Don't hold on as tight?

I use normal thin gloves: 661 Raji or Sombrio Sultan.

Hey molgrips, could you send me a copy of that route too? My girlfriend's parents have a house down there. We did one ride down there and it had a couple of good bits, but it would be really useful to have a steer in the right direction.

Cheers!

MTFU (unless it's aimed at someone you know well enough for banter)

One thing that seems to be indefensible is the rising price of tyres. I just won't buy Schwalbe tyres new – their RRP of £55 a tyre is utterly insane.

I can't believe their cheek in charging so much and I just hope that it doesn't drag the rest of the market upwards.

Aftermarket Fox Forks seem like the same kind of thing. They set a ludicrous RRP just to see if they can. They were outrageously expensive compared to everything else even before the pound went down the hole. The fact that they appear on reasonable OEM deals shows one view of what they're worth. But suspension forks are now routinely starting out at silly money and only available to mortals in end-of-season sales.

Yes, I noticed a big difference swapping 27.2 Thomson to FSA carbon and back. I bought the FSA cheap though and it's slightly too short for me, so I've had to stick with the kicks up the arse for the sake of my knees.

Hope he gets better soon.

He was doing a run/bike/swim/row across the US… I was following his progress on Twitter but I had noticed the tweets drying up a few days ago.

Looks like I'm not niche enough, but here's another Swift:

I've been using XTs for a couple of years and it's been quite trouble-free. Plenty of power (160/160 rotors), good feel, good consistency.

They can chew through pads really fast but that has mostly been at wet endurance races where everyone else was having the same trouble. My current pads have done over 3000 miles.

The pistons can get a bit sticky if you go down the zero maintenance and riding in lots of filth route. I tried taking the pads out and spraying lots of oil around… That completely buggered them, so I replaced the fluid completely which (despite rumours to the contrary) was very easy. They've been back to brilliant since then.

BTW, I'm using Ashima pads + rotors, Goodridge hoses.

Interesting fact: In France (or some parts at least), "badger" is what they call a chav.

The other thing that helps for "mind over matter" stuff like roots is to take your fingers off the brakes. Once you're on them, you'd better not be braking, so fingers round the bars can help to remove that temptation.

There's an off-camber rooty section with a steep bank falling away to the side that I use this method on whenever it's slippy out.

I've never tried Assos minty arse lard, but decent shorts work for me. Sugoi RS bibs are great, I've had a lot of pain from Endura baggies in the past but never tried their more expensive ones.

There's definitely an element of MTFU. If I stop riding for a week or more, I just have to go through a bit of soreness for the first week or so. And Sudocrem is good to help healing if you have got any post-ride injuries. I discovered that after Dusk Till Dawn in the aforementioned Endura shorts left me with friction burns in places that are more often a problem for teenagers who have just discovered the joys of evenings in by themselves.

All the usual kinds of things for me… Malt Loaf, 9 bars, nuts, muesli with dried milk, cold pizza, pop tarts. I recorded what I took for a 2.5 day trip recently and here's the list:

2x Muesli
4x Malt Loaf
4x Elevenses ginger bars
3x 9 bars
6x Oat cakes
1x Large bag dry roasted peanuts
6x Torq cans
1x Dried apricots
1x Chocolate raisins
6x Rocky bars

I got pretty sick of malt loaf on that ride, though. Which is weird because I eat a loaf pretty much every day normally!

I differ from TJ in that I don't mind carrying wet food, but it depends on where you're riding. If there's easily available water everywhere, I suppose you might as well carried dried food.

I've never tried a hammock, and it depends on what you're doing but for my purposes, I'm incapable of erecting a tarp (or probably a hammock) at the end of a big day. I tried it once with a tarp and I was too tired figure out a decent pitch so I went with the bivvy bag alone. I tend to bivvy when I'm doing big miles, hence the tiredness. If I was going shorter distances, I'd take a tent.

Of course, if I was a bit less useless, the pitching might be easier and it wouldn't be a problem.

FWIW, I got a Terra Nova Discovery Lite for 40 quid recently so it's not expensive.

Out of curiosity, how well do hammocks breath? My sleeping bag is always wet after a bivvy (I'm a pretty hot sleeper) – the hammocks look better from that point-of-view.

I thought 29ers were shite until I rode a Swift. It's a great bike.

Where do you live? A test ride or two might make your mind up.

Thanks for the kind words, chaps. It was a good ride, followed by another good ride, followed by another good ride etc. Until that stupid lonely highway to Antelope Wells!

