Bike Tips

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Check your brakes and tyres before every ride.  Look out for thorns, glass or nails in your tyres which may be letting air out slowly.  Best to fix a slow puncture at home that at the side of the track.  In the rain.  Wearing shorts.  In the dark.

Stay on the track and avoid venturing onto the verges.  This helps protect the verges from excess wear, and your tyres from punctures.

Carry a puncture repair kit that includes tyre levers.  Because a washing up bowl of water is difficult to fit in a rucksack, consider carrying a spare inner tube as well.  That way you can swap out the damaged tube and repair it at home at your leisure.  An inner tube isn't as expensive as you might think, I recently bought a 'Specialized' MTB inner tube for £3.99 (Bike Shed, Barnstaple)

Don't forget that you'll need a pump.  There are traditional pumps or compact pumps.  Some pumps attach to your bottle cage and others have in built pressure gauges.  Make sure that your pump can deal with the valves on your tyres.  If you don't fancy all the hard work of pumping up a tyre, you could experiment with one of those new fangled compressed air doofers but I haven't played with one of those yet.

Keep your mouth shut riding under trees, that way you'll swallow fewer flies.

Gel seats are a salvation, as are padded shorts.  Webbs swears by his suspension seat post!

Keep your chain oiled.  It will reduce wear and give you a nice quiet ride.  Some people insist you must use specialist Teflon chain oil (the chain oil I use is about a fiver a bottle) whereas other riders will tell you just to squirt 3-in-1 or WD40 on it.  The benefits of Teflon oil include the fact that it is 'dry' and won't attract dust and dirt.  Don't over oil with traditional oils or you will gunk up your chain.  J uses chainsaw oil, but that's him!

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