They bought the M5 to a standstill on Saturday.

https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/m5-chaos-protesters-spark-delays-6608934

I’ve been using Control SL 25 Carbon 29ers on my XC race bike, 4000km so far including probably 15-20 XC races. No issues what so ever, v impressive 1300g wheels.

SYL had enough ££££££££££ to launch a new ‘documentary’ last weekend.

Tommy in Telford: Stephen Yaxley-Lennon returns to the streets

Shame they’ve stopped making them for 2022 but my Whyte Wessex One has proven to be an ideal Winter road / gravel-lite bike – comfy carbon frame, 35mm tyre clearance, integrated Whyte mudguards, threaded BB.

It seems like Whyte were 4 years ahead of the game with the Wessex, especially considering that Cannondale are launching the new 2022 Synapse that apart from the lights & radar tech the Wessex can tick all of the Cannondale frame features. ;-)

£125 here also.

Spring / Summer – For the past 18 months Conti GP 5000 TL 32mm, v impressed, super fast & grippy. Bit of a ball ache getting them on my Hunt Carbon Aero 50s but once on the rims pumped straight up tubeless.

Autumn / Winter – trying out a pair of Schwalbe One TLE 30mm for the past few months on DT PR Dicut wheelset and whilst seemingly a noticeable amount slower than the GP5000 TL, I’ve been impressed with them as 4 season tyres. Pretty easy to set up tubeless and seem quite hard wearing so far this Winter. Good price from Merlin.

Just taking delivery of a new pair of 2022 Conti GP5000 S TR 32mm (naturally in tanwall!) so it’ll be interesting to use those by Summer as a comparison to the GP5000 TL I’ve been using.

If it goes to Court of Arbitration Sport then I dont see how FIA can defend the breaking of the race rules. As has been mentioned above, the F1 Eiffel 2020 race contains precedent as delivered by Masi.

“In 2020, there was a safety-car period during the Eifel Grand Prix at the Nurburgring. Both Hamilton and Verstappen complained it had been unnecessarily long.

Masi was asked about this after the race. He said: “There’s a requirement in the sporting regulations to wave all the lapped cars past.”

This shows that Masi knew the SC rules and that he chose to break them as RD in Abu Dhabi. Sackable offense?

Slightly too early to start the 2022 F1 thread but here’s to hoping that Merc produce a 2022 engine that’s 150bhp up on the Redbull inhouse 2022 engine with Honda now leaving the scene. Horner’s face with a RB struggling to get into the top 10 each race in 2022 would be a sweet turnaround! :-D

Imagine a World Cup Final being 4-2 with 30secs to go and then the ref says next goal wins… Sounds like 2021 F1!

Itd be ironic if it turns out Max nudged ahead of Lewis by 0.2mm under the Safety Car & is given retrospective 5 sec penalty considering Horner’s protestations at Lewis’ rear wing being out by 0.2mm in Brazil…

TheGreatApe – great minds!

What’s the penalty for overtaking under safety car conditions, 5 sec penalty?

Not inconceivable that Max could be handed a 5 sec retrospective penalty if the data is conclusive that he nudged ahead of Lewis.

Very messy end to the season.

LOL @Binners! F1 is certainly edging closer to random banana skins and oil slick hazards being applied! :-D

Race result will be annulled on Merc appeal as the FIA race rules have been breached by the Race Director.

Get ready for a 5 lap Super-Sprint re-run race back to the order of the VSC to decide the title… Seems like par for the course for Liberty Media WWF1…!

Good, the race report officially finds Max a cheat, correct result.

A 2.4g braketest according to the report!??!! :-O

Verstappen is summoned to the stewards for an alleged breach of Breach of Article 2 (d) Chapter IV Appendix L of the FIA International Sporting Code.

This says: “Causing a collision. Repetition of serious mistakes or the appearance of a lack of control over the car (such as leaving the track) will be reported to the Stewards and may entail the imposition of penalties up to and including the exclusion of any driver concerned.”

What grid start penalty will Max start with at Abu Dhabi for the Hamilton brake test?

Max supporters’s please stand up… You’ve all gone v quiet supporting your dirty cheat of a driver…

Can MV just be DQ’d now. This is so stupid.

Shame that Max can’t actually race a car. He’s mighty fast but he can’t actually wheel to wheel race with other cars.

FIA making up rules along the way. Completely absurd.

Just got home from a week’s holiday in Dumfries & Galloway – no fuel issues at all there.

Travelled back home yesterday and whilst acknowledging the shite weather might have something to do with it I thought the motorways were a lot quieter than usual – I presume the fuel issues in England likely helped with that.

Re: Merc AMG Sport vs Merc AMG.

