Unique career numbers though? Is it just me that thinks that’s gimmicky BS?

Its a motocross thing (which I guess they are going for, especially in DH, as well as taking the bits they want from F1). Having a lifetime number, and getting it printed on your jersey. helps with rider recognition. Although they seem to have dropped the rumoured rule about keeping one kit per season?

The number stays with you until you retire, and they pick in order of career wins. Please Greg, unretire yourself, pick Loics favourite number and then just never enter a race?

Good news for MTB? Seeing the revised world cup rules for next year, if I’m reading it right, whatever team TP is on he gets an automatic entry from now til 2028 as he is Olympic champion.

Ineos’ goal is seemingly grand tours, seems Tom is not a good fit for that even if they sorted everything else out.

Clearly Le Tour is the pinnacle of pro riding from a team point of view. But how does everything else rank? Is a Monument better than the Vuelta?

Riding a one week tour-of-somewhere-I’d-struggle-to-put-on-a-map is good practise for riders and teams with Grand Tour aspirations but can’t be a sponsor favourite compared to a spring classic.

Next years Worlds in Rwanda is going to be so hilly that MVDP isn’t bothering attending – suggesting it could be a good course for TP.

Tom seems to be (and I’m speaking only of his racing, not his personality) aggressive, selfish/not a team player and easily bored/needs motivation. None of which seem to be compatible with being a GT GC contender. Even his Tour stage win was a random individual effort which probably hindered the GC effort rather than helped it?

It does seem to fit nicely with riding a select targeted program of CX, XC and one day races. MVDP made a good run of doing just that prior to 2021.

This is a purpose built playground built for lazy people

I’ll join in with the segregating and gatekeeping with saying that if a day riding downhill does not exhaust you, you are doing it wrong.

RE ebikes on the uplift, its totally plausible that someone has only an ebike, or if someone has one of each, it would make sense that the ebike is the longer travel of the two.

One lap of BPW is 250m drop. 10 laps is easily doable without rushing and with a lunch break. Not many e-riders can get 2500m climb out of a battery.

Brendan and his score is the main point of discussion, but I’d like to give a shout out for Tyler McCaul. Having shown up for years (decades?) and put in fairly conservative mid scoring runs seemingly just to pad the run time, he dropped an absolute banger this time, well worthy of his 3rd place.

It certainly wasn’t subsiding the small shops or distributors.

If it brought customers to the new bike store rather than the classifieds or just keeping an existing bike for longer?

Admin fees and so on are taking a chunk out of the smaller shops and brands though.

limit the bikes to ones more akin to those you might actually ride to work on

which could really include any road or gravel bike, if your destination has suitable storage. Megatower might be a stretch to justify though…

Agree with Tom, stunning country, lovely people etcetera… with the exception of the centre of Marrakesh which seems to exist purely to extract money out of western tourists.

I will never understand the mentality of someone who is in such a tearing hurry that they can’t be delayed for several seconds by a cyclist, yet have the time for a ten minute argument about it at the roadside.  Schrodinger’s C**t.

such people cannot be reasoned with as they have demonstrated a complete lack of any amount of reasoning or logic. Don’t engage, send the video if you have one to the plod.

If aus is anything like the uk I wouldn’t worry too much about legality of riding in public – too many of them, rule not enforced, just don’t ride like a dick etc.

but check the rules on the trains, it’s a lot easier for train staff to enforce a no e-scooter rule on their trains and stations than it is for the police in the general public space.

Oops – freelander not defender. But yeah, at ~4.00. Full snorkel, water barely over the headlights and it conks out.

I can understand the mechanically uninclined not quite getting the risks of engine damage. But how the instructor thought going up to the windows in a big standard hatchback was ever going to work?

and the defender with the snorkel – that’s an awkward conversation with whoever installed it – was it not actually connected?

Coming from someonw who struggled with the same thing, although nowhere near this level:

Conversely, if we don’t try, she could not (emphasis on *could* not *would*) try something herself and she wouldn’t attend school, wouldn’t volunteer at the kennels, wouldn’t go to netball training or matches, wouldn’t go to friends’ parties, wouldn’t go to puppy training classes etc. She would spend her free time sitting in her room looking at social media. We have to do something.

