Activity: road cycling
Location: Reston, VA > Ashburn > Leesburg > Ashburn > Reston
Distance: 40.9 miles (mildly hilly)
Duration: 2:12
Weather: partly to mostly cloudy and humid, 70-80 degrees
Avg HR: 134 (max 163)
Type: aerobic

The Reston Bike Club Century day dawned with very little sleep, but I arrived at the ride start quite ready to go. I missed riding with one friend, but ran into 8 others at the ride start so I began the ride with them. As many of them had been out riding on Saturday (a “death march,” according to one who was there), their pace was slower than I’d planned to ride, so I went ahead.

I was doing great, averaging close to 22 miles per hour for the first hour, when I heard a “bang” from my rear wheel while riding on Route 15 out in Leesburg. Normally, that’s nothing to worry about: it’s usually a rock that’s deflected after being pinched by the tire. But the loud noise was followed by a scraping noise and perceivable drag. I looked down and saw that my rear wheel had a huge wobble – closer inspection (when stopped) revealed that one of my spokes had snapped when I hit the rock in the road, and the wheel had deformed due to the lateral release of force from the rock’s escape. The wheel now rubbed against my brake and my frame with every rotation.

I stopped on Edwards Ferry Road and was passed by a friend or two (riding with their racing team). A few minutes later, the PPTC gang showed up and offered mechanical assistance. I wrapped my broken spoke around a neighboring, good spoke, and one of the PPTC folk put my wheel in true-enough form to get me back to to ride start, albeit while skipping the big hills for the day. I rode back to Reston on the W&OD trail, which made my planned 102-mile ride into a 40-mile ride.

If there are any bright sides to be found, I did get to work on my spinning during the return to Reston (the wheel couldn’t take much torque, so no standing allowed, and I didn’t risk using the brake on the wheel for fear that it would fail). And now I have a brand new Mavic Akisum on the rear of the LeMond – matching the Aksium that’s been riding on the front of the bike all summer.