Well, actually pretty high, I suppose. Stands to reason that there'd be more chance of puncturing in or after some weather conditions compared to others, and a windy spell with frequent rain (essentially October-weather) sounds like a prime candidate for puncturing. You've got debris being blown onto the road, further debris moved by the rain, and yet further debris from cars taking unorthodox lines to avoid debris from the first two.
At least yesterday I managed to get almost all the way round before I picked up a sharp bead of glass in my front tyre - having curtailed the ride due to sidewinds that were, even with 35mm rims, pretty bloomin' hairy. It was walking distance home, so I trudged back and fixed it there.
Today I barely made it to Milngavie. Like most victims, I knew my killer - a sharp-looking shadow, part-rock, part-razorblade spotted moments too late. It slashed a centimetre-long gash in the sidewall of my rear tyre, and disappeared. About a year ago I'd suffered an identical puncture on my second ride on Gatorskins, and thus wrote them off as a supposedly puncture-resistant tyre. (To be fair, I've yet to puncture through the tread on my singlespeed, which faces a city every day, but I expect tough tyres to have sidewalls made out of something a bit harder than crepe paper) Luckily, I have a spare Ultra Sport to replace it with, though its lurid red tread will catastrophically throw off the aesthetics of the machine. Poor shame.
To keep the rhythm up, then, I was forced to run tonight. It went badly. My left knee started playing up so much I couldn't complete the hobble back, even at a tremendously reduced pace. I don't know what's wrong with it, but the pain comes and goes. I kinda just hope that if I can strengthen it enough, it'll stop being a problem.
Good trails!
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