Great race, great racing, great countryside and atmosphere. Also more blows landed by the peleton on the “fans” than any other I can remember. It’s always a bit of a downer when it finishes but roll on the Vuelta!

Considering the day Jens had yesterday this is amazing.

I had not done much more and I built this…. It’s still standing quite a few years later …….A shed won’t kill yeah

Righog, is that close to Druridge bay? I think I’ve rented one of those. Very nice.

I don’t like cycling when it gets too hot and that was too hot for me. I bailed out of the 75 and did the 45 where it split. I’ve never drank as much on a ride before (2 L + over 15km) and that second climb was awful in terms of oppressive heat.

Overall though I really enjoyed the event. Beautiful area, well organised and some great descents, particularly Minton Batch, and that last bit in to the finish line. Also lots of chatty and friendly people en-route which made it very sociable.

I had a chat to one of the guys who helps organise it when I was refuelling on those Celtic burgers and Coke. He said they weren’t happy with the amount of tarmac themselves (unprompted), but there was no better way to link the rest of it. To be honest in that heat I was glad of it.

Dave, I did try to send you a pic of my cool beer at the end just to give you a bit of encouragement but Facebook wasn’t playing ball! I know you’d have appreciated it.

I’m feeling the Froome love. He’s let his riding do all the talking and been very humble and generous when being interviewed. He’s the antithesis of Wiggins, which for me is another reason to like him even more. Yesterday’s stage will go down as a tour classic, and he’s achieved this with a team who are struggling with injury and form, unlike last year’s efforts.

My wallet is now lighter. Thanks (I think 🙂 )

A bump in hope.

They’re called Sheffield Death-Bringers iirc

😆

No – in my view, the fatal flaw in the Strada DL is that you can’t remove the arms at all (at least, not without dismantling half the carrier)

I have a Strada and don’t see why you’d need (or want) to remove the arms? If you’re not using them just put them down and tighten the butterfly screw. The whole point its they stay on there so you can add 1-3 (or 4) bikes without having to find the bit you removed 2 weeks earlier.

The Evo is designed to carry heavier bikes – e.g. electric bikes, hence the rack is quite a bit heavier, and needs a higher rated tow-bar. If you’re carrying non-electric bikes you don’t need the Evo.

Auto and DSG are totally different. The autos have some known problems, lots of coverage on VWT4

Chris what’s PBW?

The clever thing with the Robinson’s one is once you’ve seen it a few times you see loads of clues.

There are many, and really obvious when you watch it the second time (after you mentioned to look for the clues 🙂 , in a – “how did I miss that” way).

Very clever ad – they earned their money on that one.

Oh dear, pretty myopic view on Prosecco / sparkling wine there.

The best thing you can ever do is blind taste, so you concentrate on the product rather than the fact it cost over £100 a bottle.

For < £10 try Waitrose Valdo Oro Puro Prosecco Superiore (it’s often on offer)
For < £20 try Cloudy Bay Pelorus

Both are great IMO.

Both good, but the Robinsions one brings a tear to my eye. Very clever.

Froome to finally look up from his power meter and find to his surprise that he’s arrived in Paris
Geraint Thomas to fall off at least once
Andy Schleck to abandon
Tommy V to win brown jersey for leading gurner
Contador to be the butt of numerous steak related jokes

We use the same fortune teller. Froome to win, more meat on a rope in evidence.

Mine is bordering laughable now. Luckily I’ll spend a lot of the summer in a wetsuit so no one will ever know

Evos are the triple compound rubber. They work fine on Stans. No idea what TLR is though!

I went from 70 to 105 and then 140 over 5 weeks or so. Its a mix of pace and what your head is telling you. Take it easy and keep your HR down. Eat and drink regularly as above. The bike would be worrying me more. It’ll be a lot easier in a group. Don’t forget to tame your turns.

Excellent band meets brilliant educational format. Winner!

Have both, you deserve it. I didn’t see anyone clean that section.

Personally I’d go lower if you ride hills a lot. 29, possibly 28 as like you I don’t have thighs of steel.

Still making my mind up about the event. There seemed much less of an atmosphere than previous years, no doubt due to the lack of trackside encouragement / abuse / landing lights. The marshals and the kids were great though cheering everyone on.

The first descent was great, but there wasn’t really anything technical and no real jumps to speak of. You need some fun on a lap rather than endless doubletrack. Considering the amount of climbing (pushing) the reward for all that effort was fairly tame.

The loos were terrible compared to previous Mayhems (the frequency of the cleaning) and despite the showers looking like a mud bath they were warm with no queues (unlike Eastnor). Bike wash was a joke.

I was amazed how quickly the track dried. I did the 3rd lap and it was like a flashback to last year. Thankfully that was the exception and the course just got faster and faster bar the rain in the night. I think someone must have trailered in some Eastnor Plasticine for old times sake.

Overall pretty good though, but ruined by the lack of the tartiflette stall 🙂

Excellent vid amplebrew. Thanks for sharing.

Bibs are excellent. I can’t fault them at all.

Jerseys are comfy, and a good fit for me but…stitching on mine have been poor – back pockets came undone, and they’ve not been stuffed. Also some of the printing on the seams didn’t seem to have worked, so there were bits of white on what should be a black jersey.

Tshirts are good quality.

Hoodies; given what they cost, were really poor quality. I returned mine.

Morvelo bibs (unlike their jerseys) are really good quality, with a nice pad.

Cube did 13″ alloy frames a few years ago so might be worth a look. My son has one.

In fairness to Rossi that was a nerf from Bautista so hardly his fault. Overall a quality day for Redding & Crutchlow. I did laugh at Cal’s comment, though Pedrosa couldn’t have looked any more miserable if he’d tried.