Headwind, straight road, darkness, sleep deprivation: hypnotic and weird. But I got there in the end.

My body kept at it pretty well and the bike was flawless. Some tyre issues, but aside from tightening the chain once, that was it! Thank you Sam for designing the Singular Swift, it's great!

I think the celebs will have a few potential problems to overcome. For the first 5 days or so, you are basically training your body to the trail. Matthew knows this and was so laid back on day one that he took the front group on a walk a couple of minutes off-trail to see a waterfall. He was still hanging around the shop at 50 miles when I got there and was happy to chat away. If those guys try to hammer it from the start, they will have serious problems.

The main advantage of knowing "the route" is not with following the cues (although I lost at least an hour in some badly routed places and others lost much more) because you could always use GPS and most of the route is easy to follow. The knowledge Matthew has is where water is available (hugely important), which restaurants will actually be open, what motel to go to etc. All those things save time and hassle. The water thing particularly, allows him to travel with kilos less than other people might. Matthew normally carries 3 bottles with extras for some extreme sections. Just think about that for a minute and figure out how you'd ride 160 miles of desert.

I rode the route from the booklet recently, and there are photos etc on my blog here:

http://iamnotasinglespeeder.blogspot.com/%5B/url%5D

The route as described in the booklet is almost impossible to follow in the area of Coed Y Brenin. I just made it up as I went along and ended up doing a lot of fire-road. It would be nice to go back through and modify my route to make use of the trail centres I passed close to – that booklet predates them so you can end up just hauling down gravel when there's singletrack nearby.

Hello!

I looked through the other brits a while back and don't know any of them. I'm sure we'll get to know each other a bit in Banff anyhow. I'm feeling as good about it as I can at this point. Building up the same kind of confidence as I had for the Ultrasport: I know I'm going to be able to give it a decent shot. There are things I can't control that could stop me from finishing, but I've got the things I can control nailed down.

Hats off to Steve Wilkinson, his story is good and he dropped me a line to see if he could offer me any advice. At the moment he's among the people I owe an email! More early mornings sorting stuff before work, then!

I'm leaving on Sunday, then riding from Calgary to Banff for the start with another racer. To say it's exciting is an understatement!

Edit: Oh, yeah… there's a new blog post about my Welsh end-to-end just published now.

How much more efficient? Enough for me!

I switch back and forth now and again (riding flats enough to be happy with them). There are climbs I can make on my SS with SPDs that I can't make with flats. Same legs, same trail conditions, less ability to climb with flats. I don't know how that translates to gears, though, I suppose.

FWIW, I find I have marginally more control with flats. Any twisting that goes through my feet has an immediate effect on the bike instead of being translated into float. But when you're used to it, which is better for riding down hills is a matter of style. As others have said, look at top-level DH: some flats, some SPDs.

Voodoo?

I can't believe no-one's had these already:

Not exactly on the bike, but I use bottom-of-the-range Specialized Sport shoes with top-of-the-range Sugoi RS shorts. I tried bling shoes but they did nothing for me so I've gone cheaper and cheaper over the past few years.

Yeah, by my reckoning the bigger ladder at chicky is about 7ft. It's the biggest I've done, but do-able on a hardtail. What you need out of your bike is confidence. If your bike doesn't give you confidence, then go see someone like jedi before spending loads on gnarly bike parts.

FWIW, I ride a hardtail with slack angles (so it won't go twitchy on landing) and DH wheels (so I don't fret about them collapsing on landing). Those drops at Chicky are super-smooth so you don't need any fancy kit.

http://www.kellykettle.com/%5B/url%5D

I use one of these Casio ones. £15 and it's done me well so far:

link

Isn't the awesome strap one of these:

5.99 a pack from Maplin
http://maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=227645

Seems to me that you're not really slagging them off at all, you're simply discussing the problem and soliciting advice. I'm not sure how discussing it on an Internet forum is different to discussing it in public anywhere else? Odd.

There's a big difference. If you discuss it down the pub, very few people get to hear it. If you discuss it here, anyone who Googles that product may find your thread about it failing. You can do as you wish (I've discussed broken parts on here), but there are different consequences.

There's the Sarn Helen Sustrans route and the mountain bikey route. The second is a whole different thing.

I downloaded the route from mtb trailfinder too, but found that not all of it is available in GPX. Tried GPSBabel, but it couldn't read the memory map files.

