Running with water

I went for a ride out at little sac yesterday after work, and about 20 minutes into the ride I noticed my rear tire was nearly flat. That's pretty odd because since I've started running tubeless I haven't had a single flat. While looking for the source of the leak I realized that I've somehow worn the sidewalls of the rear tire almost all the way through. The steel (I guess) belting was actually showing all the way around the tire and the stans sealant was seeping through the side of the tire. I can't figure out what caused it to wear like that because it's on both sides of the tire. All I can think of is that at some point mud has gotten packed around the chain stays and when it dried it had to have been up against the sides of the tires and worn them down. I do run a fairly low tire pressure but I don't think normal flexing of the tire would cause it to wear like that.

Anyway, I ended up walking the bike back to the trail head because even though the tire wasn't completely flat it was low enough that I could've damaged my rims which would have REALLY sucked. Then I decided to go for a run so it wouldn't be a completely wasted trip. I swapped my biking shoes for running shoes, left my camelbak on and headed out. I normally don't run with water since I'm usually running around my neighborhood and since my runs don't last more than an hour I don't really need it. But I was already sweating quite a bit and figured having the water handy would be a good idea. Almost immediatly the backpack style started bothering me because it was bouncing on my back. I tighened the shoulder straps down where the pack stayed in place but after about 15 minutes it was riding up on my back and the straps were rubbing on my neck. I ended up loosening the straps a little and holding them in my hands as I ran so I could hold it flat against my back. That worked well enough and I ended up running for a little over an hour. It was a pain to have to hold onto the pack to keep it steady though so last night I started doing some research on a better hydration pack for running. I had a lot of fun running the trails (turns out running in the shade is pretty nice) and plan to do more of it this summer so a good stable pack would be nice to have. I think I'm going to check out the Camelbak flashflo. I read some good reviews about it online and it looks like it would work. I've got a $40 gift card to Dynamic Earth that my sister got me for my birthday, I need to head out there and see what they've got. I love that place.

I think my next rear tire is going to be the Specialized Chunder. It looks like it would provide pretty good traction. Hopefully A&B Cycle carries it.