I’ve used these for a while and find them great Deda Parabolica Due[/url]. As finbar says, put your seat all the way forward. I also find it more comfortable to tilt the nose of the saddle down a bit (but not so far that you have to keep pushing yourself back up the saddle).

I’ve not used others, but I’ve got 10 speed Force on one bike and 11 speed Force on the other and I really like them.

If you’re going 10 speed and aren’t going single ring at the front then I would recommend getting a SRAM 11 speed front mech as they are much better than the 10 speed ones and they still work with 10 speed shifters. I could never get my Force 10 speed front mech working perfectly, whereas the new 11 speed Force mech has been easy to set up and faultless.

Just to add – we had to pay the full excess to the hire car company (about 1000 Euros) and then claim it back when we got back. It took a while to get all the documentation (damage report etc) from the hire company, so even though we put it on a credit card – we had to pay it off before we could claim it back from the insurance company.

I’ve used icarhireinsurance before and when we got rear ended they paid up reasonably promptly and without any problems.

Now on another classic ’88 album – ‘…And Justice For All’ – which I still have on vinyl.

Since buying a car with a tape player in it, my 8 year old lad always demands I put on my pretty ropey copy of this!

Gary M – I just mean that I think I’d find a lighter chain easier to thread round multiple bikes. I find the 16mm chain quite big and cumbersome (I probably just need to man up!).

The 19mm chain must be huge!

Just looking at the weights:

19mm: 6.3kg / m
16mm: 4.5 kg / m
13mm: 2.9kg / m

I have a 16mm chain from pragmasis and its almost too big and heavy. If I bought it again I would go for a 13mm chain as its about half the weight (and it’s still sold secure gold for bikes).

Having said that, our garage got broken into a while ago and I believe it saved my bikes (there had been lots of targeted bike thefts locally – with just the high value bikes nicked and the cheap ones left). In my case the high value bikes were locked up with the 16mm chain to a ground anchor and nothing got nicked.

I loved seeing these being raced. Ok, not the best looking but still entertaining.

Here you go:

Chopper Christmas Jumper

The Salzkammergut Trophy makes the Kielder 100 look easy! (but probably with less mud)

Any idea what sort of percentage it is on road / off road?

Here you go theotherjonv:

Longest Lap Race

This was from the last Revolution. What surprised me was how a lot of them aren’t very good at track stands! (but no doubt better than me)

In the Yorkshire series you can also do the novice races without the £3 surcharge.

Yorkshire Series Rider Info[/url]

For normal riding (i.e. not racing) a compact chainset (50/34) and an 11-28 cassette.

Amgen Tour of Calafornia[/url]
(they make EPO amongst other things)

Personally I use them for TT’s but to make them comfortable I have to put my saddle fully forward and tilted down slightly. This then makes riding on the hoods not very comfortable.

Most of the riding I do is with groups so I wouldn’t get to use them anyway if I left them on.

Nothing to do with being drunk on a bike, but I always thought it was a bit harsh when a bloke was banned from driving for warning drivers of a speed camera ahead.

Motorist is banned over speed trap alert

Here’s my Guercotti all set up for a trip to Belgium to watch the Ronde Van Vlaanderen this weekend (woohoo!).

It also gets raced and used as a winter bike.

I recently had the screen on my iPhone fixed here (its in Horsforth):

iPhone Repair Leeds[/url]

They did it in 30minutes while I went for a coffee. Would happily use them again.

Nice one lapierrelady – I’ve just dug out the 9 year old sloe gin and we’re now drinking Sloe Royales.

Very nice!

I’ve heard that story lots of times and I’ve always thought it doesn’t make sense. Most of the big european climbs aren’t that steep, they are just long.

It would make short steep climbs (e.g cobbled Belgian bergs) a higher cat than Ventoux.

Thanks bugpowderdust. I ordered some speedway pros (from Zepnat in the end). They arrived this morning and look like they’ll do the job.

Its my birthday, so I’m off out to a local Italian with the wife and kids.

Might have pasta.
And possibly a beer.

I’ve come up against the same problem (same bike) – I’ve been looking for both road slicks and cyclocross tyres in 650a.

You can get wheel chair slicks that will fit (Schwalbe Rightrun), but not found any knobbly tyres available in Britain. Have you managed to get any of those kenda cross tyres sent over from America?

I have managed to fit (just!) a set of 700c wheels with cyclocross tyres on (and make the brakes work just about well enough) but there is absolutely no mud clearance, so not much use really.