Biggest pain was watching McPhee and Webb head backwards. Webby must be gutted he’s not on the Mahindra this season.

Prancercise is the future.

It’s a change, which is a good thing! Seems to cut up pretty easily (see 0.21). Agree that what’s on the vid looks no more weather-proof than Eastnor.

I’ve used skidrive 4 times, only to get an apologetic email saying some of the “in stock” items weren’t actually available on 2 occasions. No problem cancelling but rubbish if you’re in a hurry. I tend to use the roofbox co now. Had very good service from them, though not always the cheapest.

I got one of the last Bontragers made and trust me a good steel frame is nothing like a cheap steel frame.

I have one of the early bontragers, and a couple of others, and this makes me 😆

There is no magic. It’s just a well considered and engineered collection of (not very special) tubing and geometry, with some interesting attention to detail and for its time innovation. Price has got nothing to do with it.

What’s more scary is that a bonty frame in 1989 cost £1100 IIRC (Chipps can get his NTI price list out) which back then was a phenomenal amount of cash, and still is for a steel frame.

The P29er is a nostalgia-fest of a paint job. For that I like it. It’s also cheaper than a Bontrager and probably rides better.

I bought a Kask from OnOne recently and I’m really impressed with it. It’s the most comfortable lid I’ve ever owned. The venting is good as well but I have noticed the lack of continuous foam padding across your brow means I do get a fair bit of sweat dripping down when I’m (occasionally) working hard (but with the benefit that it isn’t a massive sponge at the same time).

<heritage>ARC = Alumin(i)um Racing Cycle</heritage>

Calling a CF frame an ARC really is taking the proverbial.

That Intense is very nice. Reminds me of a Corratec (in a good way).

13″ or 14″ Cube (Acid) for my now 11 year old. When I was looking the cubes had the most compact geometry I could find, particularly TT and standover. He’s had it for ~2 years and aside from trimming the bars and fitting a shorter stem, it’s been great (forks are a bit crap – recon coil, air is much better for kids). He’s 1 M 55 ish now and still has lots of growing room.

Never understood how the Met offered any additional protection. If you land on the chin piece it’s going to snap, and probably end up in your face.

I’ve seen that happen on a full face helmet and it’s not pretty. Always struck me as a marketing ploy with no real protection benefit. At least that Casco looks a bit more substantial.

The downside is that unlike Sky, there’s no HD feed option for ES on the ES player.

I was watching WSBK on Sunday and it was “borderline adequate” on a (good) 27″ monitor.

A bit of a thread revival, but back to the OP’s questions I had a 109s on demo last week and took it to CYB on the Beast.

It’s not light – we weighed it at about 28.5 lbs (with XTR pedals) but even being a bit of a weight weenie I can’t say I noticed the weight at all when riding.

The (carbon) wheels were a revelation. They are incredibly stiff, track like they’re on rails and don’t really deflect in a “side” impact. I was worried about them given the cost, but I didn’t really hold back at all. I noticed there were a couple of marks on the lacquer but they held up very well.

The riding position is great, (M, 5’10”) and you can shift your weight around when needed. With the CTD shocks though, despite my scepticism I did what the shop suggested and left it in descend all day bar a couple of road sections. NO discernable pedal bob when climbing seated, and only a little out of the saddle. It’s such a comfortable bike.

Gearing seemed high (er), noting the cadence of others compared to me as we were riding along in bottom gear, but perfectly manageable.

Climbing was interesting. Generally excellent, with good traction (even from the undernourished looking Ikons). I stopped on one rocky uphill section which was quite steep but then struggled to get the bike moving again. By the time I was clipping in the wheels just stopped rotating. Something to do with the wheelsize maybe as the section didn’t look like it should have given me as many problems as it did.

Where the bike excelled was descending. For a 100mm bike it’s very capable. It just seemed to hold and gain speed really easily. The Icon tyres didn’t seem to like wet rock however. I’m no downhiller but some of the Strava section times were pretty respectable. At no point did I wish I had more travel, or feel underbiked.

The one thing I struggled with were low speed corners. The bike was slow to turn in and I kept having to put my foot down (and fall off).

Would I buy it? It’s the only 29er I’ve ridden and was very impressed.
Slow speed cornering (I put that down to my lack of experience) and weight (though that’s a mental thing) are the only two things I could hold against it. Oh, and the colour scheme, which I really don’t like (the standard 109 looks much nicer).

Given that , the shop still has my 2k deposit so I guess I’m still thinking about it 🙂

Bradley Smith and Ben Spies getting done by a CRT bike

Smith is a bit more understandable than Spies, though not great for either. In fairness Espagaro (A) is a class rider. He’s in danger of being a perennial CRT rider though. He needs a factory ride.

Lots of talk about Redding and Espagaro (P) moving up to GP in 14 but you’d wonder where they would end up (Assuming MVDS doesn’t move up for Scott).

The problem with the tyre was so bad that when they cut the rear open after the race, there was only 2mm of rubber left on the radial banding!

The quick shot of the top 3 rears after the race showed they didn’t look bad at all. Terol’s looked the worst. During the race, I started having flashbacks to Terol’s championship year and how boring Moto 2 will be if he just rides away from the pack.

Let Marquez get a couple of big class championships under his belt before he’s up for GOAT status.

I thought all 3 classes were pretty tame yesterday, certainly the least enjoyable racing in a while. Watching Redding head backwards was like his 125 days all over again, though with a better finish. Kalio’s block pass was fantastic to watch, on the limit for so long I thought he’d drop it.

What was Danny Kent doing so far down the qually and race sheet?

Nice to read a positive story on cancer! Excellent news for your son and all concerned.

I’d second the notion of a “PFP” to get the weekend started.