“Relax gun control
Imprison Clinton
Ditch NATO
End trade deals with China, Mexico and Canada.
Deport all 11million illegal Mexicans.
Ban Muslims from entering America
Imprison women who have abortions
Put all mosques under surveillance
Build a **** off wall along the border
Cancel the Paris climate deal ( coz global warming is a hoax, obvs)
End the peace deal with Iran
Bomb the shit out of IS
Encourage Japan and Korea to develop nuclear arsenals ?”

According to his acceptance speech, none of the above. Unless he mentioned it at the end after it got so boring and irrelevant R4 switched him off. [/quote]

But this is what he does. Just says whatever people want to hear. He knew the world was listening…

EDIT – just to add – there are things that he says and things that he will do. Don’t assume they will be consistent…

On my short travel full suss 29er:

2.35 Forekaster front
2.35 Ikon rear

The 2.35 Ikon has a chunkier tread vs the 2.2 (which is pretty XC), so is a more aggressive tyre as well as being higher volume.

How reliable are the published geo’s? I know in the ski world, even pretty straightforward measurements like ski length go through the marketing department before being published.

Also, as some have said above, I can make my mtb handle like a POS if I change the setup, so it’s all done by feel. I didn’t test ride my last new bike, but it’s generally well regarded, and was an especially good deal. Is it perfect? Don’t know, but it got me through Swiss Epic in good shape and I had lots of fun doing it!

Had a Contour GPS headcam which only got a little use in the end. I think they have a place if you want to record stuff for personal use, but agree editing is just a PITA, and POV recordings are generally uninspiring.

The conclusion I’ve come to is for an edit to be engaging it either needs to show dramatic action, or something visually appealing, like some stunning scenery which can only really be captured by setting the “action” in context from a second vantage point, like a drone or another person.

Beavers are good soft ground tyres, but just be carful on hard / armored trails. The nobbles are quite soft, so do squirm around and can let go without warning.

I’ve just fitted a new tyre from Maxxis – the Forekaster – marketed as an aggressive XC tyre, for wet conditions. Think Maxxis version of the Nobby Nic. Haven’t had a chance to run it properly yet though, but it certainly looks the part. It’s a 29×2.35 so a bit of a wide boy in XC terms, but 2.2 are available, apparently…

The obvious thing to me is something that has already works well elsewhere. Ability categories for all seniors. Elite and cats 1/2/3/4.

To replace age cats, I would then give an age related time adjustment based on year of birth (not date), of x% per year above 40, and then include the results in the main ability category.

Proving year of birth is pretty straightforward at entry / registration.

Gnarbon credits – an idea stated in jest, but actually strikes at a deeper point, with me anyway. I have a persistent guilt that I don’t contribute directly to the upkeep of the trails I ride. I would happily pay to do so, as I have more disposable income than spare time, but the catch being that I would want to be sure that the money went directly into the trails, and not to the council or whatever…

Your username does suggest you’re of a competitive nature though! Perhaps you reputation precedes you!?! 😉

Personally, when I race I want to feel like I’ve done myself justice, which means that I train, and training is different from riding. So sometimes, I have to do a training ride which isn’t as fun as a non training / fun ride. I see it as a short term sacrifice for a longer term satisfaction.

But I’d always try and make the training as fun as possible!

Hijack

tjagain

I personally don’t see what benefit sprinting off the lights gives. If the traffic is faster than you, then they will overtake anyway, and if the traffic is slower than you then smashing it past slow / stationary traffic doesn’t seem the safest.

I’d rather let the queue of cars pass quickly when I’m going slowly, then have them stacked up behind, waiting to pass when I’m fully up to speed further down the road.

I suggest that roadies have plenty of gears to accelerate quickly off the lights, but just choose not to…

Interesting to hear other perspective though.

Hijack End

The sex of the person is irrelevant. I only mind being passed in two instances:

1) they slow down having just passed,
2) people who you have already passed, make an effort to set off ahead of you at a set of lights, having caught you up while you were waiting, forcing you to pass again.

EDIT

THREE! Three instances, no 3 being during a race, and as I’m not normally racing in a mixed event, being passed by a woman is of no consequence.

If you want to ride faster, you need to… err… ride faster.

Glibness aside, ‘faster’ can either mean ride at the same speed more easily, or riding a higher speed for the same effort.

Either way, if all of your riding is at a ‘steady pace’, then I doubt you’re stressing your body enough to get a decent training response, so I don’t think you’ll see much more improvement if you’ve been doing this for a while.

Some things to consider:

– Throwing some interval training into the mix would certainly help, but ideally this should be in addition to your existing riding, perhaps twice a week on a turbo at home. They don’t need to take more than 45mins each.
– When on your longer rides on your own, crank it up for the last 20mins, and ride as hard as you can sustain (ie not sprinting).
– Try shorter rides, but do some long intervals, say 20mins focused effort, 20mins off, done three times.

Sealskinz for me, irrespective of whether it’s wet or not. They are just warmer than anything else I’ve tried.

Open Cycle Maps is free, so either zoom into the area you’re interested in to cache it, or save the map tiles down as an offline map.