There’s not surprisingly a BIG difference between a Merc CLS 250 ‘AMG Sport’ with 202bhp vs a full fat Merc CLS 63 AMG with 518bhp. ;-D

For me it was growing up in Newlyn (Cornwall) & having one too many bad meat experiences from local Cornish pasties!

At age 8 I decided I no longer wanted / needed meat, my parents were supportive & I’ve never looked back.

I’ve also always said that if I wanted meat or felt my body needing meat then I would eat it again but in 33 years since have never reached that point.

It’s something I’ll consider and factor in for the potential hassle of replacement. For me not necessarily a complete turn off depending on the part & if there is potential for replacement by other brands.

I bought a brand new 2007 Spesh Enduro SL Pro when they came out that had the Futureshock E150 forks & Spesh rear shock. After about a year I sold the Spesh forks & rear shock & simply replaced with Lyrik U-Turn forks and a Fox RP23 rear shock, much better.

Likewise I had a brand new 2008 Stumpjumper FSR Pro that had the Spesh Brain rear shock. It failed twice under warranty so in the end sold the repaired shock & replaced with a Fox RP23, like the Enduro SL it improved the bike (I replaced the Spesh rear shock as much because I didnt really like the Brain as opposed to it’s rebound valving circuit blowing up!).

I used to be quite a Spesh fanboi during the 00’s, most recent was a 2015 Tarmac SL4 105 roadbike which I thoroughly enjoyed for a couple of years (bought brand new in end of year sales for £1200, a bargain by today’s prices) but their pricing is now stupid.

£4.5k for just an S-Works Athos road bike frame & forks… Plenty will buy them though so I suppose the market dictates.

So then, on Saturday afternoon I appear to have involuntarily joined this club! :-(

Unpacked my XC race bike & took it out for the first time in 6 months following a solid Winter of road riding mileage. Had a nice local 2.5 xc ride, very tame lanes & gravel trails just to check the xc bike over.

Suffered unusually high pressure on my wrists in final 30mins of the ride & slight left knee tightness but put this down to change in position from road to XC bike. Anyway, finish the ride at home and then when it comes to getting off the bike I barely can, and when I do get off am absolutely gob smacked that I can no longer stand up straight without total nerve agony in my lower most back!

Crawl in the house & have then spent the past 48hrs lay out flat on the bedroom floor on a very slim, super hard mattress we had stored away, regular is no good and doesn’t ease the pain. Saturday night pain like I’ve never experienced before.

I’m still flat on the makeshift bed today but have been standing every 90mins or so and then returning back to the floor just to try to get some movement. Any half quick movements lead to fairly monumental lower back spasm / jolts of pain. I can not stand for more than 4-5 mins before there’s a build up of pressure in my lower back and the associated back spasms commence.

Also worrying me is that my torso is no longer straight if viewed head on from the front. My hips have visibly shifted a decent few cms to the right and my upper body is sitting off Centre from my lower half??!! I presume the 48hrs of back spasms have overly tightened my lower back and caused a shift, hope its temporary! :-O

Currently awaiting GP appointment phone call back and health insurance physio call back.

Ah, that’s good to hear then. For a moment I was thinking that sounds like a nice little scam for drivers to pull. Glad they had the correct papers etc (although sorry to hear you didn’t avoid the charges on this occasion!). :–)

Monkeyboyjc – did the UPS driver actually provide any paperwork showing the £40 VAT & £12 Handling Fee prior to you paying that? If not that sounds a rather fishy way of delivery drivers making a nice fee for themselves collecting cash from customers that isn’t actually on the books…?

Will never forget my dad getting his dream car, I was 10 yrs old, it was a brand new 1990 H reg Golf GTI mk2 in metallic black with BBS wheels.

We travelled on the train as a family from Penzance to Paddington to go & collect it from the dealership in W London!

Very unfortunately as a 90’s hot hatch it was pretty highly sought after by thieves and it was stolen a few years later. Even now my dad gets abit misty eyed if that’s mentioned. I do wonder where it ended up, we never heard anything of it ever again.

EVERYONE needs to keep a close eye on the Crime, Police, Sentencing and Courts Bill passing through Parliament from today.

The debate about violence against women is very relevant here,under the Tories proposals a protester who defaces the Winston Churchill statue will likely get a tougher sentence than someone who sexually assaults a woman…

https://www.politics.co.uk/comment/2021/03/11/silencing-black-lives-matter-priti-patels-anti-protest-law/?cmpredirect

I’d personally recommend NCN Route 5 from Oxford. Literally comes off the canal north side of Oxford, then off via Woodstock, Banbury, Shipston Upon Stour, Stratford Upon Avon, onwards to Redditch and has been extended to finish at Birmingham New Street (!). I could be wrong but I think the Redditch to B’ham New Street is new on the OS map, I dont remember seeing that previously.

