Adventures in urban cycling: the puncture

Punctures! Possibly the most irksome of cycling problems. Simple to fix but frequent in nature. And they stop you in your tracks.

They'll either occur when you're on a ride, forcing you to remove a wheel on the side of a road, getting oil everywhere. Or you return to your bike, invariably when you're running late for an appointment, and find your metal rim is meeting concrete.

They're either caused by an innocuous thorn or piece of glass, or from hitting a pothole in the road and getting what's known as a 'snakebite' (as the resulting pinch from the rim resembles two fangs sinking into the rubber tire).

The latter cause can be avoided by pumping tires up to their maximum pressure (check the side wall of your tire to find yours), but the former is almost unavoidable, as I found out yesterday.

No more than five minutes into my ride I ran over broken glass on Gloucester Road. It's an all too familiar sight on Sunday morning. Broken beer bottles and pint glasses litter the sides of city roads, where most bike lanes happen to be.

By the time I'd spotted this particular obstacle it was too late to swing wide. I crossed my fingers but that helped not a jot. That glass shard had already pierced my gossamer thin racing tires (note to self: sacrifice speed and put your thicker tires back on!).

I ended up replacing the inner tube opposite Cabot Circus, in full view of the Sunday shoppers. I imagine the site of a grown man in full Lycra, covered in oil attracted pity and ridicule in equal measure. I doubt it did much for cycling's cause either. These technical mishaps can be pretty off-putting for non-cyclists.

So what's the solution? Keeping our streets clean would help. Make sure you report broken glass to your local council. Even if it's too late for you, it will help the next cyclist.

If you're planning to fix the puncture you might need the help of this online tutorial - and one of our free Better By Bike puncture repair kits.

But if getting your hands dirty isn't your thing, make sure you know where your LBS (local bike shop) is!