UKC

Popped out from work on the bike to grab some lunch. Got a call to come back urgently so jumped on the bike and started cycling quickly back. My Garmin beeped at me and looking down noticed that I was within a 'segment' and 1 second down. Decided to hammer it. About 200 meters from work the road does an 'S' bend. Going into the first curve I realised I was going too fast to make it through the second curve as the road was damp and greasy. This went a bit fast but slammed on the brakes but couldn't turn so carried straight on. The rear wheel slipped from under me but then suddenly righted itself throwing the front sideways. Managed to unclip and get my feet down and come to a stop with the front wheel kissing the kerb. A couple of people asked me if I was O.K which I was just a bit shaken and embarrassed. After about 20 seconds I started to wheel the bike back. The wheel did about 3 revolutions and then I heard a loud pop and a rush of air. Looking down I see that there's a large hole in the side wall of my tire. Its almost like somebody shot it.

Any idea whats likely to have caused this after the event and to such an extent as to wreck the whole tire a Continental GartorSkin hardshell.

In reply to Indy:

Dunno what happened to your tire but I like your style

In reply to Indy:

I remember blowing out a tyre once when the brake block had been rubbing on it, although that was an mtb tyre. Is that possible?

In reply to Siward:


No, thankfully the bike has disc brakes otherwise I would have hit the curb rather hard. Its definitely a strange one. Maybe I'll upload a pic of the tire wall.

In reply to Indy:

I would guess that the initial skid was from wet iron work or painted lines as they can be very slick in the wet, I don't have a clue about the tyre though unless you hit a sharp stone etc that damaged the tyre.

In reply to Indy:

Tube folded inside the tyre when you pumped it up is my guess (?), that explodes loudly and can really attack the tyre. More fun if it goes when you're going downhill, whahey.
It's quite easy to fold an inner tube, mainly due to it being stretched already from pre-use though obviously not a good thing to do.

jimb

In reply to Indy:
May have been suicide after the embarrassment of what had just happened

In reply to the power:

Could the side wall have been damaged by the curb? (rushing to work's always dangerous!)

In reply to Indy:

i have no comment to add for the puncture except good that you came out unscathed.

IO am however interested in how you knew you were in a segment and how it was going....is this 'real-time' segment info coming from having a premium account? I guess its through the smartphone app and you need a 3g connection to operate it?

In reply to Kimono:
No, its not connected to a phone.... that would be a nightmare! as in segment hotspots it would be beeping away every second. No, what happens is you pre-load all the segments your interested in onto your bike GPS. I believe that this function only works with Garmin's Edge 1000 but I might be wrong. When the Edge realises your getting close to a segment start point it beeps to let you know. As it knows where you should be along with the time it can calculate if your ahead or behind in real-time and displays it in red or green on the Edge's screen with time/distance left.

Garmin is currently building its own set of Strava like segments so although Garmin doesn't connect directly to Strava there's a handy website that'll translate any Strava segments you want for upload to your Edge1000. Check out http://gniza.org/segments

If you'd like to know any more just ask.... its a really cool feature.

In reply to howifeel:
Took the wheel into the bike shop to get a new tire and that's what they thought. The inter tube had folded.... I'd changed the tube about 300 mile before and had no problem riding on it till now I also can't think of any other time I've had this issue as I'm pretty careful when changing tubes which 99.9% of the time is at the road side. Guess its going to have to remain an unsolved mystery.

In reply to Indy:

That sounds very cool indeed...sadly i only have the 'lowly' garmin 500.

In reply to Indy:

I had a similar blow out on a front wheel a few years ago in the wet going down hill on the brakes. it went off like a shotgun and blew the tyre clean off the rim and I still don't know how I stayed upright. Due to conditions I rulled out overheating of rim brakes, but concluded as it was an old-ish tyre with a folding bead that it was caused by the tyre slipping (rotationally) on the rim, and causing a rip against the valve (the tube was torn from the valve nearly half way round the wheel, and the tear didn't follow a seam eaither). that plus 120PSI and off it went. I haven't had a similar problem before or since.

It could be somethign similar for you, especially if tyre was still cold from starting out.

Other thing to consider is how badly you might have scuffed the side wall as you went down?