Truvativ make some with allen key bolts instead of torx.

http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Models.aspx?ModelID=35544

Working brakes – I tend to obliterate components, so by the time I’m ready to replace my brakes, they hardly work at all. Then when I do service/replace them, I remember how much faster and smoother I can ride with the knowledge that I’ll be able to slow down when necessary.

And tubeless tyres. I usually use tubes and mud tyres in the winter, switching to fast tubeless tyres gives a big does of extra grip, acceleration, and rolling speed.

The Loch Lomond section is pretty mech either carrying or CX-able as far as I can remember. So if you don’t mind carrying, it’s probably easier with a CX bike than some all-mountain kind of thing.

Going on from there, I’d take a massive bag of inner tubes and book yourself an arm-pump massage for when you get to Kinlochleven. You can ride that stuff on a CX bike, but it’ll probably be death-grip on the brakes the whole way down the Devils Staircase.

Out of curiosity what ratio were singlespeeders running? Those singular guys flew past me.

I was riding on the Singular team and had 32:18. Not sure what the other guys had – try not to talk too much about gear ratios otherwise you’ll start thinking it would be nice to be able to change them on-the-fly and who knows where that would lead.

Thanks for the support, guys. I’m glad it was fun to watch. Apologies for not resetting my Spot on the final 31 hour run-in. I was hallucinating pretty hard on that Caledonian Canal section, so it slipped my mind :-)

Just put my Strava recording in, too:

Day 1: http://app.strava.com/activities/57644913
Day 2: http://app.strava.com/activities/57645458
Day 3: http://app.strava.com/activities/57645902

On the “negative” side, SS raises the threshold of effort (compared to a geared bike) below which you end up walking. So if you’re on a very long ride, or on hills that you’re not strong enough for yet, it can be a bummer to end up walking.

When I had knee surgery, I rode a geared bike for a couple of months before going back to singlespeed because I didn’t want to walk every little climb.

But for someone who can already ride geared MTB, you’ll not lose that much switching to SS and pretty soon you’ll develop in the places you need to (beard, general manliness), to be able to SS up nearly everything.

On the positive side: no chain slap, no expensive dangly things close to pointy rocks (ask Phil Simcock about that on the Highland Trail :wink:), you brain can focus on the trail not selecting the right gear, and so on, and so on….

I just successfully won a battle against tight tyres on Stans rims…

One thing that made a big difference was manually stretching the bead. Sat down, hold one end of the tyre in your hands, put your feet inside the other end of the tyre, and stretch the bead outwards with the awesome power of your legs.

Doing that, and working around the tyre to stretch it from 90 degree angles loosened up the tyre enough for me to get it on the rim.

Don’t go completely mad with the eating in the evening. If you’re doing 4/5hrs riding a day, and eating during the ride, you won’t need much more than recovery food/drink immediately after and and normal-ish meal in the evening.

During the ride, eat every hour – something about the size of an energy bar, but it can be whatever supermarket food you fancy. If you start to feel your enthusiasm for the ride go, definitely eat a bit, that’s usually your blood sugar dropping before your stomach feels hungry. If it’s hot, throw in some electrolytes during the ride, or immediately after to rehydrate. If you keep yourself topped up during the ride, recovery is a lot easier.

After the ride, recovery drink or some lean food within 20 minutes of finishing is best. Then a normal meal afterwards.

Having looked around at other riders during Trans-Wales, it was the slower riders stuffing their faces with 2 heaped portions of dinner every night, trying to make up for lack of fitness and just making themselves bloated. The quicker folk ate substantial, but reasonable amounts.

Just RIding Along built me some singlespeed Hope/Stans wheels that lasted the Tour Divide twice and all the training in between.

They’ll custom build anything you like, can definitely get Surly bits, and will advise you on the phone if you’re not sure about rims/spokes etc.

I’ve been riding my CX bike a lot recently and it’s really fun up to the point where it gets very rocky, jumpy, or droppy. Fortunately, I live in the SE so there aren’t that many rocks and I can choose to avoid jumpy trails with doubles on them.

Certainly, somewhere like the new trails at Swinley Forest, the CX can be pretty quick. I haven’t ridden them on my mountain bike yet, but I’ve managed to sneak into the Strava top 10 on one or two singletrack sections there on the CX.

Sounds like you want to talk yourself into a new bike – CX bikes are fun… do it!

How about these guys in Surrey Hills (disclaimer: I used to guide for them, only stopped because I don’t time these days):

http://singletrackschool.co.uk/courses/guided-rides-and-adventures/index.php

Or you can hire from Swinley Forest, but it’s not easily accessible without a car or bike to get there.

PS that wasn’t a willy-wave, most of them were relative to my own performance when conditions weren’t so dry not hard-man KOMs.

I had 71 “achievements” on Tuesday’s night-ride. Some popular areas are drowning in Strava segments.

Also a fan of Ortlieb Classic Rollers.

I’d give serious thought to carrying your laptop on your back. Riding without a backpack is nice, but panniers get a hell of a lot of vibration.

Beaver is bigger than Mud X in my experience

Take different types of food so that you can eat what you feel like eating.

I don’t bother with all the sports-specific products and just take a mix of: chocolatey things (e.g. mars), sugary things (e.g. jelly beans), savoury things (e.g. oat cakes, torilla chips), and cakey things (e.g. malt loaf). Maybe not all of those unless it’s multi-day, but you get the idea. Having food that you don’t want to eat is no good at all.

I don’t know the exact route you’ll be on but Chilterns are great for slashing tyres so make sure you can repair them.

Hardly anyone seems to use Sugoi, but I think they’re great. Comfortable pad, well shaped panels and they last pretty well.