From the bit I did see, the route on mtb trailfinder does not agree with the route cards on http://www.mbruk.co.uk/mbruk_SarnHelenTrail_details.htm

I've been working through the route cards, trying to plot them on a map for GPS navigation during the ride and they're very hard to follow. I'm getting different distances to the route cards in places (though I am sure that the one above doesn't follow the cards as it doesn't go through the correct grid references).

If you want me to send you the GPX files when I'm done, drop me an email.

Got a new tarp during the week and popped down to Kingston today to get some guy ropes. This is result of a trying out my pitching with nothing to hold it up but the bike and a single carbon pole:

The new bars I'm expecting will give me slightly more headroom and sticks in real outdoors (instead of Bushey Park) will probably help too.

I teach 10 year old kids road safety on their bikes and it seems to me that the manufacturers are behind the kids opinions.

I ride a Surly Karate Monkey with touring tyres and they never think my bike's cool. One of them said it would be cool if it didn't have the pannier rack! :) Some of my colleagues ride road bikes and they quite often get comments such as "That's one of those cool bikes like in the Olympics!"

I was talking to a mum last week who said how much her kid was enjoying the course and how he wanted to be like Chris Hoy or Mark Cavendish. The road/track riders are making an impact on kids psyches. But the kid in question was still riding an "mtb".

It's just much easier to buy an "mtb" (quotes because most of them are shocking and would collapse at the sniff of a mountain). If you walk into a bike shop or Halfords or a garage selling £50 bikes, they will all be "mtb"s.

On a practical level, I have to adjust many brakes every week. "mtb"s with v-brakes are the easiest to get working at a reasonable level. Some "BMX"s (again not real BMXs) have v-brakes too. But the kind of brakes you get on road bikes are much harder to adjust if they're cheap and knackered.

I had this happen and phoned customer services. They were able to tell me what address they thought they had delivered it to: my neighbour; and who they thought had signed for it: not my neighbour.

In the event they had sent it to the wrong road (and since they went to the neighbour) the wrong number. Fortunately, I was able to find the house by some internet-stalking of the name that signed for it.

When I turned up to collect, she said that when she realised it wasn't for her neighbour, she had phoned Parcel Force. Days had passed and they had never got back to her.

So, call them and hassle them!

How about alternative ways of carrying?

http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Models.aspx?ModelID=39624

;)

Seems like a bit of an odd question, but hey-ho:

XT with Goodridge hoses on mine.

Hi ton, thanks for the offer but I've got a 2001 Rockhopper frame in my loft and I know beggars shouldn't be choosers but it's so rigid it would beat me to death over 2700 miles (and it needs a tensioner for ss).

Mocha, it's the slidey bit on a D-Jab. You could run it with gears and have the wheel at front of the dropouts, but there's nothing to tension/adjust for singlespeed anymore. And I know from experience that you need the adjuster bolts to work as chain-tugs or the wheel does slip under power.

Hi mocha, gate-sized: 20"

Thanks for the replies all…

trail rat: It was my Voodoo that died. I've had a whole heap of gear wearing out or failing in the past few months and it's getting pretty maddening. I suppose the answer is not to ride so much! I'll drop you an email with a rough budget if you like. Are you thinking of doing the TD?

I'm not much taken with the idea of 29ers. The only one I've ridden was pretty awful (and will remain nameless but isn't one suggested above). Plus, I know various Tour Divide riders have got stuck waiting to get hold of a 29er tyre in a two-horse town. But both of the above options sound reasonable in their 26 inch versions.

Hmmm…

I found that giving blood would still have a noticeable effect a week later. I'd feel pretty pooped on the day, but eating lots (and right i.e. get your greens down you in the days before and after) helped.

But even a week later, I'd still be missing a bit at the extreme end of my effort range. Nowadays, I don't give blood in the run-up to a race I care about. Fortunately, it's easy to find a session in London and catch up afterwards.

I had problems with FSA headsets wearing out (sorry, don't remember the exact model), but I've had the same Hope headset for a good few years and it's still working perfectly. I'd absolutely recommend them – and they come with a split crown race which my last FSA didn't have.

The Topeak Super Tourist DX Disc is quite heavy but has all the clearance you need. Even on a Pugsley (which has about the same outer diameter as a 29er with normal knobblies on). And they're cheap.

But, if I were you, I'd consider going without panniers. You can save weight by having a frame bag, drybag under the bars, big saddle bag. Some combination of those should see you right for UK conditions.

Not quite on-topic, but I've always wanted to design a jump bike and call it the Stile Cop after the area at Cannock.