My Secrets to Never Getting Punctures 🤫

I think I get a puncture like, once every 2 years?

Touch wood. Because punctures are just a fact of life. If you ride a bike with pneumatic tyres and an innertube, then there’s statistically a 99.99% chance that you will get a puncture at some point.

I do know of the odd creature who hasn’t had a puncture (yet!), but they’re also not riding everyday or MTBers, so I don’t think they count. Even the pros puncture!

But I rarely get punctures so I want to share with you my secrets. I’ve put them in order of “Free (but costs time to create a new habit)” to “Gotta spend some cash”. And in terms of habit formation, it’s in order of stop doing a thing, to start doing a thing, which I think is harder to do. What say you?

1. Ride slower

2. Don’t ride off kerbs

3. Pump your tyres up once a month

4. If you roll thru glass, stop and check your tyres

   1. Pick out sharps

5. Get puncture proof tyres

6. Add some tyre liners

I think this is the hardest habit to create due to 3 things:

1. Our roads are designed for speed (not safety)

2. Road bikes are designed for speed (not safety)

3. Strava.

When the built environment AND your bike encourage you to go fast, you’re not going to spend a lot of time looking down for glass. You will be looking out for your safety, because the road and the bike are not going to do this for you.

Despite what vehicular cyclists say (remember those guys?) roads in English-speaking countries will alway favour the car, not the human. (P sure there is a link between English-speaking Western countries and car-dominance...) I talked about infrastructure design with transport researcher Tiffany Lam on the Wheel Suckers Podcast. She was our first (and only) three-peat guest, so there’s a few episodes, but here is the latest:

Secondly, we have the diamond frame bike, mostly unchanged in design after a century, which puts the rider in a position where the back and head are pretty much pointing down. You’re basically doing one-legged squats while facing the ground, and your peripheral vision is not going to show you what’s coming up behind you. Contrast this with a step-thru frame, or even the extreme Dutch style bike, and the rider is upright, head facing forward with 120 degrees of peripheral vision. You tell me which is going to provide a better preview of the road ahead (and behind)?

Now sprinkle onto this the capitalist mindset of “being on time” and you have folks disregarding their own safety in order to not get in trouble at work. Time is a human construct and many a civilisation has had some form of time-keeping (water clocks, hourglass timers, trumpeters in towers). Our current version of time keeping was invented by the 1800’s Western industrial revolution, implemented to make sure trains (read: the transport of goods and commodities) ran efficiently, but most importantly to keep track of (and tabs on) factory workers. If you were ‘on the clock’ you better be working / look busy. Despite knowing this, I find this mindset really hard to shake. Which is only natural since capitalism is the air we breathe. My way around it is usually deciding my life is not worth getting to work “on time” for The Man, and also working in a place that doesn’t really care what time I arrive. (Obvs easier said than done. I spent over a decade chipping away at this mindset, and it still comes back to haunt me.)

And finally there’s Strava and their infamous segments. Certain people have become obsessed with ‘being the best’ or winning for some reason (see capitalism, above), perhaps to the point where it becomes incorporated in every aspect of their lives. Put these people on a bike and they suck the fun out of everything.

I remember seeing a talk by MTB grandpas Joe Breeze and Charlie Kelly at Look Mum No Hands, and Joe talked about a friend who got one of the first digital cycle computers. His friend blathered on about all the things he could track: how far he went, how fast he was going, his cadence. And then Joe asked him if he was having fun? And his friend was silent.

My solution to this is to ride a step-through bike (Bromptons included!) so that I have better visibility and peripheral vision to watch out for pedestrians on their phones, drivers ready to t-bone me, AND glass in the road. It’s less efficient, and that’s OK! I don’t want to barrel down the road to work at speed. I want to have a nice, calm, uneventful journey. (Speaking of which, have you ever driven the actual speed limit before? It’s so relaxing AND fuel efficient! Highly recommend.)

I wrote a whole other newsletter on this, but the gist is this: The drop from a kerb/curb is the same depth as a pothole. And you wouldn’t purposely ride through a pothole, would you?

Keeping your tyres pumped up to their appropriate pressure prevents the 100% preventable snakebite puncture, which is caused by an impact. Like riding off of a kerb. Starting to see the connection here?

Here’s TMI on pumping up your tyres:

This is another annoying habit that will end up paying you back in spades. Sometimes you just can’t avoid that pile of glass in the road. There’s a driver up your arse and a bus coming in the opposite direction. Sigh, pile of glass it is.

I will immediately pull over (safely) and check both my tyres. I roll my bike forwards and look at the front tyre for 1 rotation; then I roll my bike backwards and check out the back tyre for 1 rotation. Usually there’s nothing there, which will then piss me off as I think “what was the bloody point in stopping then?” Preventative maintenance’s benefits are unseen and difficult to track, which makes it a harder sell, but trust me on this. About once a year I find a piece of glass and this vindication keeps me going.