So she manages to interact with people at these other events and locations. is it just the school classroom thats an issue or have kennels, netball etc become safe spaces over time?

Worth remembering that y11 english is still mandatory for everyone and as a shy person in a big school (previously you mentioned setting) there’s 30 people in the room she may not know well or at all. Next year things will improve greatly as not only is it voluntary attendance, she will have only 4? subjects and almost certianly smaller classes. Should see it becoming more of a “friendship” group so hopefully a less stressful situation.

Isn’t it great to see the top 3 enduro women in the world duke it out in another discipline?

There’s Rude, Maes and Melamed* on the men’s side too. Entered as a fear of the future of EWS? End of season party/playtime? Proving they can run with the DH boys and girls?

*not any more, broken elbow in practise.

55mm for 90mm travel so the leverage ratio will be really low, making it more heavily damped and needing less pressure. And the leverage curve is strongly regressive, so once you start the suspension moving it moves more easily, the opposite of most bikes – this is how “zero sag” works!

thanks CGG – though I’m still going to dipsute “zero sag” rather than just “small amount of sag”with a standard shock.

If its very regressive, is it relying on the air shock’s progression at the end of the stroke?

Midway through lockdown, when my car had probably done a weekly mile round trip to Sainsbury’s, I suddenly had cause to make a slightly longer journey (of about 4 miles).
Having barely driven irl, but spent countless furloughed hours on grand theft auto, I did have a momentary lapse on a thankfully empty road.

I was going to say that based on my current bike the max psi of my shock and indeed my shock pump is about double what is in there now… so still only getting 15% now barring any crazy leverage curves.
but… it’s a 55mm stroke for 90mm travel. So that changes things I think, but I’m not sure exactly how.

and then again, barring a bonkers regressive leverage curve, if my body weight only sags it 15% or less, it’s taking 6-7 body weights to bottom out. Trail bikes are normally about 3, dh bikes maybe 4.5 with a load of progression; reflecting the intended use. 7 body weight landings is some rampage level stuff which I’m sure the fork, front triangle and more importantly my body are not going to survive.

I have also recently started wearing contacts & have similar issue with my left eye (probably as I’m right handed).

I use my right hand for both eyes.

I’ve been a long time monthly contact wearer. Never an issue getting them out. About a month ago, I went for an eye test for which I wore my glasses, and as it was time for a new pair, I needed to select some new frames. They gave me a pair of disposable contacts to wear so I could actually see myself in the mirror (I am a -5 prescription ) Must have been wearing them for all of 15 minutes. Could not get them out, was horrible. The daily disposable ones are made of a different stuff. could be worth switching to monthly lenses if you wear them a lot?

An idea that’s come up is to encourage people to walk/cycle/bus/car share instead of driving for a couple of weeks, in a ‘try it and you might like it’ vein. Let’s assume that changing facilities and secure bike storage aren’t a problem. We were thinking of having a prize for most CO2 saved or something.

Getting everyone to cycle one day a week only when its sunny is a better result than one hardcore nutter riding 50 miles a day rain, sleet or hurricane; and everyone else thinking they are mad and getting back in their cars. A team effort or group competition is better than an individual competiton.

Also push the idea of multi modal (public transport + bike) as many people don’t consider it.

However, for straight public transport, Based on places I have lived and worked, due to pupolation density, PT routes etc; people are either in a situation where PT is convenient and car travel/parking is annoying, time consuming and expensive; or cars are easy and convenient, and PT is horrendously time consuming or impossible. And they’ve figured that out for themself within the first week of their job.

Its rare that choosing between one or the other is an even vaguely balanced choice which you could sway with a little competitionn or eco-conscinence.

The chain line is offset from the pivot, meaning you run zero sag to stop the pedal bob. That means hardtail geo, a super low BB, on-rails cornering.

can anyone explain this bit? how do you run zero sag on a standard shock? (ignoring the weird bikes like the Epic WC)

I would understand running it stiff and having a linear curve, would probbaly make it ride like a ~120mm bike but more active at the top.

