I've been riding a hell of a lot at the Rothley Bike Track this year, it's been great, and I've been getting much better at my tricks and getting so many good flow lines. On top of that, it made me better at riding too! I'm riding the most powerfully I've ever ridden, which is amazing! More time on the bike is always better.

For proof, here's me flowing around the track, shirt undone for style points ;)

And here's me doing a 1 hander! (I'm very proud of this)

However a few weeks ago, everything on my bike broke.

It started on the Wednesday, I'd just broken my PB up Beacon Hill by a solid minute, and then went on to smash the CR on Blackberry Lane (the Not Humble... segment), a segment I've held joint WR for 2 years, and have wanted to take for my own for ages. That came after a 15 minute thrash at max effort down the hill after Beacon, so I was definitely riding well that evening.

On the Wednesday I headed out for a day at the track, rode for a while, and just as it was getting to the end I decided to do something silly. A really tough long gap from boob to boob. It ended with my wheel in bits, buckled fully. This video is after I tried truing it. One side of the spokes were fully tight, the other almost fully loose. Nothing was working, it's gone.

This wheel had already been remade and spokes replaced. It was a wheel I had used on my commuter when I broke some other wheels on that, and they were wheels my uncle had lying around. 26" wheels on a 700c commuter? Works fine, in fact I still use the tyres on the Project Postie. I assume that's why I ended up back on 700c wheels, but I can't remember when I did it.

I managed to get home on this wheel, and put on the rear wheel from my new bike Gary in time for the Thursday session. (Gary is a Gary Fisher HiFi Deluxe, it'll feature later).

On Thursday all was going well for about 30 minutes, then my gears started to slip a bit. I went to adjust them and saw the cable was very much about to snap. After another few laps, it went, and I did the single speed hack (I'm quite proud of it) and got it into a reasonable gear for riding. I even managed to get home 1 gear easier with the barrel adjuster (though that did mean on the flat I was spinning out at 22kmh all the way home). I got that fixed fairly quick once I got home, which was good.

On Friday, nothing much interesting happened, except an annoying closed pathway with bad signage forcing me to take an unorthadox route home (via a dual carridgeway A road for 200m)

The big one was Saturday, quite a lot of people were out, I'd organised with the guy who builds the track to buy an old pair of Mavic Crossride wheels off him (at a fair price, while avoiding shipping costs for me). I was just riding along (hehe) when I felt something strange, looked down, and my crank was hitting the chainstay... It's always been tight, but not that tight. See here for when I put those cranks on

I thought somehow it'd shifted, because I know the bearing cover in the bottom bracket is cracked, so I thought if somehow that'd disintegrated it'd have moved over and be hitting the frame. I took it back for adjustment and asked Ben for tools, when he simply noticed...

It was cracked... Well, that's the end of that day. I hung around for about 30 minutes, chatting, borrowing bikes, wondering what the hell I was going to do. Eventually I strapped my newly aquired wheels to my back and headed home, thinking "at least I can sit on my bike down the hills". There's not many, but it was something for the long walk home (it's 20 minutes cycling)

I got to the top of the first hill, sat on the seat side saddle, and rolled down. Just after I got to a point where scooting the bike wasn't useful anymore, I hopped off and heard the terrible sound of "hisssssss"... Puncture on the back. I looked, and there was a tiny bit of glass. What's most annoying about this is that because I had to swap the wheel over, the new wheel could only take presta valves. My previous wheels had Schrader, and were filled with tyre goop to protect from punctures. That'd have solved it fine.

So I got to walking, it took an hour to get home, damaging the tyre a fair bit (3rd time I've walked with a puncture on this bike for various reasons, yes I do have a kit, no I didn't see the point in repairing it with a broken crank). At least I grabbed ice cream with my sister on the way home.

