Avoiding punctures whilst training

As a cyc­list, serving 8 years in the Royal Aus­tralian Navy did my head in. There’s only so far you can ride on a war­ship, espe­cially in rough swell.

I learnt valu­able les­sons though and one that stuck with me was a from a hard nosed Lieu­ten­ant Com­mander (Boss) who would harp on about the “4 P’s”.

1. Pre­par­a­tion
2. Pre­vents
3. Poor
4. Per­form­ance

In ret­ro­spect, on a war­ship, pre­par­a­tion can mean the dif­fer­ence between life and death. There’s enough explos­ives on board to revert most large cit­ies to rubble.

Couple that with a huge hunk of metal crash­ing through waves so big — I couldn’t do them justice here — and you’ve got a pretty hairy situ­ation 24/7.

Meet Rob

On Sunday I was pleas­antly reminded of the “4P’s” rule whilst tap­ping out a 200km+ ride with one of Aus­tralian Cyc­lings great per­son­al­it­ies — Rob Crowe.

Rob is a dual Aus­tralian Cham­pion, two time Olympian (Bar­celona and Athens Para­lympic Gold Medal­ist) and former World Mas­ters Champion.

Besides the impress­ive cre­den­tials, Rob has a unique and refresh­ing pres­ence in the cyc­ling bunch.  He’s a well respec­ted nat­ural born leader — in a nur­tur­ing sort of way — the kind of guy every­one likes.

There was 40+ of the best cyc­lists in Vic­toria who met up at 7am for Rob’s pre-arranged group ride. Before set­ting off, Rob addressed the group and when he spoke — every­one listened.

He out­lined what was to be expec­ted for the day. The dis­tance, ter­rain, how fast we were going to ride, traffic. He covered all bases — I’ve never seen such open com­mu­nic­a­tion prior to a bunch ride. It was fantastic.

Pre­par­ing for punctures

It was rain­ing, so Rob asked the group to inspect their tyres for glass lodged in the rub­ber. Every­one — includ­ing the high brow elite riders — star­ted spin­ning their wheels, look­ing closely and remov­ing for­eign mat­ter from the tyres.

This was done to reduce time spent repair­ing punc­tures. The inten­tion was to stop the whole group when a punc­ture occurred.

The part that impressed me was several riders removed tiny frag­ments of glass from their tyres. What if they hadn’t checked? How far down the road would they have trav­elled before puncturing?

Pre­par­a­tion meant more rid­ing — less time get­ting our hands dirty.

What to look for

In this pic­ture of my front wheel, there’s all sorts of good­ies lodged in my tyre — a punc­ture, and inev­it­able frus­tra­tion wait­ing to hap­pen. If you look closely, there is tiny frag­ments of glass that’s been picked up and is slowly mak­ing its way through the tyre.

Glass can cause an instant punc­ture, but what most cyc­list don’t real­ise — it can also lodge in the tyre and slowly work its way through to the tube. This can hap­pen over hours or even days of rid­ing. That’s why it’s import­ant to inspect your tyres on a reg­u­lar basis.

Tyre main­ten­ance on the fly

I’m sure you’ve rid­den over broken glass at some stage on the road or foot­paths. It’s unavoid­able some­times and you always come out the other side hop­ing for the best.

If you’re too lazy to stop, one quick way to remove any glass col­lec­ted on the tyres is to use your bidon. Best described in the fol­low­ing video.

Pre­par­a­tion, Pre­vents, Poor, Per­form­ace. This is true before the big race, the job inter­view, meet­ing the in-laws and just about any applic­a­tion in life. The chal­lenge is to apply these prin­cipals on a con­sist­ent basis to your daily activ­it­ies — not just your cycling.

Good luck and remem­ber — Be Nice.

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