I use my phone all the time for nav on the bike, mounted on the stem, and with wifi and mobile data switched off, get more than enough hours out of it (ie after 6 hours, still have 30%-40% battery).

Just need to use it as you would a paper map – ie check it every so often, rather than using it as a proxy for turn by turn nav. It’s the screen which uses most of the battery normally, so as long as you set it up to switch off after 30 seconds, job’s a good-un.

If I’m even the slightest bit worried about battery life, can turn on aeroplane mode but still maintain GPS reception. GPS on it’s own drains battery very little in my experience.

Will there be a ‘crap at wheelies’ competition? I could demo that proper good…

Would be interested in hearing your feedback from your first ride. I had the same bike and did the same thing, which I raced at Epic Cymru last year, for which it was great, but after tweaked it further to lower the BB height a little more.

“Dro-pper!!! Dro-pper!!!”

😉

I put a 120mm fork on my Anthem, and it was good. What made it betterer was the 1.5 degree angleset I put on to take some of the BB height increase back, and slacken it off more.

I killed that frame, but still have the headset (Works) kicking around, now redundant. It needs new bearings for the bottom cup, but get in touch if you fancy giving it a try – I’m sure we could come to an arrangement!

You can do the same with an offset bush, but due the shock mounting arrangement on the Anthem, you can only do this on one end of the shock, so can only get half the slackness (0.75 degree max). It might be all you need, and the bushes aren’t expensive things to experiment with.
http://www.offsetbushings.com/%5B/url%5D

I try and ride without a pack if at all possible, and put stuff in jersey / short pockets and use a bottle cage. The trick is to find jerseys which don’t look like you’ve just stepped off a road bike, but thanks to enduro, there are more MTB jerseys with pockets becoming available.

Agreed – crack on!

There’s so much to MTB racing that’s not fitness based, which is best learned through experience. Everything from how to organize yourself, learning what you like to eat / drink when racing, what pre race prep that works for you. You even race on the same courses from one year to the next, which is great to know.

Also, it’s easy to put racing on a pedestal (oooh – it’s a RACE!), and to build it up more than you should. The more races you do, the more you come to realise it’s nothing more than a bunch of people thrashing round a forest for a while… It’s great fun though!

If Bluetooth works for you then I can recommend the Wahoo TICKR. I went through a couple cheap Bluetooth HRMs before finally deciding to get a decent quality one. The cheap ones worked ok, but died after a few months due to heavy use on the turbo and sweat getting into where it shouldn’t…

Currently having an argument with CRC over a warranty claim on a shock which started to show signs of rubbing on the air shaft. After taking the shock back and opening it up, they say it’s down to worn bushes and not covered. I say it’s less than 4 months old, been ridden for less than 20 hours, and hasn’t reached it’s first service interval.

I reckon consumers are generally becoming more vocal and unaccepting of poor service / products. If stuff is becoming less reliable, I expect warranty departments to become busier, which should hopefully put pressure on manufacturers to maintain/increase standards.

To me, a flashing red light triggers an automatic awareness that it’s a bicycle, rather than anything else ahead… I have both a flashing and a steady together.

I’ve always thought of it as:

High speed C/R- too quick for me to react to (or feels like vibration) – eg wheel tracking through a rock garden

Low speed C/R – at the speed I can react to (or impacts whole body weight) – eg going through a berm or jumping.

EDIT – What’s not always obvious is whether you need to change the Rebound or the Compression damping when trying to tweak setup. Too much damping on either can make a fork feel harsh, for example.

Perhaps an incy bit hyperbolic when it comes to pedals. For double or triple the price you’re saving a modest amount of weight for slightly better bearings and bling.

This…

Also, they do resemble Xpedo pedals which are not known for their bearing reliability, so in the absence of details about the bearings that would put me off too.

Erm… They’re £20 and have a 2 year guarantee, and come from a store with nationwide coverage. Not exactly high risk, nor high hassle…

But hey! I’m going to dictate how one should spend their own £££’s…

http://www.halfords.com/cycling/bike-parts/pedals-pegs/boardman-mtb-pro-pedal

285g @ £20

I have a pair, and really can’t see why you’d spend more.

I’m struggling to get excited about the Olympics this time, given all the controversy… This sort of stuff included…

Wot jam bo said…

Where we are now, is a member of the EU, but with greatly diminished respect and influence.

But all it takes is for a large segment of society to THINK that we are picking away at the fundamentals of democracy, then we could end up in a worse place…

“We tried to tell you, you ignored us. We won the referendum, you ignored the result. We’ll MAKE you listen…” leading to civil unrest, extreme politics etc…

Whether this is actually a risk hinges on to what extent people feel they were mislead, or, having looked over the precipice, decide that actually they’d rather step back from the edge.

At some stage, someone needs to say “Actually, your opinion, based as it is on ignorance and prejudice, is not worth as much as you think it is”.

We’re all ignorant and prejudiced to some extent, which is why we elect a government to try and take the most balanced and informed decisions as possible, for the best of their electorate.

Having said that, I’m conflicted – I was a strong Remainer, but I feel uncomfortable at the idea that the referendum result could be ignored by MP’s.