I spent ages looking for cranks online, knowing I needed a 24mm axle, but unsure about width. I know road is narrower at 68mm, then there's MTB at 73mm, and 83mm for downhill I think? But I don't know anything except that my bike is 73mm, and the listings online don't say width very often. I just assumed any MTB crank would work, and had to hope. I ordered the cranks, a second pair of cranks for my XC bike, and some cleat shims (because my legs are wonky)

The next few days I spent riding Gary, the newest addition to my fleet, bought for £30 because of a long story involving lots of my Dads friends, and a guy needing to get to work, but not liking the full squish, so I had the bike off him. It's a wonderful 2007 trail bike, damn near perfect for how I want to ride trails (rather like crosscountry). I fitted the Mavic wheels to Gary, because they're not quite as strong as the Bontrager Race wheels it came with (most parts on that bike are original!).

Gary, as said before, is a 2007 Gary Fisher HiFi Deluxe, it's 120/120 which is definitely trail for 2007, but has a lot of older geometry. The best part is that it rides well with the seat up, the worst part is the bottom bracket is high as hell because it just dives straight down when the suspension goes. I'm still getting used to the setup, but I think I'm gonna take longer to get used to having grippy tyres (Shwalbe Rapid Rob) than the full suspension. It's a great bike.

While waiting for the cranks to come I decided to have a friend of my Dads (different to the getting Gary thing) drill my wheels to Schrader. I'd already been caught without a tube, and with only a poorly damaged patch on a ride on my XC bike because I didn't expect it to not take scrader being wheels off a midrange mid 2000s bike.

The drilling was done on my XC bikes box section wheels, and the wheels that came off Gary (Bontrager Race wheels). I still needed to fix a puncture on the XC bike where that badly damaged patch had fallen off, but for continuity sake, that's for later.

Eventually, the cranks came, and I got them fitted on the Monday in some baking 30C heat ;-; All the swaps went smoothly, and now I have a bonus set of 3x chainrings for the XC bike so I can pick between the ones off the old (now snapped) FSA cranks, or the new Raceface Evolve XC cranks. They look stunning!

But first, here's a video of me snapping the cranks!

That was fun, I'll probably never be able to do that kind of thing again!

So here's the pictures of the fixed up bike with new, stunning, cranks.

See? As soon as I saw this pair I knew I had to have these ones, and at a very good price of $50 inc. postage! (Cheers Gloustershire Bike Project). Pretty much all of the cranks I ended up looking at were Raceface, and the ones in my main budget, and style were Evolve XC or Deus (the slightly higher end Evolve range). Forged silver was what I wanted, and I couldn't have done better than these. I'm just in love still.

After that was all fixed I went out to the track a few days later to test them out. They feel so stiff, the old cranks always had a flex about them, likely why they cracked (lots of reports of the same kind, including Ben who tested the same or similar cranks as prototypes when he was a tour guide in New Zealand, most of the prototypes cracked in 3 months apparently). Repeated flexing of aluminium isn't good.

The new cranks feel brilliantly stiff, and the chainline is better than the old ones, though still SUPER close to the frame. I'm super happy with how they turned out. Just got to get back to the tricks I was doing before.

On the Thursday after fixing the cranks I decided to fix my puncture, this involved fucking around for ages with glue, never quite getting anything to seal, and I just suck at gluing patches... I should have left the self adhesive ones one, instead of trying to upgrade them. If it ain't broke and all that.

I did get one tube to seal, so I can go back to riding the XC bike, which is good because I want to test it with the 1x setup before swapping to the new cranks and the 3x that'll hopefully be a HUGE upgrade for it, and look cooler than going with a wide range cassette (plus, on 8 speed, wide range probably isn't the best idea). I've wanted silver cranks for ages, just gotta find the energy to put it all together.

Hopefully that's the end of the shite luck, for now I'll go back to enjoying my riding, and I'm preparing to go 200km around the Loros Round Leicestershire ride in a few weeks time. If I can figure it out I'll do a post about that.