Now we enter the money zone. If you really want to stave of punctures, get yourself the most puncture resistant tyres money can buy: The Schwalbe Marathon Plus. The gold standard in rigid uncomfortable tyres, these babies are the opposite of supple (elppus?) But I don’t care. They are my shield against would-be puncture makers and are a must-have for tiny Brompton wheels. Rear wheel Brompton punctures are a massive pain in the butt to fix; it’s as if a Pashley and a mousetrap had a child.

On my pub bike Debbie I have a compromise: the Panaracer Pasela Pro-Tite (the one with the blue tag, not the yellow tag.) This is a cheaper tyre, moderately puncture resistant, and more comfortable to ride because of this. It’s softer casing is much easier to get on/off if I have to fix a flat, but thanks to the previously listed techniques, I haven’t had a puncture for 2 years (p sure I’ve just jinxed myself.)

A tyre liner is an extra bit of protection, like using condoms and the pill. But your chances of a puncture are never zero. Still, for really tight tyres, or for situations where being stranded means getting a helicopter to rescue you, adding a liner will give you some peace of mind. They will also add some weight, so it’s not for weight weenies.

Liners are meant to go inside the tyre, sandwiched between the tyre and tube. I have found the plastick-y liners to be fiddly and warped, so they never stay in a straight line along the middle of the tyre. This is not ideal because that’s where your tyre will encounter the most sharp objects.

The Panaracer Flat-Away is the one I have tried/tested/recommend. It is a kevlar tape that sticks to the inside of the tyre, nestling itself between the tyre and tube. You’ll have to install it by taking the tyre off and the innertube out, so give yourself a lot of time and patience should you choose to go down this route.

I have promised myself that when I get my next Brompton puncture, I will add some Panaracer Flat-Away tyre liners - however I have yet to get a puncture since switching to Marathon Pluses, so that’s another feather in my cap!

There you have it, my secrets to (almost) never getting punctures. You’ll notice it requires compromise, new habit formation, and some money. I can fix a flat fairly quick (15 mins?) - BUT I DON’T WANNA, I’d rather be riding, and keeping my hands nice and clean.

I have heard zero good things about solid tyres. Mechanics hate installing them (it’s not plug and play) and thanks to their solidity they are very uncomfortable to ride. But if you really hate punctures and hate your mechanic even more, give them a try and report back.

Tubeless liners are padding that takes up like, half of the inside space of a tubeless tyre. I have not heard much about these from anyone, except the occasional mechanic grumbling about installing them. Which reminds me, I still have to write Part 4 of my Tubeless series...oops!

And Slime sealant. The green goo stuff that’s supposed to act like tubeless sealant for innertubes. (They’re not the same stuff). The idea is that it plugs the hole in the tube, but I have only ever seen this go wrong…very wrong. Mechanics HATE it, it’s a pain to deal with, I don’t think it’s worth it. I doubt it works for any type of impact puncture as the hole it creates will be much too big to seal.

Some of you may remember Amu, who taught bike maintenance with me. They were an excellent instructor, kind and patient. Their moral compass led them to stand up for Palestinian human rights, and against the UK government’s involvement with the genocide.

Amu has been held on remand, which means held without bail (I just learned what this legal jargon means, don’t @ me.) Lottie is another London bike mechanic that is part of the Filton24 and has been held on remand for OVER 1 YEAR with no charge.

Amu is now on hunger strike, alongside five other political prisoners - on day 19 now. They are not doing ok.

“The Right to a Fair Trial is a key demand of the hunger-strikers. Not only were they violently arrested, and held as ‘terrorists’, despite not being charged with any terrorist offence, but all 6 activists now on trial have been held for more than a year already, with long waits still ahead for most of the other prisoners. There has, provably, been interference in the judicial process by the Israeli government, Elbit Systems, their biggest weapons maker, and the collusion of the British government, police, and Crown Prosecution Service, as well as the withholding of evidence. It is for this reason that the hunger-strikers are also demanding immediate bail.”

If you could take a moment to write to the prisons, to let them know you are concerned about their treatment of political prisoners, I would be grateful.

HERE IS THE LATEST UPDATE

I will add a template below.

You can find out more from Prisoners for Palestine here.

Political prisoners are the canaries in the coalmine for our civil liberties, and we should be vigilant. Defend Our Juries has a neat little timeline showcasing the corruption of the UK courts.

We are in the midst of Defend Our Juries’ latest action to Lift the Ban. Read more about it here.

MASS CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE

I’ve been fighting a cold off for the past couple weeks, and it looks like I’ve lost the battle today as a painful sore throat has emerged. Send me your weird herbal remedies please.

Ride on,

Jenni x

ps. below is a simple letter template to send to the prisons and to your MP. Feel free to amend it if you would like to write regarding the other hunger strikers. Here are the contacts for the different prisons. However, the medical information won’t be pertinent (not to say that they wouldn’t be in a similar state!)