another hasbean regular – once a month I usually order ‘Blake’ a typical dark italian style, ‘Breakfast Bomb’ quite literally does what is says on the tin and one of the brazil fas something or other, chocolatey thick espressos.

Unless Im london (my nearest roaster!) this is the best thing, delivered within 24 hours and kicks anything off a shop shelf into touch…

there were no mens at all they sold out completly at the initial sale.

this reads to me like the £20 tickets dont get you into the race:

Women’s Cross-country £45.00 A
Women’s Cross-country Victory Ceremony £20.00 B

not particularly clear but to me that reads like £20 for the medals only.. May be some disapointed peeps about…

my other half raced one of those scotts around 95/96 time (while I raced an LTS1!!), did quite well on the national xc rankings reaching eighth in the UK for sport women.

When we sold it though we realised that during 2 years of racing (winter series too) the rear shock hadnt moved more than 2mm because she wasnt heavy enough to move it…

Need to start scanning some of those pics…

apparently I cant buy tickets… Still!!!!

but it looks as though the £20 mtb tickets are only for the medal ceremony not the actualy race..!

youve got hadleigh downs (home of the olympic course) but you wont get onto the course, or even get a sniff of looking at it, although the actually downs are good to ride. Hockley woods is as far as I know still rideable, although both hockley and the downs suffer badly when it rains. There are some quite large rides on saturdfay and sunday mornings (usually around 20-30 riders) but I dont know where they start from as I always seem to bump into them when Im going uphill and theyre gonig down…

SLightly further afield theres langdon hills where a round of hte NPS series will be held in July…

heres my erm… mint 97 hei hei pictured tihs weekend…

this wet..

another hylands victim….

so how did the trip to france go – did the OP get back OK???

I do 8-9 miles in the morning, with a couple of short decent hills, and usually 5 in the afternoon – pretty much every day im at work come rain shine or the white slidy stuff…

Fortunately very little is actually on road – ive got a cycle path that runs the full length of the seafront so 7 miles of the ride is on that.

the local mtb series are 2 hour long races for the sport, vets, elite etc…

Also depends when you wake – personally my 6.30 alarm comes bouncing into my bed armed with nintendos, books or his ben 10 figures, and once Im awake I cant lay in bed for long – so 7am big bowl of muesli, granola, banana and honey with a huge mug of coffee, then after that through till 2 Im usually grazing on nuts, bananas, dried fruit (normally a graze box!) while drinking at least 2 litres of water before the race.

During the race Ill not need any more than 500ml of drink and poss 2 gels if its particualrly hard.

depends on the policy wording – she will not be able to claim under the liabilities under her own policy as the liabilities are there for protection of third parties – she is not a third party.

If there is any personal accident benefit under the policy she may well be abel to claim under this for loss of use of limbs etc, although the payments arent likely to be very big and legally are not entitled to be paid until she is well again and full injury/recovery can be assessed, although you can ask for interim payments.

If you have liability insurance as a car mechanic she could be prob claim under this as it could be argued you were negligent in not telling her not to remove the choc, but Im assuming you don’t or you wouldnt be here asking.

Can she claim under your car insurance – From a legal standpoint no, as the vehicle contributed to but didnt cause the accident, wasn’t being driven at the time and was not catalyst that started the chain of events. However Ive seen some ridiculous claims made on car policies including someone falling out of a mobility scooter after ‘driving’ down a steep kerb because an ammbulance attending to someone had to park opposite a drop kerb.

Whatever you do do not go to a ‘have you had an accident in the past three years’ company they will sue you personally for as much as they can and give her very little (eg you get sued for £10,000, she’ll get at most £2,500 the company will get at least £6k and the rest will go on court costs and ‘fees’.

