1. There’s some useful videos online for various exercises.
2. Get a decent one. I went cheap and broke it…
3. It’ll hurt like hell when you first start, but get easier once it’s done what it needs to do.
4. I would get a physio to assess your problem rather than self-diagnose though…

In the eye of the greater public, MTB is seen as dangerous and it’s our road and track guys who dominate the pro sport rather than MTB – so that’s where the newbie riders have gone to IMO. Also, a road bike is far better for commuting which is another growth area as far as I can see.

As for me, for the first time since 1995 I have no MTB.
I MTBd so much for so long that I slightly overdid it and got myself a road bike and got into that instead. I’ve also broken 3 bones since 2007 falling off my MTB which has rather put me off.

As a result I’ve been riding MTB less and less. Then 27.5 came out and spares for my beautiful and expensive Soul looked scarce and the value of the thing has fallen through the floor so I decided to get rid rather than leaving it unused and potentially in a couple of years unsellable…

I think the MTB has badly shot itself in the foot with the whole 27.5 thing – it was obviously cynical after 29 didn’t quiet work how they expected. Their biggest misjudgement though was doing it at a time when earnings are static and we’re all balls deep in debt – and expecting us to be happy to replace our 26ers en masse (especially when they have such a low 2nd hand value) has been a massive fail on their part in terms of understanding customers’ needs and willingness to pay…

On the positive front, for the first time I can remember, cycling is on the increase in the UK and the anti-car debate is more lively than I can ever remember it. There does seem to finally be a national conversation about how anti-social, anti-social driving is… Social Media helping a lot IMO

So hopefully between now and self-driving cars becoming the dominant means of motorised personal transport (10-20 years?), the tide will continue to slowly turn against the status quo.

Even after working in financial services marketing for 20 years I’ve always thought that Patek Philippe positioning was pretentious and smug… and really not a brand I’d want to work on…

But marketers know what people don’t know or aren’t prepared to admit about themselves and that’s that status matters, and the brands and products we choose for ourselves are as much about status display as the essential functionality they deliver. On that note, Patek Philippe know exactly what they’re doing. As do Porsche, Range Rover, Gillette, Waitrose, Apple, Rapha, Estate Agents, Armani etc etc etc.

There is absolutely no rational need for a Patek Phillipe – you can get perfectly accurate timepieces for under £10. But people still buy them – so clearly there is a need amongst some people to spank several grand on one…

It’s often quite interesting to get people to rationalise why they’ve spent a huge amount of cash on something they could’ve bought for a fraction of the price which would deliver the same functional benefit… they’re quite complicit in the game but generally refuse to accept that…

Look at all the slow MTBers and roadies with expensive bikes which they’re not skilled or fit enough to ride to the bike’s real capability and tell me there’s not something else going on in the decision-making process…

How good will iTunes with files saved as 256kbps aac sound through something like the arcam rpac usb dac?
Listening through the headphone jack on my pc isn’t that great, noticeably lower quality than Spotify with sound quality set at ‘extreme’ through my Denon amp via Google chromecast audio.
I’d like something similar quality for iTunes, is a USB dac for £100 going to be worth paying for?

You can get a damn good bike for a grand, without having to go the mail order route.
+1 for recommending you don’t buy blind for your first road bike – fit matters a hell of a lot more than MTB

Whilst it’s good riding sense to not ride up the inside of any vehicle, not everyone knows this – and on this basis, and especially with so many new riders about and so much infrastructure putting cyclists up the inside of traffic and therefore in danger, they seem to serve a purpose.

However, they also seem suggest that the cyclist is the main one responsible for avoiding being in the vehicle’s blind spot, when actually it’s mainly the driver’s responsibility – under law.

