SOS! my chain snapped today!
My chain snapped on my training ride today. This is the first time I have EVER had this problem with any of my bikes. I have no idea why this happened and am hoping someone can give me some insight into this. Given that it's a holiday the bike shops aren't open. I'm in a bind because I'm in Salt Lake City right now, don't know any of the shops very well and have LOTOJA this saturday so I have no time to screw around.
Anyone know of a good shop in downtown SLC or in Murray who could take care of this ASAP?
I'm wondering if there is something else weird going on. Here's some history...maybe someone has some ideas on what precipitated this. My bike is a Specialized Ruby Pro with full Dura-Ace that I bought back in February of this year. I've been putting 175-200 miles per week on it since then. I'm estimating that the chain probably has about 5000 miles on it. I was planning to replace the chain sometime at the end of the season, before the typical (or so I've heard) lifetime of 10,000 miles for the dura-ace chain. In light of my race, I decided just to put a new chain on in advance rather than to wait until after it.
My bike shop back home put the chain on last wednedsay. I've had several training rides since then which have included some sprinting, some very long endurance rides as well as lots of climbing. I did not have ANY trouble whatsovever with it until tonight when BAM! it just snapped and fell off. About 15-20 minutes prior to snapping the chain started acting strangely. I would have it in a certain gear and then the chain would make a clunking sound as if it weren't actively engaged on the cogs. It didn't do this in all gears however. It wasn't doing it consistently either. It would clunk around for a few seconds and then stop. Then start up again later.
I don't have a digital camera right now to take pictures, but the chain really looks torqued in the place where it snapped. I wasn't cross-chaining in case people were wondering about that. It also looks as if the rear derailleur is also bent slightly.
I'm a small female, 5'3", ~130lbs, so it's not like I'm a huge behemoth that breaks things even though I can put out the watts.
What happened**********? This really freaks me out because it was a new chain that was getting replaced ahead of schedule and all of the other components are the same agte (new since feb). However the crankset (FSA mega exo compact) has been on only 3 months.