Zipp CSC dead on arrival - spoke pulls through rim

Tonight's events.

I rode from work to the train, 7 miles in 19:30. Pretty fast. If my rear wheel was in this condition at that point, I would not have ridden that fast...



One of the rear spokes has pulled through the rim.

After the ride, I took the train to SF. Certainly on the Caltrain there is some bumping, but my bike was pretty isolated on a rack with other "nice bikes". I rode
from the train station to meet my wife in Potrero Hill and didn't notice anything, nor did I notice the wheel ramming the brake while walking the bike to put it into the car. The bike was in the back of the Pilot sort of haphazardly. I just wonder, if you whack a spoke could it result in something like this? I'd be more accustomed to a spoke breaking, not pulling through the rim. Not that I haven't had a spoke pull through a rim before. Perhaps just par for the course for putting in a lot of miles at 210 lbs.

Aside from the curiousity of trying to figure out what happened, the next question is "what now?". I had this same thing happen to a machine built Mavic open pro built on an Ultegra Hub with double butted spokes. A rebuild would cost more than a new wheel (if you can buy a rim and build a wheel it's about 1/2 the cost of a wheel). But this is a $500 wheel. Where's the value? Hub? Spokes? Rim? Do I try to get this thing rebuilt? Or am I shopping for a new wheel? And if so, what wheel might avoid this issue? Don't bother saying Ksyriums - on my old Ksyriums I broke 5-6 spokes and with the last break I decided to throw in the towel. I rode to PA bikes, bought the Zipps, told the store to repair the rear Ksyrium so I could sell the wheelset to a flyweight. They called me the next day and said "The nipple has pulled through the rim..."

Sucked into the Strava vortex...

After a year or so of resistance, I have been sucked into the vortex that is Strava

A data analysis service for Garmin users, the most interesting part of Strava is that you can produce "segments" or "KOMs", and every Strava user who has ridden that same stretch of road will now be compared on that segment.

For example, this little known climb

Two years ago my wife bought me a Garmin 705 and I told her to return it - I am a map geek and didn't need a GPS computer. I hadn't really noted that it was useful for tracking your rides, but until Strava became prevalent even the tracking didn't have that killer app feature that sucked me in. I picked up the new Garmin Edge 500 from Mike's Bikes ($40 off coupon in the "Green Zebra" coupon book) and away we rolled.

So now all my embarrassing efforts are up there for all to see.

Murph on Strava

You know you're a cyclist when...

On the train today I was talking to the conductor about his beloved New England Patriots. He wasn't too optimistic - Welker is out, the Ravens are tough, they should have beaten the Texans so they could draw the Jets first, etc...

So we are getting off the train and he says "What do you think about this thing where they are talking about legalizing dope???". My eyes popped wide open - what! The NFL is just going to open the doors wide open on steroids! Holy Pantani!

He said - "Yeah, there's a guy over there with a petition, they're going to try and put it on the ballot!"

I looked over and saw a guy with a sandwich board saying "LEGALIZE MARIJUANA NOW"

Not DFL at San Bruno

The results are in

29 0 John Murphy SAN FRANCISCO,CA 00:23:32.00 196340 123 Webcor/alto Velo

4 guys even less fit than me decided to enter. Had I done the smart thing and entered the 4's, I would have been 21/22, unless I managed to outsprint the guy who finished in 23:30.

Amusingly, my thought is that I went out "too fast", something I would not have thought was possible. When the pack started at a pace that wasn't completely leaving me behind, I moved up quickly to try to suss out a reasonable wheel to get on for the flatter section. Then I immediately cracked - before it got flat. Several riders passed me, and when it got flat the 2nd group was just 15 yards in front of me, but I couldn't close the gap (and provided a good bridge for someone who was on my wheel). If I had just settled in and calmly got to the flat section with the third group I might have gotten a better ride to the top, as it was I rode alone for a lot of the flat section and then got a ride from the guy who finished 27th (who put a minute into me on Radio Road).

The steep section of Radio Road showed my current weight level. 10 pounds lighter (and probably stronger) I would really muscle through that section, as it was I really suffered and they had to urge me to sprint through the line as I was being caught by one of the later groups. It was rough. But I got out there, and like I said, not DFL.

I celebrated with a nice present which I'll discuss next...