In the past 11 days I have gone through 6 tubes and 1 tire on my bike. 5 of which were just on my back tire. I finally had the bike shop fix the back tire and it looks like it's holding, thank goodness.
My front tire went flat after my short ride on Wednesday. I wanted to go out for a quick 20-25 mile ride tonight, so I changed the tube, got ready and the minute I touched my bike, the tire went instantly flat. WTF. At this point I wanted to pick my bike up and throw it in the street and walk away. I found the reason it went flat, so I should be able to fix it, but still! I am so over this! Tubes are $6.50 each and I am not rich!
You know what put the cherry on the top of the cake? While dealing with my tires, I noticed that a bird crapped on my back brakes while my car was parked at the Y. Just fantastic. Sometimes I let stuff get to me too much (like flat tires) and sometimes I feel like saying, "screw this" and quitting.
I'm never going to quit really. Just at that moment in time when my emotions are high and I'm pissed off, that seems like the only thing that would make my problem go away. Of course this isn't the mature way to handle my problem - throw a temper trantrum, throw my bike and quit...hahaha. I love biking, swimming and running but yes, there are days when I hate all of them, but there are bad days in everything. To deal with those bad days, I take a deep breath, and move on. If I linger on those bad days, all days will be bad.
So off to the bike shop to get some help on my tire so I can ride tomorrow. I know you have crappy days while training too, how do you handle them?
OH HOW I HATE FLATS!!! And I always get tons of them...grrrr.
ReplyDeleteI try to look at it as great practice. I have friends who have done full ironmans who have been lucky to not have to deal with too many/any flats and they SUCK at changing them, so if it happens in a race, they are in big trouble!
one time... I woke up and my tire was flat. When I patched the tube and fixed the leak, nearly the moment I got out the door, it POPPED! And so I took a deep breath and went back inside, checked for glass, patched it, and was on my way... POP! and this seamed to keep happening over and over which was increasingly frustrating!!! Worst bike day ever. I think it was 6 or 7 flats before i finally gave up. I checked the tires so many times for glass and never found anything, i was convinced it was my rims. so I removed the rim tape sanded any remotely sharp edge down around my spoke holes, bought new tape and tried again. POP!!!! so, next day i check the tire one more time, and there was a huge piece of glass in plain site.... So mad.... took it out and no more flats. It's weird how my mind tricked me into believing that there was no glass, so that i couldn't see it.
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