Conditions dictate a lot, but I would love to see TJ’s tent that’s doesn’t weight much more than my 300g bivi bag. I suspect he means a bivi and tarp weigh nearly the same as a tent.

My tent is just under a kilo and I shudder to think how much it would cost to get ride of 700g from my bike instead of from my sleeping kit.

It’s all a matter of style and taste. If you go light and simple (e.g. no gears, bivi, stove) then you can save money while still having a bike that rides like a bike. For me, that’s great: I can go out and ride, then sleep where I drop.

I’ll be there with a Singular team of 5 in the 24 hour. Probably taking it more seriously than last year but, since I’ve got about zero speed in my legs at the moment, it’s going to be a challenge!

EBBs can have varying amounts of adjustment. A “1/2 link EBB” is smaller than a normal one and will work with some magic ratios, but others might need a 1/2 link.

If everything else is the same as before, I’d make sure you’re not being an idiot: check the wheel is straight in the dropouts, make sure the spacing on the rear cog is the same as before and the chainring is in the same place.

Definitely try to avoid 1/2 links, they’re a pain in the bum.

Standards[/url]

Maxxis Crossmark rear and Ikon front work well for me. Fast rolling, grippy, the Ikon is surprisingly good in the wet (I’m still using it now).

I’ve had really bad experiences with Kenda SB8s!

Thomson seatpost: I bought one in 2005 and it has been on my most used bikes pretty much the whole time since.

I tried a couple of FSA carbon posts and they snapped after a few months, so back to the Thomson.

It’s even withstood monster saddlebags on the Iditarod 350 and 1000, and on the Tour Divide twice.

Topeak Mountain Morph here too. I took one to Nome, and it seems to be the first choice of most riders in Alaska. I wouldn’t bother with a gauge, though. I haven’t tried on that particular model but last time I had a gauge on a trailside pump it was woefully inaccurate.

Mine’s quite long, but I did need to deal with a variety of climates:

http://www.aidanharding.com/2011/07/tour-divide-kit-list/%5B/url%5D

Completely depends on the actual trip you book on. I rode one years ago on a Spesh Rockhopper with slicks and that was fine.

I guided a couple last year and will be doing more this year (start on Wednesday!). From the guiding perspective, some trips have been 100+ miles per day where everyone used real road bikes and some have been much lower mileage with a mix of bikes and abilities.

You can certainly ride from London to Paris on a MTB with slicks. Just call the organisation before you book and make sure it’s not going to be a roadie speed-fest.

Hope that helps!

I don’t know if they on sale to the public yet, but Greg from Speedway Cycles was on a steel Fatback at the Iditarod this year.

Might be worth getting in touch with him…

Or buy my 2nd hand Pugsley before I sell it to Paul 🙂

I’ve found Endura Mullet glasses to be very comfortable and optically very good.

The lenses adapt to light conditions, and they are certainly good for both daytime and stopping bugs from getting in your eyes at dusk.

On top of the reasons already given so eloquently by Cougar, Twitter also succeeds by not ballsing it up by trying to be too clever (unlike Facebook). It’s a very lightweight service that has stuck very well to what made it big in the first place.

I signed up to follow Rob Lee on one of his endurance rides. Since then, I’ve found just the same as a lot of people: you get interesting direct opinion, competitions that appear nowhere else, and even news that doesn’t make mainstream media.

The news thing is particularly interesting and democratic. On the one hand, there’s Ryan Giggs. On the other, there’s on-the-spot commentary about incidents like shootings in London that don’t even make the local news any more. Or protests. Or good news stories. The people are setting the agenda and you can use Twitter to see what’s happening with your own filtering method.

I don’t want to get too entrenched in this, but a couple of factual points from real experience:

First, most people I coach are either outdoor types who want to have a go at mountain biking as well as the other sports they enjoy. Or people who have been riding for a while and want to improve. Sometimes because they can’t figure out how some of their riding buddies are quicker, or just because they feel their skills are holding them back.

A fat IT professional on an expensive talent compensator is a rare beast, in my experience. Having said that, I bet that nearly no-one I have seen is on STW (which probably reflects mountain bikers as a whole).

