After going over a year without a bicycle tyre puncture on the Long Haul Trucker it was with great disappointment that my Continental Travel Contact rear tyre gave in to road debris and punctured a few months ago.

I was riding down a steep hill when I began to hear a psssh noise periodically in time with the wheel rotation. At first I thought a leaf or something was stuck to the tyre and was rubbing against the mudguards. As I got to the bottom of the hill though I began to feel that dreaded squishy feeling from the rear tyre and pulled over once the clunking of the air valve on the road became apparent.

This was the culprit:

This thin bit of metal wire had penetrated the tread of the Contact tyre and gone right through the tube.

The worst part was after patching up the apparent hole in the tube, it deflated on me again about 500m down the road. After inspection I realised that each time I’d heard that hissing noise coming down the hill, the metal wire had punctured a new hole in the inner tube.

The end result was a tube with so many tiny puncture holes on both sides of the tube that it was useless to try and patch it up.

These are called needle punctures and they almost certainly always ruin an inner tube. They’re close to being the worst kind of puncture, second only to one that ruins your tyre.

Up until that point the Continental Travel Contact’s had been a great choice of tyre and had resisted anything the road had thrown at them. I’ve done about 5000km on them now and will post a tyre wear update at 6000km so look out for that soonish.

I’m still keen to try out Schwable Marathon Pluses or Vittoria Randonneur when the Travel Contacts reach their end of life but I have a feeling they’ve still got a lot of life in them yet.

1. China discourages time travel over Jasmine Revolution
2. Continental Ultra Gatorskin Road Tire Mileage @ 6000km