epic thread.
I have never seen anything unusual. But often do solo night road & mtb rides. Used to be mad scared of the dark – suitably freaked out again. Hope you’ve all watched ‘signs’?

Made £15000 into £28000 from buying shares at share.com
Shame it’s only a practice account.
And it was purely fluke, so I don’t have the balls to do it for real.

GP was in fact a nurse, who did nothing but said she’d refer me to the GP tomorrow. Which is unfortunate, but probably moreso for her, having to see such sights unnecessarily.. “if you can just pull down your trousers”
So GP tomorrow, after almost 4hrs in the saddle today, fun fun. (‘in’ used lightly)
Appreciate all advice so far. Have been using chamois creme before and savlon straight after ride, clean shorts, showering a couple of times a day(around rides and in morning), bit of spot cream on them but aware that this could be irritating the area more so not too often, playing with position too. Off to get sized up for a Specialized saddle tomorrow to see if it helps things – 30 day swap if it’s not comfy – closest thing I could find to demo saddles nearby.
They haven’t been getting much worse of late, but its the little ones that seemed to have settled as bumps under the skin that I’m worried about. May need to get the hot bath and needle out. But I’ll see what the GP says first.

Off to the GP, this should be fun..

Thanks guys, lots of new ideas to try.

Thems definitely ‘zocchi forks

Shall give BBB’s a go (the power of internet advertising, eh) – http://www.tredz.co.uk/.BBB-BBS-16-TriStop-Brake-Pads_60334.htm – these boys seem good value, £10 for two pairs and they’re all high tech looking.

Got Kore canti’s.

Have an unused 26″ storm control for sale if you’re interested.

1/2667.
Get onto veloviewer.com , top job to see loads and loads of virtual willy waving stats.

G.T Ruckus 2.0 ’06. With a set of pikes, beefy wheels and single ring it became God.

With regard to core, be careful of burning yourself out. I know that I don’t really enjoy it (maybe you will so you won’t need to worry, don’t let me influence you!), but can hang in with a hard session for 3 or 4 weeks. But that is all I can do. After 3 or 4 weeks I’ll find something else to do or kid myself that it’s not worth it, no matter how good my intentions are.
That’s not the approach you want. Stay modest and underexpecting when planning how many reps of whatever you’ll do. Much better to start low(easy :O!) but consistently build up than suffer with something that’s tough for as long as you can bare – which won’t be the 12 months that you have.
If you have money, then potentially a circuit class or something would be the best medicine, they’re much more ‘enjoyable’ than your bedroom floor and much harder to back out of (in a good way)

Awesome. I’m a bit young for the diesel engine to have kicked in yet, but when I get a bit older racing the Divide is on the to do list.
Fair play to you.

From an XC and road racing background, I can’t emphasize the importance of strength for a ride like that. For a long time I thought fitness was the be all end all, just get out and ride your bike la de da. I’m now beginning to realise that for any comfort or longevity in sport, you need to keep on top of your strength. Body weight exercises- squats, lunges, pressups, planks, bridges are as much as you need, just getting them done regularly is the important bit. To be honest, I just enjoy riding my bike, so I’m not that fussed on rolling round the floor getting sweaty, but after having to sit out for weeks and months with injuries, there’s a net gain in bike riding enjoyment if you do a little hard graft. Get a routine and stick to it and you’ll never have to worry about it again.

Best of luck

To be fair I have little interest in culture or night-life, I just ride my bike and go to school, I don’t really have time for anything else!
I’m aware this may change, but I guess going to Loughborough may be beneficial in that there’d be **** all to do even if I wanted to go out and ruin my training!

A lot of people saying good things about Loughborough so far, I do think I’m kind of swaying that way..
But then the placement year brings me back to Bath every time.

Loughborough seems more central, for travelling to races. Assuming British NPS and big races are also central? If they’re all stuck down the bottom end of the country then obviously Bath may be a better idea.
East Midlands Airport being only 7 miles down the road makes Loughborough quite appealing.

What’s the race scene like around Bath?
The professional placement definitely sounds good, but could I do something of similar value over Summer/holidays if I went to Loughborough?

Fair play mr Bland, you make some very good points.
Lol, I currently have no interest in birds, but after getting beaten at the weekend by two senior lads who both have ladyfriends, I think I better get hunting.