Never tried Assos, but I’ve done plenty of trips with back-to-back 16+ hour days in the saddle and Sugoi RS bibs have always worked well for me.

My Thule tow-bar rack has space for two normal bikes. When I’m carrying the fat bike on there, I simply put it in the gap between the two normal positions (it rests on the frame of the bike rack) and bungie the tyres down. One of the clamps still reaches the frame nicely, job done.

Canada is much cheaper than USA. The US-based airlines seem to have standardised on $200 each way.

I even tried to get around it by booking with KLM operated by Delta. Got stung for $200 again.

EDIT: The $200 did at least cover the entire journey including connections

I had the exact same thing happen on a 3-cross laced Hope XC. They replaced under warranty. You might possibly have to pay for them to rebuild it onto your rim if you want them to do that, but I sent it in as hub-only.

But you could also argue that a rider without gears, is like a boxer with a glass chin.

More like a boxer who lives in a montage of wood-chopping and step-running and awesomeness.

I noticed that caliper had to be moved pretty much as far over as it will go when used on a Singular Swift rigid fork and XT brake.

It does work, though, so maybe Shimano brakes will be the way forward for you.

Got Tektro Oryx cantis on my CX and they’ve been good.

Cheap, plenty of stoping power, no maintenance hassles. I like them.

I use a Timex Expedition:

http://www.timex.co.uk/ProductDetail/T49851.aspx

A reasonably cheap, reliable watch but the addition of a vibrating alarm means it can still wake me when my hand is buried down in my sleeping bag and I wouldn’t otherwise hear the alarm. And the Indiglo backlight is very easily readable while riding at night.

My only criticism is that it’s overly chunky and rubs on the bone of my wrist which can be irritating after a few days. I was planning to file the corner down to be rounded but haven’t got around to it yet.

Entertaining article, but maintaining gears in UK conditions makes me far angrier than riding SS.

I also found other trail users far friendlier towards me when on a cross bike?

Me too, and roadies seem to be friendlier too.

I use mine to ride from my doorstep in the outskirts of London to some nice off-road in Surrey Hills, Swinley and surrounds, or The Chilterns.

The first 2 take about 1/2 an hour to drive to, or about an hour to ride to on the CX. So, it’s an efficient use of time not be sat in the car. And for the kind of trails you get in those places, a cross bike is really fun to ride. Nowhere near as fast as my mtb, but still fun.

Then in the summer, I use it as a road bike.

I’ve never raced my CX bike, and don’t have any immediate plans to do so.

Prime candidate for a Lefty?

Salsa-sponsored rider Kurt Refsnider on riding a Mukluk with a Lefty:

http://krefs.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/a-little-squish-is-all-it-takes.html

Curiak:

http://lacemine29.blogspot.co.uk/%5B/url%5D

Epic riding, well photographed and well written

You might want to have a look at the first bit of EWE.

Starts in Plymouth, goes through Dartmoor, then takes the Sustrans route over to Exmoor.

Details and GPX file here:

Route

I use 9-speed chains for singlespeed and I think they’re a fair bit lighter.

Yep, a few quid for new springs now, or potentially having to send your wheel back to Hope to get a new ratchet fitted to the hub later.

Disassemble now while it’s easy!

What you’ve done there is make the classic internet mistake of reading 4 words and ignoring the rest of what I actually said, It mostly depends on whether you’re doing one loop or laps.

If it’s basically XC, and you’re good, and you know what’s coming, having a rigid fork won’t slow you down much.

Where it makes a big difference for me is on unseen trails where that insurance clause of suspension can save you when it all goes wrong. If you’re cavalier, even that might not slow you down.

I don’t know everything, but I’ve ridden > 6ft drops and won races on rigid bikes, so I do base this on some experience.

Singular team (myself included) often race rigid and we usually do OK.

It depends a bit on the course, though. If you’re doing laps like a proper XC race, then you learn on your practice lap or your first lap and then you can go fast in the real thing. If it’s single loops like the Dyfi Enduro, I always keep a bit more in reseve on a rigid bike because I’ve done the “skipping over rough ground towards certain doom, wishing I had enough grip to brake” thing and it isn’t much fun.

Bonty Mud-X is the closest to a Trailraker.

Maxxis Beaver is less of an out-and-out anti-clag tyre.

For mixed conditions, Beavers are my favourite. For clag-fests like The Chilterns, Mud X is better for the worst of it.

It is a great bit of kit. Here’s mine still glowing 15 minutes after I stopped riding(!)

Depends on how you plan to use them. If you ride alone at night and/or put a lot of time and money into going on trips that involve riding at night, you don’t want a light that will let you down.

Your mileage may vary, but I’d much rather take a USE light on a 200 mile ride in the highlands than my cheapo one. In fact, the cheapo one is so damn heavy, I can’t use it as a helmet light for more than a couple of hours.

White Lightning Epic is available in big jugs (http://www.ukbikestore.co.uk/product/29/qpwl5032e/white-lightning-epic-ride-32oz-quart-jug-960ml.html) and, for my money, works better than Finish Line Dry.

Big jugs… dreamy face

Looks fantastic!

All the problems that people have already mentioned about bad cycle paths mean that my default position on a road that I don’t know is to use the main carriageway.

Some of the ones I do use in London are only usable with heavy-duty tyres as they regularly feature smashed bottles and shopping trollies, sometimes even burnt-out cars. If I went down there on a road bike, I wouldn’t be too pleased about hanging around having to fix a puncture.

It’s only really on routes that I ride regularly that I can make an informed decision on which way to go. The road is almost always going to free of debris and stupid junctions that make you stop all the time.