Also I wouldn’t put it past a sneaky lawyer to use the sticker to blame the dead cyclist who’s been left-hooked by a bad driver…

So the advice is good but the medium is not – I always vote for more Bikeability – then cyclists/we can learn for ourselves where the danger lies and there’d be no more need for the stickers :-)

I’d like to see the song 1916 from the 1991 album 1916 get some more airtime next year as part of the WW1 commemorations. It really makes you think…

16 years old when I went to the war,
To fight for a land fit for heroes,
God on my side, and a gun in my hand,
Chasing my days down to zero,
And I marched and I fought and I bled
And I died & I never did get any older,
But I knew at the time, That a year in the line,
Was a long enough life for a soldier,
We all volunteered,
And we wrote down our names,
And we added two years to our ages,
Eager for life and ahead of the game,
Ready for history’s pages,
And we brawled and we fought
And we whored ’til we stood,
Ten thousand shoulder to shoulder,
A thirst for the Hun,
We were food for the gun, and that’s
What you are when you’re soldiers,
I heard my friend cry,
And he sank to his knees, coughing blood
As he screamed for his mother
And I fell by his side,
And that’s how we died,
Clinging like kids to each other,
And I lay in the mud
And the guts and the blood,
And I wept as his body grew colder,
And I called for my mother
And she never came,
Though it wasn’t my fault
And I wasn’t to blame,
The day not half over
And ten thousand slain, and now
There’s nobody remembers our names
And that’s how it is for a soldier.

25c Conti 4 seasons for club runs and 25c Coti Grand Prix for commuting. 75kg here and running them 95-100 psi without any puncture issues.
The Grand prix have lasted me 2 years of commuting twice a week c 30 miles each time before wearing out. Very comfy tyres – I like them more than the 4 seasons tbh

You know he was a cultural icon when Radio 4 just did a 10 minute slot on him during the lunchtime news :-)

I do hope you find who did this OP – they won’t be expecting to get caught :-)

Agree with the ‘it doesn’t really rain that much’ if you commute on your bike.

However, still worth having a waterproof for when it does IMHO – riding into rain is not pleasant! You don’t need £150 though – £50 will get you something good enough. Given my commuting kit tends to end up with a fair bit of grime on it I wouldn’t spend a lot on it in any case

Sad day – a man who lived life on his own terms.
In interviews he always came across as pretty thoughtful and a nice guy.
Great live – saw them 4 times, always awesome

Fat feet? Specialized – all my shoes are Specialized and no sore feet ever.

OP – maybe get your wife to have a chat with her GP about known ways to help – it’s hardly an unknown issue after all.

I am not an expert but social surroundings can make a real difference when you want to change negative behaviours so what you do can be a real support or undermine her re your own drinking. Have you considered quitting with her? I know you say you have no plan to, but why not? Especially if it helps her.

I find it hard not to lay into the chocolate and biscuits when I’m stressed. Best solution I’ve found is to just avoid letting it in the house – avoid that aisle in the supermarket…

Good luck

Use soap flakes or liquid soap instead of standard detergent

I’ve just sold a 20 year-old Technics CD deck on ebay for £20 + postage that cost me £100 originally. It was in very good condition, except for a slight loose connection on the output, which the buyer was aware of.

So if it’s working well and in good nick you might be surprised – kit from that era was always the best way to get good quality sound and was built to last so there still seems to be latent demand for it.

As for speakers and amps – with stuff like Google Chromecast Audio and various other streaming devices coming on the market, these still have a life now…

When Bkb was proper narrow single-track and sometimes still called golden birdies
That first go on your mate’s full suss/your own bike that’s had your first ever bouncy forks on
Going from cantis to v-brakes
When crc was a double paged spread in the back of mbr

Not for long. The european economies are starting to grow again. Many young people who came to booming Britain looking for work, and who rent, may soon be returning home. If we vote to leave Europe it could be more of a stampede.

This is interesting… I had a chat with a colleague of mine – a market researcher who spends her time talking to people about all kinds of stuff – she herself is Italian and has been here 5+ years.