Thanks for all the replies, s’awesome.
Kitz Chris – can’t get on facebook at the minute, but will check that out. Bath looks very good as a university in general.
I’m going vaguely by the rankings of universities and their specific sports science rankings, so Cardiff, Newcastle etc don’t really come into it, the 9/10 I listed at the start are the top 10.
PGreen – yep, that’d be me. Say hi to her sometime for me :) Loughborough seems to be coming out on top. LSCC website and community looks good. Have done a bit of track myself, it’s super fun, high speed.
Poly – cheers, shall disregard Aberdeen then. I know what you mean about a Sports Science degree. I’m fairly passionate about it, I’d hope I could do something with it, be that coaching, managing a team, sports promotion with a local council. If it turns out a complete dead end I wouldn’t at all mind being a teacher so I could go the PGCE route in theory. Bound to end up doing something more interesting than being a GP anyway. Although any other ideas are very welcome!

So choices looking like Loughborough, Bath, Birmingham, Sheffield Hallam, Brunel. With Loughborough and Bath being the favoured two?

I had considered Bath, they’ve a good placement year oppurtunity and good course in general. BUT I did notice that they seem to offer specific support and scholarships to just about every sport other than cycling, which didn’t seem all that promising to me.

I see Loughborough won both the BUCS XC championship race and XC sport race. Maybe would be worthwhile trying to get in contact with Jonathan Pybus who won the championship race.

I know what you mean. Predicted grades – A*AA

Loughborough entry grades – AAA
B’ham entry grades – AAB
Sheffield, Brunel – ABB
Aberdeen – BBB

Therefore, I’d kind of like to go to Loughborough or Birmingham as in theory the standards would be higher, and the sports support looks top-class. BUT neither of them offer a placement which I think would be fairly useful for employability prospects and general learning/experience.

I know I know I know, lame idea.
Have a couple of nice concepts that don’t involve large bits of metal for the bike rack, so will probably go with it.

One last bid for any ideas?

I’m sorry to drag this up again, but it’s Sunday night, what else have you to do eh? ;)
Current thoughts are that I like the public bike rack idea, but it’s going to be a huuge amount of manufacturing large pieces of material, something smaller and more intricate would be more up my street.

At the minute I’m kind of thinking of taking a normal A4 lever arch file, changing the mechanism up a bit(so that it doesn’t break so easily), adding a restockable to do list that folds out, possibly a pop up desk-tidy, spaces to keep pens, pencils etc., a memory stick that would slide out on an extension cable so you’d never leave it in the computer, thermochromatic outer cover to look nice when the heat of your hands touch it etc.
Aimed at school kids mostly, would save you lugging around a huge bag all day, and keep all your stationary and things you need organised in the one place.

Just if there’r any more sparks of genius floating about out there tonight, send them in my direction if you please :)

Awesome, really helpful response, thanks.
Not disregarding any of the other ideas, but the public bike rack is a good one, I like that.

Way may be reinventing the wheel to a certain extent – innovation is a myth and all that, but unfortunately it must be done to get some marks!
Faf week didn’t happen. Some other schools started theirs’ at the end of last year supposedly, so we’re on the back foot. Clever teacher pressure/motivation

Keep them coming if you can!

Cheeers.

[certain degree of hyperbole]
“Just trying to eat as much as I can. This is the first stage where I fell like it’s really going to get to me.”
It sickens me that I can quote that. Amongst almost all of the other crap he says. When he has his moment on the ‘really big climb’ I want to punch the tv. Maybe once, ok, but being faced with him saying the same things 10 times a day… I don’t even see the few people I like that often.

And then the bustard goes and starts talking with his mouth open. Stick your frog’s legs up your arse Francis.
[/certain degree of hyperbole]

(anybody hear boardman talking about ‘hyper-bowl’ the other day? lol)
As Salmon says though, better than the Boardman adverts of last year.

I’m a road biker and mtber, got a cx bike and love it. Got a mountain 7 miles away that’s a bit far to get to, ride round, and get home on the mtb, but with the cx machine I pedal on the roads(/up the ditches, deadly fun) and then ride round the mountain for a while and then spin home. Super job.
Incredibly sketchy doing any sort of descending on big gradients, especially if it gets rocky, everything flat and small gradient is fab though. Can ride through mad puddles and mucky stuff that the mtb would just slide ontop of, the 28c tyres cut through it. Lots of adrenaline due to useless brakes and no suspension.

