crack - POP! - shhhhhhhh - foomp -- Log

Heard that this Saturday..

Was out riding up Munns Rd, doing some hills with Kevin and Kim, started to decend and then there was a loud pop, and my rear wheel seized-up...going ~30kph...on a steep decent....i basically slid across the road, out behind the saddle MTB-style, aiming for a soft patch of grass in the ditch to land in.

Came to a solid stop...no worse for the wear myself. My old (3+yr) Mavic Open Pro finally died tho! I knew it was gonna happen soon, just hoping it'd be a while longer tho. Of course. =)

Over a foot of the rim just peeled off..much like aluminium foil!

Hitched a ride to the nearest payphone, and thankfully my friend Heather came out and picked me up from Millstream. I don't think i could have been much farther from town..haha

I'm getting Fairfield Bikes to rebuild my wheel..getting a silver Open Pro reattached to my Veloce hub, hopefully it'll be ready for the weekend. Getting them to build it nice and stiff..need power-transfer more than comfort! (It had been feeling mushy for the last 6mos or so..)

In the meantime, i've dusted off my old Asama MTB, and will putter around town with it, including some hills tomorrow...make the best of a bikeless situation!

The last week was pretty normal, went out for a couple hrs on Tuesday w/Andy, gym that night. Wed went for a run with Heather. Thursday was the combined Victoria Cycling League race of the month, where a bunch of the local roadies come out and raced with us the track.

It was a good race, felt like i had my legs back. Nice to see a bunch of the guys from the Burnside ride (haven't been out for a while!)

72 lap Points race, i believe there was one lap where i got a 4th, but it wasn't recorded, so it's not official. I hung in with the pack for most of the race, but fell off with about 14 laps to go...maybe i shouldn't run on Wednesdays! Once back in the pack, hung in for a 9th place finish overall. According to the points total, i'm currently tied for 4th place in the track league..not too bad after four races, my first year in! Hope to slowly nudge that up over the year...it's pretty stiff competition tho!

I took it easy on Friday in anticipation of the hillwork on Saturday..where i had my experience with a broken rim 1hr into the ride. I used Sunday to get my Asama road-worthy. (Tube had a slow leak, brakepads worn out, etc..) Also went bouncing around for a bit, doing some trials. (The Asama is totally rigid, i used to do a fair bit of trials several years ago.)

I was looking forward to sprints at the track tonite, but it's been raining all day, and i'm not sure if it'll dry up in time...or stop raining even...

Back to it tomorrow tho, gonna do some Observatory repeats with Andy, plus probably hit the gym in the evening with Brandon. Mebbe a light run on Wed, track racing Thur, and so-on. =)

Have a great week!