My ride today, was either a disaster or a blessing in disguise and highlights not to be to complacent of success or how much can go wrong between now and crossing the finish line in Rambouillet or being a DNF.
Fitted a new chain on Friday onto my chosen ride for PBP, my veteran from 2015. Since January 1st, I have clocked up a just over a 1000 miles on it getting it ready, ie for comfort mainly. Yesterday on it, I was getting a mystery rattle on it whilst on the small chain ring and presumed it had something to do with the new chain, maybe worn chain rings, or gearing out of sync. On getting home, everything looked OK and nothing seemed amiss.
Today, I got up early, to get one of my other bikes out to prepare for my ride, but decided to ride my "PBP bike" one last time with a small saddle adjustment before putting it away till July when I would finalise getting it ready for PBP with some long rides.
30 miles into my ride, the rattle I had the day before was non existent, odd?, but as I went round a corner there was a loud crack and the back end became uncontrollable but managed to stay on. Checking the back wheel, it looked like a wheel bearing had gone as it was all wobbly with side to side movement. I decided to ride home slowly as my circuit I was doing meant I was only 5 miles from home. After a short distance I thought, it cannot be a wheel bearing it has to be something else. On checking the bike again, I discovered the chain stay had snapped where it is fixed to the drop out. Perhaps it was partly cracked the day before and it was flexing a bit.
How I see it now is, if I had put my bike away till late June or July time, the chain stay would have broke then leaving me only weeks or less to replace the bike, or use one of my others and either option would have left little time to really get used to it for very long rides. Or if I had not done the mileage I had done this year on it and left it to later, it could have snapped on PBP and I could have easily been a DNF
So, a trip to the shop this week and see if its repairable as its only the join that has gone, but can you trust it not to happen on the other side? or a new frame as it should have a life time guarantee that TREK has on its frames.
Maybe the morale is, a brand new bike for PBP is the best option, otherwise, you never know when your old "veteran" from many long distance epics is going to give up the ghost with fatigue.