We live up on top of a hill were the water pressure isn’t the best, so it comes through the pump to get round the house. No cold or hot water Dobbo.

All the help is much, much appreciated, thanks!
Know a plumber so gave him a buzz to see if he could get it working again, but wasn’t familiar with it, so just rerouted the water to bypass it. Getting water now, :), but it’s not much more than a dribble from the tap.

Kronos and Marcus, sorry, I hadn’t really mentioned it, but you could be right with the bearings, it had been getting noisy over the past week. ‘Frozen peas in a blender’ kind of noise as someone put it on a post I’d read from someone with similar problems. Could hear it a good 20m away.
Assuming it is the bearings I’d imagine I’d have to disconnect the water and find a way into it?

Cheers mav & Capt. Kronos, will take a look at it now and see if I can get into it somehow. Likely end up breaking it even more, but worth a try I guess.
Unfortunately stuck over in Northern Ireland, so not too close to Kendal at all!

Noticed Wiggins had lost the visor he was wearing on the prologue TT also. Definitely at an aerodynamic disadvantage, but I imagine on that length of a TT on a hot day, it would be much nicer to get a bit of wind in round your face rather than a big visor over it. Not as important in the 7k prologue TT. Although almost everyone else had a visor or glasses!

It takes many precious seconds to get a gel out and down it though, hardly something a pro team in such an important TT would want to give up just for ‘comfort’?
Fair point about them possibly being a caffiene gel taken early, although from all the photos I’ve seen it’s still stuck up Wiggos leg well into the TT, but you could be right.
Evans had an aero bottle on, while Wiggins was rocking a normal bottle. Interesting, thought Sky would be going for every advantage available!

Did I notice Froome and Wiggins with an energy gel hiding up their legs? Interesting for a 50min race. Maybe to begin the recovery process as early as possible & limit damage more than to give energy?

Got some offers this year for racing, trade price bikes and kit and the like, but unfortunately even at trade price, a good sale on CRC or a Canyon bike full price is still better value, and you don’t have anybody on your shoulders! IMO it’s not worth it at all until you’re paying 40% or getting free stuff.
Green oil give me free stuff though, go check them out if you don’t know of them already, their lubes and bike cleaner smell awesome and wash out of clothes! ;)

“I could say that a local farmers market, a health food shop and a tupperware tub would work out much cheaper but then I appreciate its impossible to bask in your middle class superiority people cant see you get your nuts and dried fruit sent to you through the post by a trendy company at a vastly inflated price….”

Unless you intend on robbing all of the mentioned retail outlets, it’s probably not going to be cheaper than a free box.

Mr peterfile, through the goodness of my heart I was offering you a free box of nuts. It’s a reputable website. You can cancel your account You are under no obligation to do as I say.
I may come round to your house and throw each one of my free nuts at you one by one. xo.

“Has anyone ever BOUGHT from graze? Always just seems to be a circle jerk of freebies.”

…in theory I get a quid off every box for everyone that takes a free box. But just realised you can only use one voucher per box, so I’ll still have to pay £2.79 or something. Scrap that, I may donate it all to the ‘graze school of farming’, which I guess isn’t such a bad thing.

http://davemonty.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/holy-grail-of-tyre-leverage.html – Need I say more? Bontrager do it for me.

I would also recommend High5 zero tabs if you’re looking for something more hydrating than water.
But after some top secret advice from a roadie one time, I’m impartial to slipping a sachet of Diarrhoalite(sp.) into my juice if racing on a super hot day. AFAIK it’s gonna do the same thing as some more expensive electrolyte based substance. Most sports drinks come from some sort of medicine based product anyway.

Flip, that PBK offer is incredible. Thanks!

Shameless rekindling of this thread. Sitting here pretty bored, so interested to read some more blogs to spend(not waste, haha) my time. Any more bloggers out there?

Mine is http://davemonty.blogspot.com/ and there’s a bit of lately updated stuff there! :)

http://www.davemonty.blogspot.com
would be my blog. Really not that much stuff on it yet but some race reviews and general business.
Racing British and Irish NPSs next year along with loads of other races so intend to update it a lot more.
Nothing really too interesting to write about at the minute unfortunately.
Take a look at it anyway, thats what it’s for! haha