Second, the coach needs to be good at coaching and riding. But not necessarily faster/”better” than the person they are coaching. I’ve ridden with XC racers who would certainly lap quicker than me, but have spots of poor technique that would make them even quicker if they could fix them. Does it matter that my aerobic speed is lower? No. I’ve also ridden with people who can do all sorts of clever tricks on a BMX and jump better than me, but they don’t corner as well at XC riding as I do. That’s the area they can be helped in. You quickly realise that comparing riders against each other doesn’t make sense except in a very limited context e.g. a race or a particular feature

Coaching does frequently seem to be offered up as a solution on here. Doesn’t mean that it’s wrong.

toys19 has the right idea 🙂

Velosolo are not that well known, but well worth a look. I use their chainrings these days and they last well without being as heavy as Surly.

Having removed the mangled remains of a King headset the other week, I’d say Hope headset and keep the spare cash. But pretty much the whole world seems to disagree so YMMV.

Sugoi RS bibs work for me. Not crazy expensive, but I’ve raced 4000 miles in them so far this year.

http://forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?t=627966

Veggie/vegan trivia: Tunnocks Tea Cakes are one of the few veggie marshmallows!

Saddles are the tough one for a biker… I don’t know of a good non-leather option.

I’d say Hope are worth it. They last maybe 4 or 5 times longer than Shimano for me.

I bet some of you people squeeze toothpaste from the wrong end of the tube, too 🙄 🙂

Outside for me, but some weirdos put them inside.

Or no thermarest at all if you want to be super-light. I’ve gone without the last couple of times and it’s been fine.

It was a nice ride out there. Weather was a bit “Wales” 🙂 but I expected that! It was certainly nice to go round with IanB’s company.

Here are some photos:

The complete set here

There is a small backpack packed into it, just in case. But I can carry a couple of day’s worth of food in the existing space on the bike.

Happily, it rides pretty much like a bike. The Pugsley with 2 people’s gear on it that I rode last time I was at WRT rode like a donkey carrying a submarine on its back.

Here’s my setup:

32lbs all-in (no food yet). And all pending inevitable faffing/changes.

Bikepacking fans might want to keep an eye out for the next Privateer. Proper bikepacking article ahoy!

Got my route planned 🙂

Still waiting on frame bag 😕 but it’s being done by a mate so, if necessary, I can go stand over his sewing machine until he finishes.

I’m surprised to hear about Revelate problems. If the TD guys get really stuck, I have a spare Revelate seat-bag that I could lend.

9 bars are very calorie dense. About 280 calories per 50g bar. They do have 20% fat but it’s (roughly) good fat as opposed to the bad fat in pork scratchings!

For a 3 day ride, peanuts are good too. Not easy to stomach if you’re riding fast, but calorie dense.

Haribo is fine if you don’t mind eating gelatin, but if you do there are always jelly beans (some of them) and liquorice. All are high carb with loads of sugar.

Plan another trip…

The kind of racing I do is probably not the kind of racing you had in mind. I like the utlra-distance multi day stuff because it take you to outstanding places and lets you have real psychological battles with the other racers. You can’t beat rolling into town to see the people you’ve been chasing for days looking like zombies or (on the other foot) hearing them pass while you sleep and having to scramble back onto the bike.

I’ve come 2nd in the Iditarod (hold the SS record) and 3rd in the Tour Divide. I’m currently bricking it at where I ought to be aiming in this year’s Divide.

These events give you a continuous project. And to quote a more eloquent racer than myself: “We go to look for cracks in ourselves. We come back to see if we’ve fixed any”.

I had an encounter with a walker a few weeks ago…

It was on a moderately steep downhill, so I passed him as wide as possible and at walking pace. He told me I shouldn’t be riding there since it was a footpath. I said that I knew it was a footpath, but I couldn’t see the harm in riding it when under control and in the current (dry) conditions.

