Breaking wheels...

This fall has been a bit tough on my wheel sets.

I've only been out on weekend group rides but the second time I took my single speed out I broke two rear spokes and pulled a spoke out of the front rim. Not a good way to start the winter riding season.

The following weekend was nice and I was able to take my normal road bike out. It held up find on the Saturday group ride, but taking it out for a ride on Sunday resulted in another broken rear spoke.

Not feeling like rebuilding the wheel myself I took it into a local shop to get rebuilt only to find out that I had cracked the hub flange on my powertap....GREAT!!!

Upon further research the shop found out that Saris/Cyclops would either rebuild the hub with all new parts or just replace the hub...depending on what they felt like doing. However, since it was out of the warranty period it's going to cost me $300.00 to have them do so, but they will also reinstate a year warranty on the hub. So...it's not all bad. I'm not waiting on the hub to be returned to the shop and have the wheel built.

On a side note, I'm looking at purchasing a new wheel set for my road bike. One of our team sponsors is Corsa Concepts so I'm looking at having them build up a set of their 2.3T wheels with a Powertap on the rear wheel.

So far the training over the winter has been going fairly well for the winter. I haven't been doing as many hours on the bike/trainer this year as in the past, but have had some good intensity with short intervals. I'm going to slowly ramp up my time on the bike/trainer over the next two months in preparation for the upcoming season. With cross season winding down I'm expecting to see more teammates show up for the group rides Saturday mornings...which should make the pace pick up a little as the winter moves along.

This past weekend was a good ride since we had a few more people join the 21+ group and we had a few short climbs thrown in for good measure. It was probably the best ride I've been on for the past two months and climbing on the single speed is always an adventure, but a good power builder :)

So far most of the weekend rides have been wet since we are in a La Nina year and they are expecting it to be wetter than normal with some saying much wetter than normal. So I'm expecting a lot of wet rides this winter...Not great fun, but it gets you ready to race in the rain should that be the case in the spring.

Anyway...Hopefully the broken spokes are over for the year...since I'm getting my Powertap wheel rebuild and I replaced my single speed wheel set with a new set of wheels.