We both agree that one of the reasons London has become so expensive (and wages kept low) in the last 3-4 years has been an influx of European youth looking for work accepting any old accommodation and any old salary – with youth unemployment so high back home, the Italians, Spanish, French etc have come to London to get a job and will take anything cos it’s better than nothing that they’ll get at home.

IF – and this is definitely an if, there are more jobs back home, combined with London turning out to be too expensive for them to live in, we may well see a reversal. Which won’t do rent and house prices any good as the bottom falls out of the BTL market which is already showing too low a yield to be worth it anymore (in London at least)…

Be interesting to see what impact a Brexit would have on this dynamic…

To a degree I’m quite glad now I missed out on buying in SE London in 2013 – I’d be balls deep in debt for a small flat and more than a little bit worried about negative equity

Parliamentary enquiry into working conditions

You might find this is how the prices get so low…

Undercover reporters also found evidence that thousands of workers were receiving effective hourly rates of pay below the minimum wage.

If we want more equality we have to play our part… it’s not all about expecting the government to sort everything out for us…

It’s something that we can in all honesty blame Thatcher for: her first Tory government stopped building new council houses, then allowed people to buy the existing stock for pennies, then kept the capital receipts rather than letting councils re-invest in new-build.

We can also blame Gordon Brown who did nothing to fix the situation but let the banks overlend, we can blame Osborne who just added fuel to the fire and has quite happily let a tidal wave of crooked money into London, and we can blame those of our fellow citizens who’re daft enough to believe the myth that property is somekind of surefire winner, and get defensive when you point out the damage they do when they hoard a scarce, essential good: no-one forces you into borrowing a load of cash to buy a second home after all…

OP – I’m sure you well know that the effort to kill BTL is as much about trying to prevent a bursting of the bubble in the housing market as anything political – read what Mark Carney has to say about it – there’s simply way too much debt underpinning it, whatever your individual setup.

Given that both government and consumers are in more debt than we were in 2008, another housing-led bust will lead to far worse consequences than last time in terms of people’s livelihoods… we’ll be in a desperate state – which will hit people poorer and older more than the average STWer and BTL landlord…

I’ll give you that Osborne is a highly political creature and both his boosting of house prices and undermining of BTL have, IMO, highly political objectives, but BTL is a crisis in the making and I don’t think you can dismiss the very real negative consequences that another bust will have for us all just because it spoils the plans you have for yourself…

Besides all this ‘rent will go up’ is propaganda – no-one knows what will happen – there’s more to housing than supply and demand. it’s more about supply of ability to pay.
As the letting agent I spoke to last week said, rent comes from post-tax pay, not credit supply so tenants can’t just be forced to spend more like mortgage payers can. Landlords need to remember that – if people can’t afford the rent they’ll just make other arrangements like staying with friends, parents, or emigration…

Super high rents and mortgages are killing the real economy because it reduces the amount of disposable income we have – especially with wages largely stagnant for 10 years.

BLTers need to remember there’s a bigger picture than their own desire for enrichment or pension provision and when they UK is in such a parlous state I don’t think complaining is going to go down to well amongst the masses – take a look at the comments on any news story on house prices and BTL and you’ll get a feel for the sentiment

Happy Xmas…

I predict that everyone’s predictions will fail to come true :-)

The only thing can predict with certainty is:
a) My ride to work is about to become much more relaxing as I move to Milton Keynes in a couple of weeks – cycle lanes all the way from home to work
b) My hill climbing ability is about to die. MK and the environs look horribly flat to me, especially compared to my current club runs around Kent and the North Downs

Simple fact is the exact same conversations were taking place when cantis became v’s and when v’s became discs.

I know we’re dealing in opinion here but I recall exactly the opposite at the time. Cantis were rubbish on an MTB, Vs came out and we were all raving at the power they provided, then discs came out and we all raved again. Same with front forks when they first came out – even RS Q21s! Same with full suss.

