Ode to Liberace

Equipment failure is never a good thing. Especially when you're racing. It can put paid to months of training with a simple puncture or a gear cable breaking. These are things we don't want to happen but sometimes they do.
Having your seat post snap is a whole different thing. No one expects their seat post to just break off! especially not on a road bike.
So there I was on the back end of a 70 mile ride when I heard a noise and I felt my saddle move to one side. My first thought was that the carbon rail on my saddle had broken. In an effort to make saddles light they certainly are pushing the envelope on rail construction. So I reached under me as I kept riding to feel what had happened. That's when the whole saddle went sideways and came off in my hand. Luckily my skills are not too bad so I was able to pull to the side of the road and as I stepped off the bike I got a clearer picture of what had transpired.

As you can see the back of the post snapped clean through. Looks like pretty dodgy material and lucky for me it didn't happen miles from home. Riding 10km standing was bad enough. Now I'm not quite at racing weight but I don't think my 160 lbs should have enough leverage to snap this so cleanly. Also the roads around here are very smooth so we can't attribute it to that.

Basically I think I just got a lemon from Cervelo. Granted the bike is 5 years old but still it's less than ideal.

Moral of the story ... regularly inspect your components to ensure you're not moments away from a catastrophic failure.