My current thought is to get a set of 650c wheels and use those as you can get cross and road tyres for them.

According to the Royal Mail website:

Lithium ion/polymer/metal/alloy batteries when not sent with, or contained in/connected to an electronic device, are prohibited.

from here

Royal Mail Prohibited Goods

You appear to be the same size as me (6’2″ with longs legs). I’ve got a large and it fits great. I’m running a 70mm stem and it seems fine.

I’ve got just over 8″ of seat post sticking out.

In terms of British Cycling bike racing for kids (e.g. cyclocross) the age group you are in is dependant on what year you were born, not what year you are in at school. So it doesn’t make any difference whether they were born in August or September as they will still be in the same age group.

I have a December born son who is one of the older ones in his year, but races against a lot of kids in the school year above.

This is just for info.
I’m not saying this should be taken into account when deciding a date for an induction!

You’ll also forget your left from right whilst half way up a climb – hence the common shout of “no, your other left!”

Gatorskins have a reinforced sidewall so are quite good at reducing pinchflats.

I changed from some cheap tyres that came with my bike to Gatorskins and haven’t had a pinchflat since.

Tord Torc Ground Anchor

Easy to install. Rock solid.

plus 1

Good chains and locks from there as well.

Billy Duffy (out of the Cult) stayed in the same hotel as us on Iona. He definitely looked a bit more rock’n’roll than the rest of the clientèle.

I only worked out who he was because he put a comment in the guest book.

So I’m the only one with a triple on my cross bike then!

I’m also off to Belgium in a couple weeks on the overnight Hull / Zeebrugge ferry. We’re going as a family on our first cycle tour. We’re only going to cycle to Brugge (kids are 6 & 8 so that’s probably far enough), stay there a couple of nights and then head back.

The kids are dead excited by the idea of cycling onto the ferry!

Bought a map of the belgian cycle routes from here:
Brugse Ommeland Noord

I thought I’d worn too many clothes (long bibs, overshoes etc) during the first half but was very glad of them in the second half!

Hats off to organisers for handing out loads of the shiny blankets at the end.

The descents off Hardknott and Wrynose were pretty intersting as well.
I heard there were a number of bad falls? Hope the fallers were ok.

I tend to buy a combination of these:

High 5 Marathon Pack

and these:

High 5 Race Pack

Ian

Not sure if this is correct, but I have Xavier as the answer.

I changed the names to letters as follows:

Zorba – a (17 times)
Yolanda – b (15 times)
Xavier – C (10 times)

Number of games played = (10 + 15 + 17) / 2 = 21 matches

I just tried to make it work by starting with a vs b in the first match and ended up with this run of matches:

Match Player 1 Player 2 (Loser)

1 a vs b (b)
2 a vs c (c)
3 a vs b (b)
4 a vs c (c)
5 a vs b (a)
6 b vs c (c)
7 a vs b (a)
8 b vs c (c)
9 a vs b (a)
10 b vs c (c)
11 a vs b (a)
12 b vs c (c)
13 a vs b (b)
14 a vs c (c)
15 a vs b (b)
16 a vs c (c)
17 a vs b (b)
18 a vs c (c)
19 a vs b (b)
20 a vs c (c)
21 a vs b

Looking at the problem, I’d be suprised there aren’t more solutions to this. So I’m not sure my answer is always right.

Ian

You only live once. Give it a go.

Find a local sprint triathlon and set it as a target. The swim is usually about 500m and often in a swimming pool. Just go swimming each week and build up the distance you can do until you can swim that far. Don’t worry about how fast you do it.

Much the same with the run and the bike. Don’t worry about the time, just try and get out and build up to the distances involved. As has been said, be careful building up the running to give your body time to get used to it.

Do the event, and if a few days after you don’t have an urge to do better, sack it off and find something else that may tick your boxes a bit more.

You never know you might enjoy it (or at least the challenge of it).

Ian

I take you haven’t seen this:

The Rules

I have to admit that I do now line up my tyre logos with the valve (rule 40).

Ian

I fitted the “double defence” version recently – they’ve got a puncture proof strip and thicker side walls.

They seem pretty tough to me, but they do weigh more.

Racing Ralph Double Defense

Ian

I’ve had a spoon on my mountain bike for years and I find it really comfy. I tried it on my road bike for a couple of months and weirdly I didn’t like it (mainly due to numb nether regions). I suspect its just the different angle I am sat at on the road bike.

Nothing wrong with it if it works for you, just didn’t seem to suit me.

Ian