Although I beat you by a whole 16 places h4muf, I wouldn’t recommend the cross bike. It was only an advantage wading through the great bog of pull your shoes off and the little steep bank of um, steep bank ness. I was on it because my back refused to countenance picking up a more comfortable steed and was a bit sad when Trio25 came up behind me going wheeeeee on the berms and whoop di doos. Hey ho, it was still probably as much fun as you can have on ‘crosser :-)

Thanks to all the photographers. Lovely to relive it all – such great couple of hours.

However, I think the real winner was our dog. As we were standing chatting at the end, the catering company was scraping out the almost empty vats and generally tidying up.

One of the staff came over with a difficult question: Does your dog like beef?
Hmm, let me think about that. :D

Thanks! Nice to hear. Yey for John and Ed! :D

Great event, thanks to Terrahawk and Harry the Spider and all the other organisers. It was fun but gone in a blur!

Well apart from Jane and the ‘you can ride it’ (not on a cx today Jane, sorry), I remember that bit…. Oh, and the new bermy bit is great fun. Even on a cx.

Hey Rusty Spanner, having eaten loads at that Tod takeaway, I conclude that my stomach is made of steel. However, I’ve not tested it lately, just in case. So yes, OP, the star rating does affect which takeaways I go to now.

I haven’t… yet… but I will!

Hey, when I get too hung up on going fast, I try and practice doing something well. The fascination with the mechanics, trying to be elegant or just seeing what happens if I do something a bit differently tend to break the ‘you’re not good enough, must try harder’ internal mantra and at least divert it for a bit. It’s not so much that I stop thinking down thoughts, just I can distract myself and if I can distract myself for long enough they don’t seem as important.

I’m pretty good now having had quite bad issues ten years ago – things change :-)

Weather’s so rubbish that I went *swimming* (in a real pool, this is not a metaphor) last night. Drier and warmer than riding.

Never feel fit this time of year. The only thing for it is…. Hit the North. Kill or cure treatment.

:D

Mountain biking.
Singletrackworld.
Not worrying*

*work in progress

Aaaah.

*Working from home. Must have forgotten to do the cleaning. Clouds of it.*

How long is it? :D

Get a good physio to check you over. The more you ride, the more opportunity there is for little things to cause bigger problems. Mine knows I have no money so kindly gives me lots of exercises and things I can do without needing loads of repeat visits.

It’s the ability to slough off mud that attracts me to discs. That and the sadness of wearing through a pair of carbon rims…

The braking advantage is not so great at races but improves off-road technical riding and fast downhill road sections in the wet. The ones I’ve tried have been mechanical and worked marvellously for all these uses.

Cook sprouts to just before done then finish off by sauteeing in chestnut puree and butter.

Roast beetroot – parboil then roast with orange juice, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, honey, juniper berries, peppercorns and bay leaves.

I haven’t cooked for Christmas for a three years now. Missing it!

Hey, I got fitter accidentally by commuting on my bike. I didn’t really think that 6 miles each way would have a huge effect, but daily, it did. 60 more miles a week than I had been riding.

The fitness then became a thing of pride and joy. Longer rides became so much easier and faster. I took up CX racing (and do ok) and did the Three Peaks this year. Was good for mtb too – I’ve eased off worrying about getting uphill as it’s no longer as hard and spend more time thinking about downhill.

Oh the other good thing about commuting was that I wasn’t thinking about the benefits (apart from saving train fare) so they crept up on me. If you start to do something you have to give it at least three weeks before you can expect results and not give up before then because ‘it’s not happening and it’s all tooo hard’.

Good luck!

I accidentally made a bit of money on oanda.com – I was hedging a currency transaction and closed the position rather fortuitously then did a bit of trading before returning to original sensible intentions about 50% up.

It piqued my interest and I did read a few large technical tomes and like nothing more than a nice maths textbook… However that’s hardly as important as being kind of level headed and not panicking or being greedy.

Oanda is v easy to use, fair, better interest rates than banks.

Although I have a bit of a moral dilemma – what good is pissing around on the margins of currency transactions doing the world? It is kind of fiddling while Rome (in the wake of Athens) burns.

Yep, working in retail. For myself. Therefore at work and spreading the plague or whatever it is to the discerning consumers of Hebden Bridge. Sorry. :oops:

Hmmm, no, I think it’s a bit luck of the draw how much it takes to wear you out!

Re: weight loss – you can’t know that you wouldn’t be feeling worse without it. It’s v important you’re getting lots of minerals and vitamins though.