I’ve done a few Oxford to Stratford Upon Avon and back to Oxford day’s out on that route – carbon xc race 29’er hardtail ideal. Approx. 100 mile round trip. I really like the route, easy to follow, some nice extended gravel sections and generally quiet road bits, mostly country lanes. The Illmington Downs just South of Stratford are picturesque and the 5 mile Green Way gravel old railway track provides a fun off road spin right into Stratford.

I’ve not taken NCN Route 5 from Stratford to Redditch and onwards so can’t comment on that but certainly always enjoy Oxford to Stratford. Also to add it is pretty hilly between Banbury and Shipston on Stour so that’s the most physically challenging section I’d say.

I bought an Edge 520 Plus in the Xmas sales, I wouldn’t recommend it and glad I got it cheap.

It’s a step backwards compared to my nearly 8 year old Edge 500. My main gripe is that it seems much more common than not that 520 Plus’ always 20-25% underrecord elevation during a ride. Mine suffers from this so I have to use the Strava elevation correction function for every ride I upload.

I’d score the 520 Plus 2 out of 5, it really shouldn’t be a step backwards on a Garmin Edge 500 from a generation before.

Reminds me of the 7 or so years I did as Local Authority Safer Neighbourhoods Manager. I used to manage the network of local NAG (Neighbourhood Action Group – yes really!) meetings bringing together police, council, city councillors, county councillors, and some legendary parish councillors.

This vid has bought back memories of one particular NAG meeting where a local councillor wasn’t getting his way with his request for part of his ward to have use of the local neighbourhood police team’s SID (Speed Indication Device) to deal with speedy rat running. We had a few local secondary school students in to observe local democracy & decision making in action at that meeting. Well, cue this councillor not getting his way on the SID deployment, losing his sh*t and right in front of the police inspector chairing the meeting picking up his chair and WWE style throwing it across the room and storming out. I felt most for the secondary school pupils just there to observe – welcome to democracy! :-D

Slashed my rear Gravelking TLC 700x35mm on my Wednesday lunchbreak ride but not really complaining. Been running them tubeless and it was at 4700km and looks like glass on the road slashed open the carcass in the middle of the tyre. Quite incredibly the tubeless sealant sealed it after after about 90 seconds of on / off spurting – one of the biggest tyre slashes I’ve had seal in 10 years of being tubeless so quite impressed by that being honest!

Pumped it up at home, stored on the slash to allow sealant to flow through if required and it was riding fine again today. I will replace it though as it’s pretty worn on the centre line anyway now.

I bought an Edge 520 Plus in the Christmas sales as it was going for a decent clearout price. Pretty underwhelmed by it in that it’s a backwards step compared to my 7 year old Edge 500 and pretty useless at tracking elevation and always 20-25% under reports total climbing!

I’m just living with having to resort to the Strava Elevation recalibration function for every ride, it’s kind of my regular upload routine now just to click on Strava to recalibrate elevation. Daft really but I just can’t be bothered to send the GPS back.

I happen to own the prettiest gravel bike there is, best paint job as well. You’re welcome.

https://theradavist.com/2019/10/the-2020-cervelo-aspero-disc-grx-1-comes-with-a-27-5-wheel-option/

I technically won at Road Closed roulette last night & enjoyed a really quiet section of abandoned lanes into a local village where the t-junction closure was easily navigated by using pavement round the road barriers.

BUT…

…the Road Closed roulette karma then took away my ‘win’ by providing me with a 2km climb the other side of the village that was covered in spilled farm slurry all over the lane…!

My wife when I get home: ‘Hi! Pwooof, what’s that smell…’??!! :-D

I lived in & around Oxford for 20+ years & used to ride up to Banbury and beyond from time to time.

IMO gravel & road riding better nearer Oxford / Woodstock / Charlbury but still a decent amount of lanes & gravel trails around Banbury. Nice gravel routes NW of Banbury across to Shipston upon Stour, Ilmington Downs and onwards to Stratford upon Avon – have v fond memories of nice 100 mile day outs out and back that way. Worth taking your bike.

OP – be interested to hear how you get on with this, am looking at the GRX version as a Winter roadie bike (although noting that the right size for me has already sold out!).

Cervelo in red – wrong.

I got this Cervelo in April, imo the best metallic splatter effect paintob since ’92! Why would I want it in red when it’s got the best bike paint of 2020 by a mile! 😄😄😄

https://theradavist.com/2019/10/the-2020-cervelo-aspero-disc-grx-1-comes-with-a-27-5-wheel-option/