Think this chap has his nomination sorted out

Agreed with staying off skyline, bits of it are pretty muddy. The exposed section of Energy on the Whites Level is looking worse for wear as well. All the above is perfectly rideable though, and the rest of the centre is as normal.

I think 90% of it would be pretty good, and the rest would be pretty full on. Some great riding either way, but I’ll be riding my mtb to enjoy the more technical stuff.

OK, cheers, I’ll give those a go!

The blorenge is good and right next to Abergavenney for a short ride. Bits of it might be muddy though.

http://www.the-gower.com/self-catering/middletonhall/middletonhall.htm old byre is nice, but probably a bit big for you.

You need to actually warp the shapefile, currently you’re keeping the same geometry. http://support.esri.com/en/knowledgebase/techarticles/detail/21447

+1 for the annoyance of brighter headlights. I’m sick to death of having to angle my driving mirror so I’m not blinded by cars behind with lights that are far too bright.

Do you not find it a bit too hot on the bike? I’ve got a Montane equivalent and it’s too warm for anything active.

Eyes are peeled!

+1 Eneloops

It’s my PhD viva that day. Zombie apocalypse would be mild in comparison.

I’m not sure about cycling, but ITB in runners* is often caused by weak gluteus medius, might be worth looking into? How are your 1 legged squats? A solid course of 1 leg squats, jumping lunges etc nailed my ITB permanently. I found I had a fairly big imbalance in glute med strength from one leg to the other.

*A quick google suggests this is probably the cause in cycling as well.

Worth watching out for this M4 closure, will probably be heavy traffic for a few days. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-14293311

I’ve never understood all the Cadel love either. If AS wins, the tour would have been won on the Galibier and be legendary. If CE wins it’ll have been all on the ITT and we’ll have forgotten by next year.

A few of the British olympic squad won’t be riding I think, there’s not much of a gap between the two.

Napster must have been pretty freaked out by being haunted by Jim Morrison.

Better a supervisor that is a tyrant, than one that doesn’t give a @*%#!

Oh, and don’t be too proud to ask for help from other PhDs, staff, technicians etc, ask early and ask often. Many PhDs spend weeks working out how to do something that a 3rd-4th year could have explained in 5 mins!

LaTeX +1.

Use your first year to gain some skills (including writing in LaTeX!). Learn a new programming language if relevant (find out what is status quo in your field), brush up on your maths if needed. Don’t forget it’s as much about acquiring a skill set as getting the title, and you will never have such a rich opportunity to acquire random talents.

I’ll stick my neck out and say if you’re working in science then learning to use a Linux system is a solid step to take, though I guess some will disagree. You will find post doc positions in many fields that demand linux experience though.

Mind mapping software can be good for getting your ideas together.

Accept that some supervisors are crap, and need managing – try to find out early on (from their other PhDs) if yours is one of them.

Read PhD comics. here

My advice would be to put in rough headings for all of your thesis right at the start if possible, accepting that they’ll change around a bit later. Add subheadings under these and so on until you have a rough structure. Then starting adding in rough ideas for paragraphs etc. Keep building on this structure, putting notes into the different sections as you think of stuff. Keep doing this for the chapters you’re not working on as you think of relevant bits. I made all my figures for each chapter first, and then went through and built on the notes I made afterwards. By having the structure in place early, I’ve found the whole process not too daunting as by the time you start a chapter, you’ve already got plenty of notes to type up. This is particularly relevant for the discussion, make lots of notes of discussion points as you write your results and methodology. Good luck!

Not sure I’d let it put you off, they’re excellent frames. Just worth being aware that the bearings do need attention, and that there’s a fair few of them. The same may well be true of lots of other more complex suspension designs anyway, the trance is the only one I’ve owned.

Trances are great with the following caveats:
1. Bugger to clean – lots of little nooks and crannys that were obviously never designed for this side of the Atlantic.
2. Horrendous number of pivots when the bearings need replacing.
3. There’s a couple of the top pivot bearings that seem to have a habit of not lasting all that long.

“… because road or trail runners never run uphill?”

Then cycling will help with those components, however I think it is fair to generalize by saying fell runners do far more uphill running than road or trail runners, hence for those disciplines there is far less of an advantage training in a way intended to help on the hills (e.g. cycling).

“fell runners and non-fell runners ‘use different muscles'”. Same muscles used in different proportions which makes a fair difference e.g. http://jap.physiology.org/content/83/6/2073.short

Fell running is a unique example though. Cycling transfers very well to fell running and visa versa, and many top mountain runners do a lot of training on the bike/turbo as it is hard in this country to produce the kind of sustained (running) climbing required on alpine courses (see Sarah Rowell’s book). As already stated above fell runners have done very well in cycling (Jebb) and triathlon as well (the Brownlees) I don’t think cycling is thought to be as useful for general running.

+1 for the grid.

MATLAB -1.

ArcGIS is my pet hate. It’s wonderfully powerful and all, but how a piece of software on version 9.3 can still be so woefully unstable is beyond me.

How much caffeine do you drink? I felt run down and crappy for ages, and it turned out to be overuse of coffee! Try giving it up for a month and see how you feel.

Surely over the course of a 24 hour solo the time it takes to remove some bar ends is neither here nor there? Put them on, and if you don’t like them just take them off.

EDIT – just re-read and saw about the foam grips.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2045813

This Skin so Soft?

IdleJon: I’m guessing you’re with MTBPigs? If so must have been another Nick, though I did bump into you all outside the Woodman once I think!

Thanks for flagging this up, I’ll definitely send them something.

Dolygaer is on the way over from Talybont-on-Usk as you drop down from the hills to the west . I agree that the Gap is overrated, there’s better riding either in the Black Mountains or on the hills between Talybont-on-Usk and the Pontsticill Reservoir area.

Actually out of Ebbw Vale, or in the vincinity of it? If just nearby, the Blorenge is good for a couple of hours (doable in an evening). For something longer do the classic Black Mountains killer loop http://www.gpsies.com/map.do?fileId=kdtelxubjpmdgfwq or the Llangors loop http://www.mtbbreconbeacons.co.uk/hubs/talgarth/llangors-bwlch

All fairly standard answers, sure someone can come up with something a bit more imaginative!

They really do seem to be really patchy at the moment. Sometimes they’re infeasibly fast, and sometimes unacceptably slow. I mostly use Merlin now, and just use CRC when I can’t avoid it.

I have properly skinny wrists and the 305 is fine for me. I wouldn’t wear it down the pub like, but for running you want a pretty big screen to look at really. I thought it looked smaller on my wrist than it did on the web.

I ran 130mm on the 100mm original Trance, I’d have thought it’ll be fine. If anything the handling will suffer, in which case wind it in a bit.

I’ve been beaten to referencing Rule 24. Now km for distance with ascent in ft is a major faux pas.

Tapeworm?