Hasbean – Blake for a bold rich italian taste or Breakfast Bomb bold and strong…

you need the Hares Moor Chilli kit:

http://haresmoor.bigcartel.com/product/tex-mex-chilli-con-carne

Everything included just add an onion, tomatoes and meat

Looks like Ill give the skins a try – had a word with a few people, doesnt look like the ‘rules’ will be enforced to any major degree so even in the nationals unless I suddenly become the fastest rider in Essex Ill be safe!

Jeez some of those time trial rules are all but unenforcible

that has got to be one of the dumbest things the UCI has ever written, and badly written at that -the way thats written women can’t wear bras!?!?!?!

In fact wearing your shorts a size smaller would be banned too!

I guess the national xc series falls under the remit of the UCI…

seriously – why’s that ???

the skins shorts you’re using are these C400’s or the black with yellow stiching??

I love the day off..

huge (and I mean huge) bowl of berry dorset ceral muesli with added granola bananas and honey (about two noral bowls worth), with a very full mug of cappucino (and chocolate!)

However it wasnt much of a cheat on the main with cauliflower and macaroni cheese with pork chops with veg…

and tbh I sometimes ‘extend’ it to a full weekend.

I hope no ones skipping these days in fear of putting on weight as tbh I may put on a pound over the weekend but by weds it’ll be gone…

yeah the biggest side effect of hte diet is being skint after having to buy virtually a whole new set of clothes – you seen the price of 501’s nowadays?!?!?!

if you want curries you could do worse than go to Hares Moor site I have at least one a week, usually with fish or vegetables, and I think I saw they were doing onion bahjees recently.

According to Friel, the worlds greatest cyclist is probably laid on the sofa smoking 40 tabs a day having never sat on a bike….

That does make me smile every time I read that…

we actually realised the other day we’d been together 19 years December just gone… 😀 Never got married, promised ourselves we’d do it next time we’re near Vegas! Two gorgeous kids… life is good…

everything Kitz said…. incl balls the size of footballs and the will to win..

just claim off of his liability Insurance – the details of which should have been logged witht he lettingagent when he went on their books… Doesnt matter if it was on or off the books.

fairdos – Iwas sure someone would have noticed it beforehand if it had been a day out..

someone over on the Inner Ring has done a bit of homework, looks like the beef story was total bull (sorry….)

[/i]I just went through the report. One section that stood out for me was #16 in the in the “II. Factual Background Section” “A blood sample was also taken on Mr Contador on the morning of 20 July 2010. Such blood samples also contained clenbuterol at a concentration of around 1 ug/ml”

July 20th is the morning of Stage 16. If you don’t remember that was the day Armstrong went into the break and it also included many HC climbs. It was also the day before the rest day and Alberto’s infamous tainted steak. Why go through the motions of tracing the source of the steak, or even claiming that the steak was the source of the failed test, when he tested positive the day before?

this do…??

tbh training when tired is prob how Ive done so well…

Due to having two small kids I had to find a way of doing intensity training , but not losing a mrning or day at the weekend with them. So, since May/June Ive been up at 5.30 every sunday and on the turbo for 90 minutes – now when I say turbo its a tacx fortius fitted with real life videos of world cup mtb courses, the beauty of the tacx is it alters the resistance at the back wheel to simulate hills / off road riding and you can race against apponents – so effectively before breakfast Im doing a 90 minute xc race racing against myself. During this I get through 750ml of hi5 zero cal. By the time Im finished (7.30 ish) breakfast with the kids and then off swimming &/or climbing with them.

I would say though that this is as high an intensity as I could get to without actually racing someone, theres nothing like climbing a 200 mtr hill with another rider visisbly gaining on you to motivate you to ride faster. Im guessing my body adapted quite quickly to converting fat for fuel as opposed to the small amount of carbs I consume.

one of the things I found racing (2 hour xc ‘short’ course) was that I wasnt as reliant on energy products – previously Id be taking a gel every half hour and go through about a litre of drink – the last races I did I think I had two gels and still had some left in a 500ml bottle.

