Mike's Bike Blog

I'm not one to shy away from getting out on the bike when there's water on the streets or a downpour. Really the only thing that makes me think twice about the weather conditions is if my bike is clean and how much I want to clean everything afterwards. If it looks like the bad weather is here to stay for a few days I'll get out and do my rides for a few days in the elements and clean it up when the weather clears up again.

This approach has worked well for me, no crashes or even close calls to speak of. That is until 3 weeks ago, it had been raining heavily the night before and the roads were still wet when I went for my lunchtime ride. While I was out on the ride it started to rain a bit, but not monsoon conditions. I was on my second 20 minute Sweet Spot Training (SST) interval for the day. In fact I had about 1 minute left on the effort and I had 1 hard right turn to negotiate. I let up on the pedals and applied pressure to the breaks. I wasn't slowing, I then realized I was hydroplaning! The back time started to slide to the left  and fishtail. Just about that time I hit a dry patch of road. When the back tire made contact with the road it catapulted me straight into the air like a bucking bronco. I went down hard onto my left side and slid a good distance. Luckily the pavement was wet, I hate to think how tore up I could have been. As it was the only damage suffered was to my Clear2Go bottle, it got totally mangled, I think a car ran over it as I didn't noticed it came dislodged and rode off before realizing it was missing.

Well that was 3 weeks ago, then today once again it had rained the night before and the roads were wet, but when I went out for my ride the skies were dry. I had another set of 20 min SST intervals to do and given the wet conditions I thought doing them on the Twin Creeks circuit (1 mile loop) would be the best option. I've done this workout on this same course in similar conditions and I know to take the roundabouts with caution. In wet conditions when I enter the roundabout I gently apply the brakes as I stop pedaling.  Before I started the ride I let some air out of my tires to compensate for the wet pavement.

About 13 minutes into the first 20 minute interval I entered the roundabout, stopped pedaling and as I started the turn the tires went out from under me at 24.4mph. I slid across the road a good 10 feet or so to the curb. I didn't sustain too much new roadrash, I seemed to land in the same exact spot as the previous crash so re-tore up what was just starting to heal. I landed on my hip pretty hard so along with the fresh roadrash I'm sporting a rather large lump

These 2 crashes got me thinking about my tires and how they might not be the best selection for wet conditions. Back in August I bought 2 Vittoria Rubino Intrepids from bonktown. Giving a quick search it would seem others aren't too fond of their handling in wet conditions. Another factor in this last crash could have been my speed, the other times I negotiated thru the roundabout this morning I averaged 23.9mph, 23.5mph, 24mph and 23.6mph. When I crashed I was going 24.4 mph, a bit faster than the other times. I felt like I was in control and nothing was different that is until I hit the pavement.

One thing I'm coming away from this experience with is that when it's wet out I'm not going to do SST intervals or anything with intensity. When I'm attempting to hold certain wattages, especially wattage around threshold it's too much for the conditions and it's not worth the risk. Next time I'll just do a regular easy ride and complete the intervals on the trainer or forego the interval all together. Seated hill repeats would have been a good alternative for a day like today too.

Actually it's 3 crashes in 3 weeks, I nearly forgot about the crash on Monday on the inline skates. I was skating around the neighborhood with Zeb. He was up on the sidewalk and I was in the street, we were going up a slight hill so we weren't going fast, 3 or 4 mph when I hit a pebble. I stumbled a bit and wasn't able to recover and went down. Again on the same darn side hitting my hip and tearing open the scap on my knee.