 25% descent that’s great fun when your wheels are round) I decided enough was enough and that I needed to ditch this wheel and get a new, stronger wheel hand built for me.
My local bike shop were brilliant about this, ,as they always are and agreed to build me a new wheel at cost, given all the trouble I’d had previously. A Mavic Open Sport on Shimano 105 hub with 36 DT spokes. It should have been bombproof.
I’ve waited a long time for this wheel. Not just the month that it took for the parts to arrive and the shop to build it, but I’ve had a year of not being happy or feeling particularly safe on my stock Bontrager wheel, always fearing that there’d be a ping and I’d be stranded 50 miles from home with a wheel that looked like a Pringle. So when I got the call that it was built I excitedly walked the 3 miles to pick it up. (I would have ridden to get it on my singlespeed but I didn’t want to risk damaging it if something happened while I was carrying it back). I left the shop with a grin on my face and even tweeted:
Just picked up my new rear wheel from York Cycleworks. It is ace. Loads of spokes. This one won’t fail.
I put on my cassette and fitted my brand new Maxxis Detonator tyres. I tweaked my gears so that everything was shifting smoothly and set out on the bike to meet Lee for a quick 50 miler. I managed half a mile, and I was lucky.
Spinning along at about 25mph, warming up my legs I heard a brushing noise. I recognised the noise, having had so many bendy back wheels in the past year and just as I realised what was going on the back wheel went bang as the tyre blew out. The rim, snapped on the weld, locked into the brakes and the tyre shredded as I slid along on the metal rim.
Time seemed to slow down and I found myself weighing up my options. I could ditch into the bushes, or I could try and bring this thing to a stop while staying upright. Unfortunately at that point time sped up again and the back of the bike slid out from underneath me and I went skidding across the road on my right elbow and my backside.
Before I even realised the blood or the bruises, all I could feel was rage. I was so angry that whatever had just happened had happened. Why my bad luck? Although really, I could have been a lot less lucky. If I’d been half a mile further on the road I would have been on York’s outer ring road. If I’d been half an hour earlier I’d have been in commuter traffic. If I’d got further into the ride I could have been coming down Terrington Bank at 60mph.
A car pulled up alongside me with two older women in it. One wound down her window, noticed how angry I looked and wound it back up before shouting “Are you alright, love? Do you need an ambulance?” through it.
The next car to stop (as I was still sitting on the ground, swearing) produced an old gentleman who told me that he used to do a lot of cycling and that at one point he was a member of the CTC. “Fantastic”, I responded as I bled and winced, lifting my bike onto the pavement.
Lee came to pick me up and we dropped my bike off at home before taking the Dawes up to his garage/workshop to spend the rest of the evening tinkering with that.
I woke up this morning feeling very uncomfortable, aching all over, tired from having woken up every time I caught my elbow on the sheets, and knowing that I’d have to get a bus to the bike shop to sort this mess out.
Thankfully they were very apologetic, as were Mavic when they called them to complain about the rim. This time next week I should be riding around on a much tougher OpenPro rim. That one shouldn’t fail. Should it?
So now I have to pick myself up, get over the (relatively minor) injuries and hopefully, soon, get back on the bike.
