I paddle at night sometimes on the Thames near Hampton Court. Just in a sedate “escape from the sofa” kind of thing. It’s nice to see the river when it’s not quite to crowded.

In hindsight, muffin man is right but I didn’t know it would get represented automatically. The contractor could have asked for it to stop being represented as well, I guess, but I’ve got more incentive since I’m the one who loses out.

The money from the cheque left me on September 28 so I would have thought that if it was going to clear, it would have done so by now.

Any idea who could actually sort this out? My bank? His bank?

Yeah, I put my hands up to the bank charges since I was at fault in the beginning. I paid extra on the card payment to cover the charge he got for the bounced cheque.

But the amount at dispute is £800 and I’m not going to let it go.

I’m told that 34:19 on 29er is about the same as 32:16 on 26″ wheels but I haven’t done the calculations.

However, 29ers are magic and make you a better rider.

When I ran baby-wheels, I used 32:18.

To actually answer your question, I use 34:19 on 29er wheels and live near London. But I’ve also ridden in Colorado, Pyrenees, Alps, Wales, Scotland, Lakes, etc. without changing ratios.

I haven’t had a geared XC bike for over 7 years and I don’t feel like I miss gears at all. I don’t even change ratios when I travel. It’s cheap and simple, and you’ve always got feet to use if it doesn’t work out.

I am thinking how nice a cross bike with one of these would be, though.

My geared bikes are:

The little hardcore one because I couldn’t keep it straight enough pedalling uphill on north shore trails while pushing a SS gear.

The road bike as I do some guiding on it and you need gears to chase down hardmen who race off the front when you’re talking to the people at the back.

Probably, you can live without those two geared situations.

Elfinsafety – Member
London 2012: Food and drink rules hit Olympics fans

Daddy, I’m hungry

That’ll be eighteen pounds fifty for that small burger, sir
Enjoy.

Once Cameron has introduced his fat tax, it’ll be £20.

Mark – I’ve got some ring drive lube you can have.

I don’t think I’m every going to drag that useless excuse for a hub out of the shed again so you might as well have the lube.

A few people are suggesting not taking a watch – I’d be cautious about that.

I completely shagged my knees a few years back (surgery, a year off the bike, physio, pain for years afterwards) by taking bike fitness into running and going too far too fast.

Since, then I started running to the watch. I was able to slowly increase my runs by a couple of minutes per session. It meant turning around before I wanted to, but I can now run and bike.

Enjoyment-wise, I definitely go the MP3 route.

The thing that no-one has mentioned, though is having loops that you aim for as goals e.g. from my house, I can run to Bushey Park and around a fountain there in about 6 miles. Also from my house, I can run along the river to Walton Bridge, along the far side of the river back to Hampton Court Palace, cross over there are run home in about 11 miles.

It’s quite motivating to have these loops with landmarks in them to tick off as I increase my distance.

The horse has clearly bolted, but always shift the chain into the big ring first so that it’s slightly less pointy if you do smack your hand.

Singular Peregrine?

I’ve only ridden it once, but it was great and it matches your criteria.

Who was the tall guy who got up that vicious climb?

Maybe me? Depends which climb you mean.

I was on the Ti Singular.

That is all.

Yay… thanks to Phil for organising and PaulD for leading.

I ride those trails pretty much every week, but it’s nice to ride them with some different people (and put faces to internet personas).

I think he means turn right once you’ve gone past the Go Ape bit (which is, as you say, on the left).

I think I might join you all since the weather’s nice and my bike is clean for the first time in a month! It’ll be fun to meet some new people and maybe discover some new trails.

philconsequence – slow group (still recovering from bad shoulder, honest guv)
mrsconsequence – slow group
AndyRT – slow group
Thisisnotaspoon – fast group
PaulD – fast group
raymond – fast group
slimjim78 (-1 buddy) – buddy has now put hoe before bro
Elfinsafety (too lazy to copy and paste)
Turboferret – undecided on group (not ridden for a while, and will be SS) attendance 75% likely
DezB – fast group
Singletrackmind – fast group (presumptuous, I know)
kevsterjw + 1 – slow group
Phil56 – slow group
TurnerGuy – slow/medium/fast group
MrBlobby – fast group
dobo – fast group
Tenuous – some kind of [non-pootle] group
Pleurr [aka Mrs Tenuous]- pootle group
sjw77 – slow group
Bullheart – slow/medium/fast group
mk1fan – slow/medium/fast group
Aidan – fast group

I think you’d better go on a skills course. If you steer with your hips and get your heels down, you can go round the thorns without losing momentum.

I reckon 28hrs is do-able in good weather. I would be staggered to see someone do it in 24 hours, but the South Downs Double times have been slashed in recent years.

That bloody route is cursed!

Thanks all!

If it hadn’t have been for you lot making it what it was, SSUK would have been a sad lonely party!

As it was, I think things went pretty well.

For the results oriented,

Male:

1 Simon Smith (Bikeshed Wales)
2 Neil Richardson (RAF CC)
3 David Kleinjan (Singular Cycles)
4 The rest of the men

Female:

1 Louise Robinson (Tunnel Hill Trolls)
2 Elouise Lindenberg
3 Phillippa Lansdown
4 The rest of the ladies

And Aidan Sampson won the chainless downhill race by 8 seconds!

Email info@ssuk2011.com, we’re getting a deluge of cancellations at the moment.

Long-story-short, I’m pretty sure I signed-up really early on… but can’t actually remember doing it. Or getting any confirmation from the ‘organisers’.