But MTB is a very different riding environment and back then it was a very new sport, so there was a natural development in technology going on.

Road riding hasn’t changed for God knows – 100 years? It’s just riding on tarmac. I ride roads that my Dad last rode in the 1950s and they’re just the same as they were then – in this instance very steep! We understand each other perfectly when we talk about the experience of riding these roads despite a 60 year gap in our experiences.

The essential design of the road bike hasn’t changed a whole lot since the Rover Safety c 1880 and the essential nature of road riding hasn’t either.

MTB is a totally different beast – it was a new sport in the 1980s, growing, with no suitable kit, so there was a lot of technological development needed to get kit to market which worked.

It’s noticable how much slower the pace of technological advance MTB is now compared to the mid-1990s – it’s a mature sport.

I’m sure discs will become much more prevalent on road but that’s because we’re all consumers these days, I’m really not sure the use case is there in the same way it has been for MTB

I ride club runs every weekend and today was the first time I rode with someone with discs… overall I dont think road biking is quite as ‘latest technology’ obsessed as MTB + for summer/dry weather riding, the use case just isn’t there. I’m still on my original brake blocks on my summer bike after 6 years…

That said, there does seem to be a use case for winter/commuting although you really don’t brake that often on a winter ride so I’m still not convinced. I had a Roadrat for commuting for 5 years with Hope Minis on and I really never needed the power they had to be honest although I suppose it did mean my rims lasted without any wear.

IMO it’s the manufacturers doing a 27.5 on road bikes – pretending the demand is there whilst deliberately pushing built-in obsolescence on us. Bit of a con really, just bringing the same ethics as ‘fast fashion’ and consumer electricals to bikes…

I’m amazed by the quality of Google Chromecast audio for £25 though my 20 year old Denon amp.
Only works through Spotify though or anything through your browser – I can’t get it to work with my iTunes for e.g.

I had mine done with Paul Mill in Crystal Palace/Camberwell a few years ago.

http://www.elitecycling.uk/offer/bike-fitting/

I believe he’s well thought of around SE London.

Condor do one when you buy a bike, but not sure if they do them standalone as
well.

I’ve set up multiple bikes to Paul’s settings since 2008 and have never had any muscle or joint issues of any kind which for me is proof of the pudding…

I had mine done with Paul Mill in Crystal Palace/Camberwell a few years ago.

http://www.elitecycling.uk/offer/bike-fitting/

I believe he’s well thought of around SE London.

Condor do one when you buy a bike, but not sure if they do them standalone as
well.

I’ve set up multiple bikes to Paul’s settings since 2008 and have never had any muscle or joint issues of any kind which for me is proof of the pudding…

Sorry to hear that and good luck finding a new job.

It took me months to find a new job this year – I was told quite a few companies had recruitment on hold or on a go slow – and there seem to have been a lot of redundancies announced over the last few months so I suspect there’s more of this on the way next year.

To be fair regular home owners are also guilty of this. Theres many of them too. Perhaps we should ban them too

A lot are, yes. But they represent less of a systemic risk – default rates are a lot lower and if they struggle to pay they’re more likely to try and keep paying whereas a leveraged BTL will sell – that’s the risk BoE have been very clear that BTL now plays – of a sudden rush to sell which will crash the whole market. For those who think interest rates will never go up – note what happened in US yesterday and the forecast of 4 more increases by this time next year…

On a more positive note: this is an interesting idea and certainly far more constructive from a community and social point of view than BTL

Co-living space[/url]

Remind me how I’m a “greedy and parasitic landlord”

It’s the systemic risk that’s the main problem here… what works for you and your tenants is no longer working for society nor the financial system as a whole. There’s too many naive ‘investors’ making wrong assumptions about BTL that means too much risk of bad debt and a house price collapse has now built up.
BTL was less of a systemic risk when a small number of well-informed, sensible players made up the bulk. Now it’s become fashionable you have large numbers of ill-informed people up to their balls in debt, hoping a tenant will pay it off for them…

Hence the time has come to kill BTL.

