Life's little challenges - Puntures

I hate them, I hate them, I hate them, I hate them.

I the last 3 weeks I have had approximately 7 issues with tubes, pumps and horrid little bits of glass that you need a microscope to see.




I have walked for litterally hours. I have spent hours changing and re changing and re changing.

This morning I was about to set out for a ride when I descovered I had a flat. I took it out, turned the tyre inside out, held it under the spot light. I pumped up the tube, patched the hole. Pumped it up again, checked for more holes. Put the whole lot back together again and .... A minute in to the ride the bike was feeling sluggish. Went home, checked the tyre pressure - 40 psi, down from 120 litrally minutes before. Now an hour later? Totally flat.

I don't know what to do. I am now scared of going out on my bike incase I get another puncture and I'm in the middle of nowhere.

I want to scream and cry and stamp my feet but I know it wont solve the problem. I just screamed in the shower, it hasn't helped and I'm now concerned the neighbours are going to call the police!

Can anyone help me? Please?

Life's little challenges

When I called this blog 'Life's little challenges...' I was trying to be ironic. Another meaning, however, can be the 'little' challenges I will encounter during my day-to-day training.

Today's 'little challenge' occurred whilst I was on my long bike ride. 40 min from my house, just out of the city, I got a puncture. Annoyed, but not worried, I changed my tire. I swear it was only a mile or 2 later when I hit a hit hole. Boy do you feel sick when you feel the immediate deflation of your tire. Again, after a bit of swearing, I changed my tire. This was the first time I had carried to tubes so I was really lucky. Or was I?

For some reason the tube wouldn't inflate. A passing cyclist also tried his pump and it wasn't happening. I don't know what exactly what happened but I must have caught the tube when putting it and created a pinch, or it was a faulty tube or I hadn't found the original cause of the puncture, it didn't matter. It was by now 8am and I was 8 miles from home and I had an hour to get to work. There was only one thing to do. I started to walk.

Sights on route to work included Musselburgh race course; the lighthouse on an island on the forth; the firth of forth (always a sight to be seen), Portobello swimming pool (and the grateful use for their facilities with the tremendous luck that no one nicked my bike while I was there) and the promenade.

I started changing the lyrics to songs. It started with 'Brights Eyes' being changed to 'Bright Side', Monty Pythons 'Always look on the bright side of life' and other songs that I can't remember now. It gets a bit monotonous as I can only ever remember a few lines of songs so they kept on being repeated round and round and round.

After 2 hours of walking I was beginning to get a bit jaded.

I arrived at the office after 2 hours and 45 minutes walking and getting close to a sense of humour failure.

Sod the diet, I headed to the corner shop and downed a snickers duo.

I have decided to call the walk to work a 'training session' specialising in 'mental strength'. I hope I don't have too many of them!