I’m doing my best… You should have an email with details for the race today. If you haven’t and you want to double-check, send an email to info@ssuk2011.com and I’ll see if you’re on the list.

Hi guys, if you’re waiting on email back from SSUK… Sorry… Been away working!

Transferring entries is fine, just email over the change of details.

I just remembered this thread as I was loading some new maps onto my GPS…

Have you had something on that SD card before?

When you “delete” a file, it may just get moved to Trash/Recycling Bin. That doesn’t free up the space but does make it look like the file has gone. On mac, I ended up deleting the file using Terminal. Which is a hell of a faff if you don’t know Unix/Linux.

How do you go about downloading the Openstreetmaps into a Garmin?

Put a microSD card into your Garmin

Plug the GPS into your computer, you should see it as a removeable drive

Create a folder called “Garmin” on the microSD card (on my computer, the internal GPS memory is a drive called Gamin, my SD card is called “Unnamed”)

Copy the .IMG file that you downloaded into that Gamin folder on the SD card

That should be it.

I’ll see about the cider. The bar should be able to get some kegs of the good stuff so I’ll see what I can do.

The race should be under 2 hours for the top riders doing all 4 laps. Your speed, drinking, and number of laps are up to you… Come along!

It’s actually quite a nice hard-ish satisfying climb, so have at it. What we won’t have is sour-faced individuals skipping the beer AND the climb.

If we just gave you beer and climbing, you’d never come back down and you’d miss out the 3/4 mile descent :)

I can’t remember how far it is to the beer stop, but they’ll be serving free Dark Start Hophead. And if you don’t drink, there will be a penalty climb.

More details on the course and on the details when I get more time behind a computer.

I think The Southern Yeti et al. are misrepresenting how you refuel after hard training… It takes a lot more calories than you can get from a recovery drink.

So a very convenient tactic is to have a recovery drink immediately after exercise, then cook nice proper food when you get home. If you’re going to go energy product crazy, you’d follow their advice to keep drinking their stuff in the hours after training as well. That’s the point where I draw the line and think I can do well with real food.

I’ve tried recovery drinks and solid food after training, and I’m convinced that the recovery drinks work well. Torq is the only one I’ve tried since I haven’t had enough downtime this year to risk switching to other products and screwing up my training. If the OP is feeling sore after riding, then a small tub of recovery is a cheap thing to try.

And in case you’re going to come asking for credentials: This year I set the SS record on the Iditarod 1,100 mile snow race, came 6th in the Tour Divide 3000 mile race despite snapping my frame, rode in the 2nd place Singular 24hr team at Bonty 24/12 etc. So I do know a bit about back-to-back riding.

Oh, yeah, the tyre. I’ll mail him about that :oops:

We’ve got our camper van on the road now, heading over to Ireland on Wednesday morning.

Beyond that, I haven’t a clue.

Endura baa-baa is good. It’s quite a tight weave so it’s not as stretchy as some merino and it is comfortable to wear for days without washing.

The only criticism I would have is that it doesn’t have the normal 3 pockets at the back – just a tiny one for keys. Not a problem for Camelbak users, I suppose.

Good luck if you go the warranty route. Zyro told me to get lost :(

I tend to plough my own furrow that can involve 24 hrs at a stretch and I’ve found commuting by bike to be destructive for training. Too unfocused (neither fast or slow, traffic, lights) and too easy to do when you should be resting instead. I got on better with working from home and training on the turbo in the winter. It was lucky that I could do that but it made me realise not to lean too much on the commute.

If you have lots of other life commitments, poor quality bike time is poison.

Singular prototype with grumpy cat (clicky makey biggy). Sam pointed out that the bar angle was all wrong and I did fix it before the first ride!

If anyone’s missed their chance for an entry, send an email to info@ssuk2011.com

We’ve had all 250 entries, but I’ll be going through cancellations/payment failures/glitches etc. tomorrow so a few more spots may open up.

The course may have a certain amount of brutality to it. More info on the first week of September, so you’ll have plenty of time to switch tyres.

What you have there in your thread title is a false dichotomy.

The only way to know if you’re going to like SS is to ride one. It’s completely different to riding a geared bike and leaving it in the same gear. If you like it, then great.

FWIW, I don’t think there are many truly SS-unfriendly places to ride. They suffer on steep technical climbs and on pancake flat areas. Everywhere else is a matter of fitness skill, and willingness to acknowledge that you might not have the most efficient tool for the job.

Cheese-flavoured tofu, of course!

I hope I can manage to put together a bike by then…

Weirdly different experiences between trail rat and myself.

I find Shimano to be super reliable (I have 3 year old XTs that have done A LOT of miles) and Avid BB7 to be problematic (seized after about 18 months).

To answer your actual question, I reckon you’ll be fine with what you have but Hopes would be nicer.

For years, I used to use Race Face Good and Evil grips.

Like MTG says, moving your hands around is key. I don’t like bar-ends much so I only use them for multi-day races (15+ hours per day). Even without them, though, you can use various hand positions e.g. lay yours hands flat over the brake reservoir and levers so your palm isn’t even on the grip anymore.

Set-up and riding style can help too. You shouldn’t be using your hands to hold your body up, you should have a very light touch.

I’ve just tried Richey foam grips and they seems pretty decent. Not as comfortable as RF with bare hands, but pretty good with gloves, plus light + cheap.

Another thing to consider in relieving back pain is to get weight off your back. You could try switching from camelbak to bottles and that will remove a couple of kilos just with the water. Saddle bags are very cool, but if you could put your tools in one and have less pain, then it could be worth it.