TINAS – you’ve missed my point entirely! I’m talking about my position at retirement after a lifetime of renting instead of living in a house that I own, having paid off the debt…

The people I know who buy to let, and I know a lot of ’em, do so because it’s a relatively easy and safe investment.

And this is the nub of the problem exactly. They think it’s safe. It rests on a number of assumptions which may not be true – not least that the tax rules around it wont change – which they just have – and look at the response – just anger and resentment. That tells you most BTL had got their assumption totally wrong. Let alone interest rates going up or house prices falling at some point…

The BoE will be looking at this from a systemic point of view, looking at the amount of debt being built up (again) in the banks, using housing as the asset, and looking at the risks of default (roughly twice as high as an owner-occupied mortgage I believe) and deciding that in actual fact, the risk is now high and they need to get this under control and avoid having to bail the banks out again…

Shall we devalue all houses by 50% immediately. Problem solved.

Um, that’s what BoE are trying to prevent from happening by bringing BTL under control – they’re worried it would lead to a mass sell-off and bring about a crash. A lot of people will be in very serious trouble if we have a repeat of 2008…

A crash isn’t the only option which could be managed either… how about a steady fall in house prices over 10 years? Or stagnant prices for 50 years?

I know BTL is at the end of a lot of emotion right now – me included as one of the anti’s but you really need to take a look at the bigger picture and the risk BTL at the current scale and with the position of the current participants to understand why it’s important to kill it.

And blaming the banks for it is like blaming the car manufacturer when a driver kills a cyclist by driving into them at high speed…

BTL isn’t a business like a cafe or design agency or airplane manufacturer in that it takes inputs, does something with those inputs and sells the finished output for a profit.

It’s 100% dependent on debt and an assumption house prices will go up forever. It’s a speculative punt.

Economists call this kind of economic activity ‘rent seeking’ in that it just exploits existing assets rather than creating new wealth, hence the desire to discourage it but not discourage normal business activity.

Build to let would be different in that it would be creating new assets and then taking an income on those new assets…

OP – just let your kids be themselves. There’s nothing wrong with shy. They’ll grow up far more confident if they’re supported in being who they want to be, rather than being forced into some idealised template you have for them.

I know you’re trying to help here so I’m not being critical but it seems this is more about you and your own attitude towards your own issues with your own shyness than it is about them and their needs…

Worth reading Quiet by Susan Cain – it’s a call to arms for introverts, pointing out there’s nothing wrong with being an introvert and societal pressure to be otherwise can cause great personal troubles…

Quiet – the Power of Introverts

Introverts make up about a third of the population – we’re not weird freaks! Also worth noting that Barack Obama is an introvert and he’s turned out to be quite a good public speaker :-)

People make a wrong comparison between renting and owning when they see the two as equal. For the immediate reality, maybe, but if I rent for the rest of my life, I will have to pay rent after retirement. If I buy a house now and get the mortgage paid off before I retire, I will need a much lower pension pot to maintain a given standard of living, or have a higher standard of living.

As things currently stand, my rent is so high I can’t afford to continue funding my private pension as I have for the last 18 years. So I’m a middle-class professional with a degree and post-graduate qualifications earning well above median wage – facing a reasonable standard of living until I retire and then almost entirely dependent on state help to pay my pension and possibly have to fund my housing as well… and therefore having a much lower standard of living over all.

We have to remember that if the system doesn’t share the gains evenly and reward hard work then the social contract starts to fall apart – inequality like that tends not to motivate people and tends not to end well!

The future taxpayers (our kids) and the economy won’t be able to afford to pay for my pension and housing and it’s pretty unfair to put that tax burden on them for a problem they didn’t create.

Better, surely, to bring housing costs under control now?