Pre race I now obviously drink like a fish (alweays have done) but I eat nuts, dried fruit and a banana…

Don’t feel anywhere near as tired as I used to when finished either

im using tanita scales, prob not the most accurate, but they take into account muscle mass, and when it says 8% and I look in the mirror and can see my abs I guess I must there or there abouts. I do however always weigh/measure the same time of the day, after breakfast, so maybe if I did it beforehand Id be even lighter!

TSY – No muscle loss at all, I still go climbing (indoor at the mo)at wekends and im reaping benefits there, and on the xc front I was steadily improving last year until I was getting top 15 in vets, but already Im way ahead of the game compared to where I was last year.

Im 44, 5ft 7, over the last eight years Ive just let my weight creep up and was usually 12stone, but for whatever reason last year, first race of the year I was just shy of 12.5 stone, and it was seeing a picture of myself in that race when I realised I needed to do something.

Ive now been 10.5 since August, sustained that over christmas, without missing anything, and now it’s feb Ive promised myself to get rid of the last half stone, although that may be harder as already my bodyfat levels are down to 7/8%, I may have gone a far as I safely can – but heyho there arent many 44 year olds that can still fit into the same size clothes they were wearing nearly 30 years ago and can see their stomach muscles…

I guess as a sideline to this the BBC this morning were ready with a Dad who’d lost his daughter and a representitive from the CTC on the couch, didn’t see the whole thing, but they invited comments as usual, Im sure that would have just degenerated into the usual clarksonesque comments about not being on the road etc…

oh and I have a kitkat (currently the peanut butter ones!) every wednesday!

Dont miss bread at all, will occasionally (poss once a week) have a wrap with refried beans and chillis, but last time I ate bread over christmas it didnt agree with me at all…

I started last march/april, or whenever the first race of the season was – lost two stone (from 12.5 to 10.5), will now try and get the last half stone off I want before racing starts this year.

If Im riding (which is pretty much every day) I eat fruit, occasionally Ill have some rice with chilli or a curry Ive made, and I have two free days, but dont go mad, my biggest luxury is a bowl of muesli with honey and a cappucino every sat & sunday morning.

Weight has stayed off and about to push the other half stone off…

and Parcelforce’s £8 handling charge…

theres a room like that at mile end climbing wall, I spend quite a bit of time in there – it’s practice and conditioning, same as riding bikes, racing xc etc…

null

Why is it every idiet thread just results in people whinging about whats actually involved… If you don’t want to do it great, fine, bye. Don’t start with the ‘that’s impossible’ ‘I can’t live without…’ etc etc… If you want to lose weight it works (ive lost over 2 stone since May last year and find it quite easy to keep it off – another half a stone to go for may this year), if you don’t then let people that do find out what’s what and not have trawl through pages of bickering… again…

the chicken runs are already in place on the course – as it stands there is one feature, a rather large shear rock feature, that only a very few of the elite riders attempted, the majority opted for the ‘2nd route’ (also known as a chicken run..). It would be perfectly rideable for the majority of riders today (using the alt routes) although some may struggle on the ups… They are making provisions for it to be kept, I believe its already pencilled in forthe local race series in 2013.

yes there is riding to be had but dont expect what youve currently got..

BEing in Leigh youll have Hadleigh DOwns on our doorstep – you can ride past the olympic course every day! The downs are actually quite good but more for loops than spending hours in the saddle – some very good (national class) racers have used the downs as main training. There are also other woods and forests dotted about in ridfing distance, and Langdon Hill (about 5-6 miles away) is on the national xc race list this year. Local race series takes on the immiedaitely local stuff and goes up to thetford if youre into xc

but this is prob one of hte most populated areas in the UK youll find a lot of small places to ride but the whole area is slowly becoming an extension of the east end of london, and you might also want to check out the UKs largest airport they’re planning on building in the estuary, that’ll be right opposite Leigh (good news if youre a plane spotter I guess! not so if you dont want to live around the flightpath of one of the busiest airports in the world) – although this obviously hasnt been confirmed!