So, plus points:

more DH and XC than ever (or at least in the decade I’ve been watching).

Enduro still existing, although wholly in Europe.

Professional ebike racing seems to have disappeared due to poor attendance.

Negative points:

Fort William gone – forever or just rotated out?

Got to buy 8 months of D+ rather than 7 to watch it all.

Questionable team rule changes as per recent MUTN podcast.

Also sram are on their second gen of wireless mtb group sets. And they seem to have abandoned cables above GX level. I wouldn’t be worried about non compatibility for the manufacturer or first owner.
(as kelvin points out though, in five years someone wanting a second hand frame as a cheap starter bike/winter bike/park bike might be a bit upset).

there was an article on here a while back about getting a custom frame built. It raised an interesting (but probably very niche possibility) that someone commissioned a cableless hardtail or road /gravel bike in the specific period where first gen AXS existed, but UDH didn’t (or wasn’t ubiquitous). Hence leaving a custom frame owner with only the possibility of using first gen AXS for the rest of the hopefully long life of the frame.

Rumours that at the XC marathon worlds (probably lake placid xco too but I haven’t watched it yet) that some of the top shimano athletes had the unreleased wireless shimano mechs with fake cables glued to them.

Lovely place

That half of the valley has had extensive trail closures for (AFAIK) the entirety of 2024, which for me and the missus* has changed it from an ideal hub for a full weekend of riding to an awkwardly placed but very nice quality accomodation with maybe 1.5 days riding accessible making prodigious use of the rail path.

*self guided “masts” routes would be beyond ability/enjoyment.

If your ‘test’ is full of surges then you may just be very good anaerobically so your result may be a bit high.

Assume your fussed enough I’d do a longer form test to set your base zones, but once training over threshold maybe use power based on what you know you can do.

I think thats it – I’m good anaerobically/recovery. I’m about to start my “winter training” i.e. fairly unstructured zwifting because weather is crap. Thats all I really care about. Even though I plan to get back into (low level) XC racing in 2025, I dont think I’ll reach the stage of wanting/benefiting from a power meter on my real-life bike.

I’ve always questioned FTP “estimates” or even the 20 minute test or ramp tests for people who have primarily gained their fitness via MTBing, especially in the less hilly parts of the world.

Last year/this spring my FTP was determined to be about 325 via a ramp test. There is no way in hell I could do 325W for an hour. Don’t think I’ve ridden at a continuous effort for an hour in my life.

But using that figure (or the resultant W/kg) seems to work fine with the zwift workouts and zwift racing categories for shorter races. So I’m probably riding at an “effective” 3.85ish W/kg for shorter efforts but in reality I’m probably a much lower FTP but with a good sprint…..

[for clarity on all the above, a Wattbike is the only power meter I have ever ridden on, have never seen what power I can do on a real bike (skinny or fat tyred) outside]

I always wondered what would happen if Orange did a carbon bike. Seems it’s this.

Sure that I won’t be able to afford one but genuinely interested.

Looks like wireless only extends to the dropper too… but obviously the brake hose still needs a hole.

4.

2x flat, one lightweight, one high top for winter (not waterproof/goretex, far too hot)

2x mtb style clipless which are now pretty much turbo only. Maybe I should buy a gravel bike….

You won’t find many on here who will recommend a Giant. Warranty is pretty much worthless.

That was one high profile case of idiocy on Giant’s part wasn’t it? Or was there a deeper problem?

Friends with Giants seem to like them. Don’t think any have broken them.

Think XC is the way to go for your use case. Will be a massive improvement over a 2009 bike.

Some brands have their XC bikes in two versions, a “race” and a “trail” version. If they do I would recommend the trail option – its still not a “trail bike” but but will probably get you 20mm more suspension, tyres more suited to recreational riding rather than race day speed; all on the same frame.

Have a friend who rates his Orbea, to throw another lower cost brand into the mix.