Lovely! Don’t some things just cheer you up :-)

Weather forecast improving on BBC and Met Office and holding steady on XC weather. But the temp is averaging 6º so it’s not going to be frozen :(

It’s usually pretty good – the rain arrives on time. I do a fair amount of ocd weather checking on Friday afternoons…

Oh dear, see what you mean about the BBC. And the metoffice.

This: dryness … but don’t be fooled nothing’s dried out properly all year so it will be much of a muchness. No straying into the mud zone. Splatterproof gear. Although full on animal costumes appeared de rigueur for Hebden riding last week. I liked the bat costume best.

It’s all changing due to current downpour. Which will have washed away the veneer of extra-slippery ice/mizzle from this morning. I think they correct term for conditions is yucky. But who knows what tomorrow will bring?

There are other forums? 8O

Lake winter boots (a bit on the big side) plus mohair walking socks.

Capricorn Mohair to be precise – they have a website. As they’re grown and made in the UK also v close to my heart. :-)

I’ve just started running. Once a week. Like OP I went straight into an 8 mile pack run from um, nothing. My legs for the next three days were a standing (or mainly sitting) joke. Muscles I never knew existed

To be fair it only took a couple of weeks for me to stop trailing behind and I don’t hate it quite as much now. Still puzzled at running downhill. Downhill should be fun. Running, it feels like I am a sack of spuds tumbling down stairs. Thwack thwack thwack. :?

+1 for accessories.

I am really not very girlie but looked admiringly at a white CX bike with pink anodized cantis and skewers yesterday.

Don’t forget that if you get a very pink bike you have quite a challenge to work out the rest of your outfit to match (or at least not clash outrageously).

Took my dad for his first mountain bike ride a couple of weeks short of his 70th birthday. He was quite impressed – more than twenty years ago he’d dismissed mountain biking as a bit of a fad but ‘the bikes have come quite a way since then’.

:cry:

Love my CX bikes for all the reasons above but now want one with discs. I replace a lot of brake pads in winter and have already killed a pair of rims.

Rumour has it that Stu is making beef cobbler.

Nearly time… any last minute bookings?
:D

Amazing what people don’t notice they’re doing.

Car whooshed along pretty close to me the other day. At lights, I tapped on window and said ‘just to let you know that was a bit close and scary’. Driver apologised profusely saying it was a new car and he was just getting used to it and gave me a huge amount of space when he passed after the lights… :D

Yes, they do, yes it will help. It’s ace. I have no idea why.

Hideously expensive but 100% waterproof (in Yorkshire) and comfy too – Mission Workshop – no signs of wear after over a year so hopefully it will be going strong for long enough to make it worth the extra cost.

Hurray, we’ll have a proper flotilla / stampede / shitload… what about a rompede? Like a stampede but rolling…

There will also be a novice tandem to welcome to the fold. :mrgreen:

We proceeded at a stately pace with our novice CX charge. It was a glorious day and some of my favourite CX loops (although I’ve never put them together like that and there were some new bits too) so I had a lovely time.

Loved (in a stupid way) descending Penny Steps (in front of Stoodley Pike) – first time I’ve done the whole thing but also the first time with discs. London Road (the climb on the way back towards Hebden) is not usually that muddy (electricity board churned it up). High Brown Knoll is unless it’s been dry for a while, which it hasn’t. I forgot. I may have misled you a bit about the not swimming. Oops.

The last descent off High Brown Knoll into Luddenden is the only one I really regretted not having a mountain bike. The timed climb was cruel and I felt sick!

Also the last little bit as you came into Hebden and then realised you were being sent back up the side of the hill again rather than along the valley bottom straight back to base. That was just plain naughty.

But really, how gorgeous was this? A great day out..

[/url]
More rocks on HBK[/url] by Chipps Chippendale[/url], on Flickr

Discs are not absolutely necessary but I find I go faster in the knowledge that I can stop. Would have been brilliant for the Three Peaks (had an exciting ‘can’t stop, can’t stop, oops, over the bars’ moment) so if you’re contemplating anything like that, go for them. Not quite so obviously necessary on weekend CX races.

Er, chicken levers. Not just for the fainthearted. Nick Craig has them for the Three Peaks. He doesn’t do discs. Just so as you know.

Hmmm, no whiskey?!!

A blindfold then? Stoker vision seems to work on the ‘less is more’ principle… we can test it next month :D