Is it better in the long run to try and reverse the situation we’re in (which won’t be without cost – trust in government, for a start), or make the best of where we are now?

Rather than being reluctant or refusing to engage with the information provided, I would suggest that a large proportion of the electorate very much engaged with it, and dismissed is credibility as they believed it to be biased, fear mongering, partial and aimed at manipulating their vote towards a desired outcome.

Hence why the ‘we’ve had enough of experts’ line was so damaging. It gave people permission to hold a position that was based on gut feel / fear / myths rather than trying to understand the more nuanced reality.

Equally, people are not rational – or – one person’s view on what’s rational is not the same as the other.

My favourite (but not essential) bits of kit:
– Gilet
– Waterproof socks
– Dropper

And on a similar theme – 3 (…wait, 4…) bits of advice for a newbie:
– go tubeless (learning how is a right of passage!)
– learn how your bike works
– don’t worry too much about kit – the most important thing is the driver
– have fun, (which supersedes all of the above!)

Wrappers – some XC courses are so fast and furious that getting a gel out, taking it, and putting the wrapper away without wrapping yourself around a tree (see what I did there?) is a bit of a challenge. The Mayhem course is NOT one of those courses, so there’s no excuse really.

What happened to your guy? Saw you had a long lap 1?

Not sure if we tempted fate or not here, but there’s only one of our team who has any running form, having done a sub 3 hour London marathon this year, so he was the obvious choice for the (much shorter, so we thought) start run.

He pinched his tyre 2/3 round the first lap and in the heat of the moment thought he was more advanced around the course than he was, so decided to run it rather than put a tube in.

Suffice to say we were all waiting for him in the arena and when we saw him running, the chap waiting to take over said “Someone did tell him he could ride his bike, right?!?” You have to maintain a sense of humour doing these things! And we were actually more relieved that he wasn’t injured…

He was gutted, and knackard, but it actually didn’t impact the result at all in the end.

Was a bit odd racing you guys, yet none of us saw you once on the course, for the full 24 hours. Seemed like we were chasing ghosts! I did some sums on the times, and I think we got to within a few mins of you at some point, but that was as close as it got.

We really enjoyed the event. The best one of the three we’ve done so far…

Yes I’d sort of switched off by that point as I just needed to get round and we would win, so no risks were taken!

Yes – you were too far ahead for us to catch by that point, without some sort of mechanical. Quite hard to urge yourself on for the final lap, that being the case. Think we had one each, both very early on, so all’s fair on that score!

Whyte 29C is pretty competent downhill…

Sat at home now, with the rain falling, feeling thankful that the event was dry! Some of that mud was unreal in places, although conditions did change constantly…

Another vote of approval for the additions to the course. Made it much more engaging I think, although I was a slightly disappointed that having extended the climb to the full Kenda Koffin Decesnt, they still kept the following grassy zig-zag climb and decent. There’s plenty of climbing already and the course could go straight across to the final climb…

Everything I saw was well organised, and all the kids running around were having amazing fun. The support from the spectators and trackside camping was great – a real help (apart from the BBQ’s which just made me hungry!)

Trails are mostly fireroad and tracks, but saying that does them down a bit. They’re nice rides, in a ‘see the countryside’ way, with some decent climbs, but nothing terribly technical downhill really, apart from the loose surfaces, and some deep ruts…

I stayed at Messini a couple of years ago and despite not having very high expectations of the group rides I found them to be fairly graded and pretty good. More ‘get out and ride’ affairs than trail center ripping.

The stock hardtails were fine, good actually, (and really all you need), but I’d suggest you take:

– pedals
– a shock pump so you can do some quick fork tweaking. I have a 2 in 1 shock and tyre pump which was useful as I tweaked tyre pressures too, but I’m sure there’ll be a track pump to use.
– A multi tool to tweak shifter/brake position on the bars and that was it.

All takes less than 10 mins, which you can do while they faff putting other people’s pedals on.

All the bikes had slime tubes in, so punctures weren’t a concern.

There is another option…

Use your current job/skills but move somewhere closer to the things you like doing. Before we were married, my wife worked in Geneva for 18 months, and I would have joined her if the credit crunch hadn’t hit.

Doesn’t have to be for ever, and much less risky…

EDIT – DOH! Beaten to it…

No suggestion on bike deals, but if you do get one, I have just killed my Anthem 29 medium frame so have some spares kicking around:

– mech hanger (new) plus the one on the bike
– 1.5 degree Works angleset (for normal tapered fork, not OverDrive 2 gubbins on the newer Anthem models)
– a brand new Manitou Mcleod shock, which was recently replaced under warranty. Bought it as a bit of a punt when the original shock died, but have been really pleased with it (warranty issue aside!). Performance was great.
– KCNC, Shimano compatible bottom bracket, with some brand new, still boxed Enduro bearings

If any of the above is of interest let me know (email in profile). I have no use for them now…

Edit – to add BB

I have used both SRAM (X9 Type 2) and Shimano SLX with One Up RADR cage and both work pretty well.

I prefer the clutch on the Shimano and think with the RADR cage works better than the X9. The X9 is no longer available and has been replaced by GX, but can’t comment on that directly…