The 3km Ride to Port Dickson

That's right. What was to be a 120km ride, my first long ride since Raya, was cut short to 3km. Or 2.71km to be precise.

The day started out good enough. Was up at 5.45am, and left the house by 6.30. Packed 3 bottles of water (2 Powerbar Endurance, 1 plain water) for what I thought would be a fairly long ride, as well as Tuptim (the Cervelo) so I can feel what it's like going long on that bike.

Got to MTDC in Bangi at 7.15am with plenty of time to set up. Present for today's ride was ride leader Adzim, Laif, Fadzil, Jaja and Andrea. At about 7.40, we pushed off.

Barely 10 minutes into the ride, I felt my front wheel hit something. Followed by the familiar flop-flop-sound of a flat. Pulled out of the paceline and stopped to change the tube. Not a big deal, or so I thought.

Tube changed, I proceeded to inflate it using CO2. But for some reason, the inflator sisn't want to pucture the canister to let the gas out. While fiddling with it to get it inflated, I inadvertantly snapped the head of the valve stem off. No matter. Sometimes these things happen and it'll steel keep the wheel inflated.

Thinking my inflator was busted, I borrowed Laif's inflator. This time the canister did puncture, and my tyre was being inflated. Oh joy!

Bu the joy was shortlived. Air was soon rushing out of the broken valve.

And because I was using my Zipp wheels, I couldn't borrow another tube from Laif. I needed tubes with an 80mm valve stem to fit the deep dish wheels and I didn't bring any valve extenders.

End of ride.

I was about to make the 3km walk back to MTDC when Laif volunteered to ride back and pick up the car. I guess he figured the rest of the group was a long way off, and riding solo to catch up would be a waste of effort. So off he went.

So that was it. The ride I had been so anticipating since before Raya ended with a pfftttt. And I still had three full bottles of water!

Lesson learned. The Zipps are meant to be race wheels and should be used just for races. Next time take the Ksyriums for training rides, less complications.

Was supposed to run tomorrow but since I didn't get to ride today, I'll join PCC and do their chicken loop. And I will be bringing Angel (the Trek), complete with Ksyriums, instead.

I have to apologise to Laif and thank him as well for sacrificing his ride to help me out. I owe you big time, dude.