Week 31

Date
August 1, 2016

Distance
107 miles

Strava Link
Week 31

Route Map/Profile

Weather

Ride Report 
It all started yesterday. I went out for a Six Mile Canyon loop and had an issue on the final descent. I was coming around a wide curve, heard a noise from my rear wheel, and the bike got wobbly on me. At first I thought it was a flat tire. I've had plenty of those this year. However, when I stopped to change the tire I noticed that it was rubbing against the chain stay. I had actually broken a spoke.

This was on my Easton EA90 SL wheel, which doesn't have many miles on it. I bought it last summer for Petoji and haven't used it very often since then. I'm bad about tracking the mileage on my components, but I'd say it has somewhere around 5,000-7,000 miles on it. Granted, those are some difficult miles (Petoji plus an Everest), but that's still disappointing. I'm only 138 pounds and I don't produce very much power. It's been at least 8 years since I broke a spoke and I think I only broke that one because the shop I went to did a terrible job of truing my wheel.

The EA90s are tubeless compatible, so it may be difficult to find a replacement spoke. That's a shame, because I was just getting ready to finally try a tubeless setup.

Anyway, today's ride was equally frustrating. I got a front flat towards the end of the Mt. Rose climb. I hate to stop during a climb, so I just rode the last mile or so with the flat. This one was caused by a thorn. The tire is a Maxxis Detonator, which I'm learning is not that great of a tire. I love Maxxis ReFuse tires, so I was hoping the Detonators would be almost as good but a little cheaper. Their ride quality is pretty good and their durability is decent, but I'm getting lot of flats on them.

Later on when I was descending Kingsbury I was getting this strange feeling like my rear tire was flat. I've had a couple scary moments with flat tires on descents, so sometimes I can be a little paranoid. Every once in a while I'll stop to feel my tire and it will be perfectly fine. Well, today I was just looking down at my tire and it didn't look any more squished down than normal. I took the descent nice and slow just in case. Just a few mile later as I was making the turn on to 88 the tire went completely flat. Was it going flat on the Kinsbury descent? Was my paranoia finally justified? Or did I just happen to get a puncture on the flat stretch of road between Kingsbury and 88?

I couldn't find the object that caused the flat, but it was probably a thorn. I couldn't even find the leak when I took the tube out and pumped it up, so it had to have been something small. Another strike against the Maxxis Detonators. Two flats on two different tires. Not a good day.

I know this stuff can be frustrating, but it's probably a good idea to take a step back and look at the big picture. Is it really that bad? It's the middle of summer and the weather is great. I live in one of the best places in the country to ride, especially in the summer. I'm healthy enough to ride as much as I want. I don't really have anything to be upset about.