Pothole Pain

I was looking forward to today's 10 mile time trial, which was my clubs open event. The preparation hadn't exactly gone well, having been strangely tired Monday and Tuesday, then having a cold on Wednesday and Thursday, luckily however, it shifted by Friday meaning I could finally get some miles in on the bike.

I headed out the garage at 9 o clock, only for it to begin to rain, very heavily, this would not deter me though as I?m used to riding in horrible conditions on the mountain bike.

I signed on, and headed out for a warm up, waiting for 10:27 and my start time, with a few minutes left I was riding along this section of flat, but water covered road, when suddenly I hit a bump which loosened my grip on the bars, then the rear wheel hit the same bump and the back tyre burst immediately sending the bike into a slide, putting me straight on the tarmac at 20mph, once I came to a stop and picked myself up, I realised I had hit a hidden pothole at the side of the road which resulted in my crash.

My left thigh has road rash, as does my right thigh up by my hip, my right elbow is cut up as is my right knee, thoroughly cheesed off I headed to the start to inform them I wasn't able to race and got a lift back to race HQ to dry off and warm up. Whilst waiting for my lift to arrive I also noticed my back deep section carbon wheel is now buckled, fantastic!

This pothole got me thinking, I saw a fifth gear clip about claiming from the council for damage to cars because of poor road surfaces, so I headed back out to measure the pothole and take some pictures with the same intention to claim for damage to my wheel and tyre. When I got there some of the water had run out of the hole showing its full size. It's approximately 13" x 13" and around 2.5" deep, running over this in the car, which we did on the way home in a soft Passat with tyres at 30psi, showed up the amount of shock through the suspension, now try this on a bike with 20mm wide tyres pumped up to 180psi and you can see why these holes cause so much damage.

This piece of road is littered with potholes; I know where most of them are as they are on one of our regular courses; however this one was missed today due to the water. The council, in recent months, have taken some strange decisions when it comes to road repairs, for instance, one stretch of road that was fully resurfaced just a few years ago, with buttery smooth black tarmac, perfect for driving/cycling along, received a coating of tar and then small stones on top, and the intelligent person who made this decision also decided that only around a mile of this two mile stretch received this bizarre council treatment.

This begs the question, where is the logic behind modifying half of a perfectly good road surface, with something which is less adequate!?

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