I was excited this morning to get ready to head out for my first pre-work bike ride outside (instead of going to spin class). I figured that the weather was okay (a little drizzle), but there was no other reason to NOT get outside. I actually sat in bed deciding whether to hit the gym or the take the bike out, well, the outside bike ride won.

By the end of this story, you’ll see that I should have just gone to the gym .. anyway, I headed out about 5:45am into my normal country settings. It took some time to get comfortable riding with my headlamp and all and dealing with the fear that cars can only barely see me because it was just before sunrise (despite all my lights), but I pedaled on anyway. I was just getting to that point in the ride where it was feeling good, and I had just said to myself .. “wow, what a nice way to free your mind so early in the morning” .. This was about 6 miles into my ride to the country (about 27 minute according to my watch) and I slowly started up a hill (about the midpoint of my ride). Just as I downshifted to get more power to knock out the hill, it happened….

Suddenly my pedals just stopped like it got jammed, and naturally that caused me to panic … forgetting that I was clipped into the pedals, I tried to lift my feet because it was stuck and almost lost my balance and fell over. Thankfully I was able to pull out of the clips and keep my balance, but i wasn’t in a good situation.. I did a quick damage assessment thinking maybe the chain fell off or something, but sure enough, the rear derailleur was almost sideways and the bike chain was kinked against the tire and derailleur so that the pedals couldn’t turn. Somehow it bent out of place and was totally jammed up and I couldn’t even figure it out. I had no idea what to do… here I was, at 6:10 in the morning, on some country road, with a busted bike. Not good.

I had to figure something out, because I had to get home to get my car to the shop and get to work.. I figured that I had to somehow get the chain free because the derailleur was busted and bent, there was no way that it was going to work again .. easier said then done. I pulled out my multi-tool and started doing whatever I could to release the chain from being jammed to no avail. So I finally popped the rear wheel off, which freed the chain, but didn’t release it from the rear derailleur. I thought at this point that even if the derailleur was busted, I could still get the chain on the cartridges and have some power to pedal home. So I hacked at it some more to get it released and suddenly it came free.. but then the chain also broke. Not good.

So here I stand with a totally busted bike, with no way to get home… I figured I was about 4 miles from home, which actually turned out to be 5 miles when I finally measured it. At this point, I pulled off the chain, put the tire back on, made sure the brakes still worked, and went on my way, walking. I probably burned out the cleats on my shoes with all the walking on them (i haven’t checked yet), but I managed to get on the bike and coast down hills wherever I could to make up time, until I realized that “hey, i’m a runner, right?”… The rain was starting to pick up, and it was getting light out, so I was hoping some nice person would come by and offer me a ride, but that never happened.

Anyway, remembering that i’m really a runner, I decided to pull my cycling shoes off and just started to run with my bike at my side, with my shoes in my hand… so if you can picture this for a minute, here I am all geared out to cycle (helmet, gloves, etc), now running uphill, barefoot, in the rain, with my bike on one side and my shoes in my other hand.. it had to be funny to look at. I’m sure I gave many people lots of things to talk about as they drove by me this morning. Oh yeah, I didn’t mention that I did some of this going up the main road in the area I live in, so lots of people saw me as they went to work.

Regardless, it only took me an hour to get back to my house after I started running barefoot .. although I wrecked my cycling socks and my feet are killing me from the gravel on the sides of the road. My bike has since gone off to the shop to get repaired, I hope to have it back for Saturday, but no guarantees ..

I guess I don’t know what really happened to the bike, or if I did something wrong, but it had been making some noise since I got it adjusted a few weeks ago .. guess it wasn’t adjusted that good, I should have taken the warning signs and done some more adjustments.

So thats my funny story, in the end I should have just gone to the gym and done the spin class and saved myself the whole ordeal .. but it could have been a lot worse. Its been a challenge getting my workouts in this week for several reasons, and this was yet another challenge to me to test my dedication to my sports, but I made it and proved that I’m tougher than I think.