.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cwyl9048gx8t

Looks like day two is walkie talkies

(which would seem like the least secure means of communication, but if you’ve binned your pager yesterday, needs must)

Nice to know my colleagues are considered fair game.

FWIW our company emergency schemes are pager driven because they work.

well I stand corrected

What benefits do you find they have over the more modern alternatives?

or is it a “we’re in too deep to change our processes now” kind of arrangement?

Clear night and full(ish) moon yesterday, so went for a no-lights walk in the forest

Or one of the lowest precision strikes in history?

Precision means identifying specific targets and accurately hitting only those targets. Distributing thousands of explosive charges to unknown destinations and simultaneously detonating them with no confirmation of their location seems like the opposite of that.

I’m going to guess that the assumption is that anyone buying a new pager in 2024 is using one for the express interest of coordinating the actions of their [freedom fighter/guerilla/terrorist] group outwith the prying eyes of the IDF (or CIA et al).

Depends if there’s a viable alternative

fair enough comment.

how much of a detour would you take to avoid doing such a thing?

this isn’t a “we should know our place and stay in the left gutter” its a “I’m aware of how drivers arelikely to react (or not react) and will take steps for my own safety”

But to add to that, as a cyclist I (and presumably all of us) can spot a good cyclist just by watching them ride. Ok that doesnt determine if they are going to follow the rules or suddenly U-turn and bunnyhop a kerb, but we can see that they are competent and able to ride in control right?

Thats why it really grates when you see an actor who very clearly can’t on TV.

Anyway, my anecdotal observation on shared use paths is that wearing a bright checked shirt elicits more positive greetings etc than the same bike ridden in Lycra or just mountain bike gear.

This does add to the nuance of what “hi vis” actually entails. the article and most commenters have assumed its a low cost loose polyester luminous green vest added over your outfit.

But you can acheive high visibilty with a number of outfits.Just wearing colours can be good in daytime. Does anyone have one of those reflective white coats for commuting? They look ace for a mud free environment.

My perception (and remeber this is coming from a cyclist) is that:

flappy hi vis vest and no helmet – former drunk driver on his way to labour on a building site. possibly pissed, unlikely to follow the highway code. bike in poor state of repair so unlikely to brake or turn correctly.

flappy hi vis vest and helmet – worlds most boring man approaching. The sort of person who can engage you in an hour long one way conversation about the longevity of 7 vs 8 speed chains based on their extensive research. Acutely aware of the highway code (and can even quote the clauses) but with no common sense, will take the right hand lane on a busy urban dual carrigeway with a perfect hand signal.

Sell more bikes. The peadable dh bikes that some of the riders are using won’t be bought by many. A boat full of 150 ish travel bikes with good geo will sell well. The purpose of racing is to sell more bikes

for enduro I can see the logic (although I’d rather the courses changed to favour the smaller bikes rather than a blunt rule)

but making xc 100mm (or any other equipment rule) is going to undo everything great that has happened to XC over the past 5+ years.

Requested to join.
probably won’t put everything on Strava as I don’t want to here the pants off my regular followers.
will just post on here and annoy you lot instead.

I’m not sure how many people are nicking bikes but have a decent phone?

anyone under 40 (and many people over it) has a smartphone permanently attached to them – maybe not the latest most expensive model. AirTags work back to an iPhone 6S which came out in 2015. A refurbished one can be had for £50.

Ok your opportunist crackhead might not have a phone but the theives in question traveled 35 miles each way by car/van to an address on their radar from last year. That’s a professional, not a junkie after a quick hit.

Bigger front wheel rolls over stuff easier, smaller back is more nimble. Along those lines. Oh and fashion probably plays a part too.

plus on longer travel bikes and shorter riders, less chance of catching your arse.

Liteville tried it for years and were pretty much ignored. Then they became race legal* not too long after 29ers became popular in downhill and enduro racing.

*side note, apparently the Mojo team did it earlier, having got their hands on the first gen 29er downhill forks, but not able to get new frames so kept running the 27.5 back end; didnt bother to read the rules, and nobody checked either.