15 Murphy’s Laws of Cycling

By Adam Marsal

According to Murphy’s Law of cycling, anything that has gone wrong can go even worse. Have you been there too?

1. For some unspecified reason, your record-breaking day trip didn’t record to your Strava account.

2. Massive sales up to 30% off will start the day after you bought a carbon fibre bike you craved to have for such a long time.

3. The carbon fibre frames made by this manufacturer never break, except for yours.

4. The type of spoke that broke in your wheel is the only one not available at the bike shop.

5. The beauty who persuaded you to apply to the local cycling club leaves for Germany just a week after you joined.

© Chalermwut Comemuang / Alamy / Alamy / Profimedia

6. You never ever leave the air pump at home, except for the day when you get flat in the middle of nowhere with no people around.

7. Just before a wonderful descent, you’re passed by a vehicle that keeps slowing you down all the way, but refuses to let you go first.

8. Just a month after you subscribed to the beautiful print magazine about cycling, you get a message they must go online due to financial cuts.

9. You get caught by a heavy rain on a very dirty road just on the day you’ve meticulously cleaned every part of your bike.

10. The only puddle you dare to enter is full of broken glass.

11. Your cycling holiday on the Stelvio Pass coincides with a Harley-Davidson International Meeting in the same part of Italy.

12. Your cycling shoes are available in all sizes but yours.

13. After you’ve struggled against the wind the whole trip with the comforting outlook that the way back will be much easier, the wind changes direction and you struggle all the way back home again.

14. The battery in the light dies just with the twilight.

15. The wrench you need to loosen the socket head screw is the only tool not included in the multitool you have in the pocket.