As per my links above, landlords need to be less defensive about how people feel about BTL and remember when you accumulate what seems like ok behaviour at an individual level it’s having a severely detrimental impact, economic and social for society as a whole – especially the risk of pushing us into another financial crisis – and it’s this that BoE have asked for permission to tackle and one reason why Osbourne is killing BTL for the one-man BTL model.

The Institutional model is BUILD to let. So far it’s not really taken off, but if pension funds, insurers and other investors build brand new purpose built rented accommodation the risks and the impact are very different – not least the increase in supply of new property…

The problem with BTL specifically in the UK is a lot of people think it’s different from any other debt-based speculative activity. There also seems to be a belief that prices will go up for ever, especially over the long term based only on the fact that the last 20 years have followed this pattern when in fact UK housing has never done this before…

Well worth reading these two articles to see the similarities between crashes in general and the current UK housing situation, esp the last 2-3 years in London and SE. I don’t have the link but The Economist published some research recently about recessions caused by housing crashes have been shown to be deeper and longer than recessions from other causes. BoE is therefore very wary of stopping our current bubble from bursting. Osborne also wants to as it’ll ruin his chances of being PM…

5 steps to a bubble

Market Crashes – a study[/url]

Find a running club and train with them. You’ll end up in a pack of similar abilitied people and gradually improve

This – there’s years and years of experience to tap into in any good running club. Your natural competitive spirit will grow and you’ll train harder. The support you get from clubmates helps too.

Definitely +1 for interval sessions. they’re hard, they hurt but they’re very effective. Very helpful for racing if you’ve spend time every week hurting like hell and still carrying on – you reach the same place in the middle of your race and you know that you can keep going.

IME you don’t need to be running a lot – focus on quality. I was getting lifetime PBs as a recent Vet a couple of years back on 1x track session, 1x long run (total c 15 miles/week), lots of cycling, 2x core and conditioning sessions a week.

Get some racing shoes too – the lower weight definitely helped me, psychologically if nothing else.

Good luck

All I can say is the whole thing is an utter mess and the sooner house prices go back to some level of affordability the better – whether renting or buying there’s a huge proportion of earned wealth going into paying off mortgages – either your own or your landlords, the ultimate beneficiary of which is a bank – not wider society.

I’m paying £1300 a month for a 2-bed flat just outside London. 10 years ago I would have paid c £800 but in the meantime my salary has barely budged so guess what – I’ve reined in spending on almost everything else which means less business for all the companies I used to spend my disposable income on, lower wages or fewer jobs, no expansion for those businesses, and I’m no longer funding my private pension provision because I simply don’t have the money.

We have barely any real economic growth, we’re mired in a massive amount of debt – sending so much of consumers’ money to the banks in the form of mortgage payments – it’s utterly stupid and just holding us back and likely to lead to another crash

The biggest problem with BTL is it’s scale – far too many naive investors getting into more debt than they can manage – this is why BoE want to kill it -financial stability and prevention of another crash. Remember the current bust started by banks lending too much to people on mortgages they couldn’t repay.

The problem now is the emotion that’s being attached to it and landlords are feeling attacked and getting defensive about it. Understandably I suppose, but they really are a massive systemic problem and BTL and house prices generally need to be sorted for the sake of us all. BTL may work for a single landlord but it doesn’t work for the healthy functioning of housing provision or for the economy when it’s done at the scale it’s now reached and by so many inexpert people…

+ 1 for the decarbonising our way of life and our economy being the priority but I think political objectives are what’s steering the recent rise in shale in USA and now fracking here.
If we can ruin Saudi and Russian economies (both highly dependent on oil price) we can a) increase our security b) save a lot of money on not having to go to war c) get a desperately needed source of income to help pay of the debt.

So, not ideal, but some very positive and badly needed benefits. Remember, we’re in a crisis and we have to be prepared to try previously unimaginable options and make compromises to get out of it…