We talked for quite a few minutes and his main complaint was that some bikers go too fast and don’t leave enough room when passing. When I pointed out that this could equally well happen on a bridleway and that the problem was those particular bikers being idiots rather than the classification of the path they were on… he conceded.

We parted ways with him saying that I had ruined his arguments and he wished all bikers were considerate. Quite a few more minds out there to change (including idiot bikers), but some can be changed.

Nice to see the entries coming in. It’s going to be a lot of fun!

Re: Rollers

Dan said he was going to bring the Flintstone rollers and Rollapaluza are bringing both track bike and spin-tastic MTB setups.

Oh, if you’re going to the WRT, you can have a go on my L Pegasus.

I don’t have any scales and I never weighed my Swift so I don’t know how much of a weight saving there is. It is one of those bikes that you pick up and think “Ooooh!”.

I think the lighter weight is probably part of what makes the Pegasus a more agile ride than the Swift but not the whole story. I didn’t get to try the two back-to-back: I rode my Swift for ages, went off to Alaska and rode a loaded-up Pugsley, then straight onto the Pegasus when I got back.

My Pegasus is SS only, but (unless you take the one Sam already has – I don’t know the spec for that) they can customise those fittings for you.

As with all things, attempt to try before you buy. I imagine you’ll be able to play around with the low front end of a TD-1 if it bothers your (bar, stem choice). I have modest risers on my Pegasus which is against the consensus for 29er setup, but they were what I already had and work great so I haven’t been moved to throw any money at a wide flat bar.

No toe overlap problems on my Pegasus either (6’3″ with size 12 feet on a L frame). I’m a bit biased, but the Pegasus is the best bike I’ve ever ridden. Here’s my witter from my first couple of rides:

http://www.aidanharding.com/2011/04/pegasus-is-here/%5B/url%5D

If you’re ever up London-way, I’m sure we could sort you a test ride. Or ask Sam, he’ll have a good idea of where the Pegasus owners are.

I found the best technique was to use grease and then the following:

Tighten the adjusters to get the dropout in the right place
Tighten the side bolts that are supposed to hold the dropout in place
Re-tighten the adjusters so that they press into the dropout a little

Don’t overdo step 3, but it does really help to stop them from rattling loose.

Regardless of how you feel about your own safety, I’d think you should avoid the forest to avoid some sort of “Idiot mountain biker risks fireman’s life by ignoring advice” outrage.

Each to their own, but you can easily reach The Chiltern Hills, Surrey Hills, and Tunnel Hill from the Western parts of London.

Smaller sprockets are definitely not as good.

I used a 22t chainring for Iditarod in 2009 and wore it out in 350 miles. I used a 28t front and a bigger rear this time and it was still in decent shape after 100 miles.

Have you been through the usual suspects? Since you’re standing up a lot, that makes the saddle an unlikely one. Think very closely about the pain: does rotation hurt? If it does, a tweak of the cleats could help.

Just because your current setup worked with gears, that doesn’t mean it was right. With the extra strain of singlespeed, you might uncover something that has always been wrong but never showed itself.

I’ve had new shoes with the cleats slightly wrong that were great for 3 hours and only really showed a problem when I rode more than 100 miles per day.

Another thing to think about is dropping your heels across the top of the pedal stroke. It’s easy to end up climbing with your body right up over the handlebars and your toes pointing down on a SS. It takes more core strength to drop your heels but, if you can get used to it, it seems more powerful.

I ran an On-One 29er rigid fork on a Voodoo D-Jab (100-130mm travel when I had a suspension fork) for a while. It was great fun. I enjoyed it much more than when I had a twitchy short rigid fork in the past.

Definitely worth considering, I think.

I thought it was great. For the people who thought the descents were not as exciting as billed, bear in mind that this is the driest I have ever seen the course (I think I’ve done 8 years). Try those same descents when all the rock is wet and/or covered in slime and you’ll be filling your pants. I know there wasn’t much singletrack, but if I want to ride the same twisty singletrack that I have at home, I might as well not drive all the way to Wales.

Big pat on the back to all the organisers and volunteers, the Dyfi is a unique event and (along with SSUK) the only race that I enter every year without hesitation.