Importer said 2nd week of December when asked last week.

A friend won some haggis slices a few years back, posh ones.

It took us about four days to get sick of haggis and cheese toasties.

You seem more pedantic than the entire bike industry which seems to have called it ultegra (google: di2 hydraulic, every result on the first page calls it ultegra, or ultegra level), even shimano gave it a 78x part number, and its release shortly after the 78xx groupset.

Shimano decided not to release this under the Ultegra name as the lever was more bulky than standard Di2 or even mechanical shifters. Lars VDH was seen using prototype (all machined aluminium) Di2 levers at a race a week or so ago, with a profile bearing greater similarity to the regular Di2 levers. I imagine these will become part of a named group.

A bit like Ultegra getting hydraulic Di2 rather than Dura Ace.

The Hydraulic Di2 is a non-series part, neither Dura Ace or Ultegra.

I have M953 and an M970 rear mechs in the garage that are perfectly good apart from the lack of jockey wheels.

RR is ace, just a shame that the Shadow design makes it hard to pull off.

Everything old is new again.

Red Bull Helter Skelter, 2000 was the first running.

One of my hubs is a 135 x 10 rear, converted from the QR original. Used with a DT RWS.

I assume a new hub would not come with any sort of skewer.

I have two sets, one less than a year old and the other six years old.

Dead easy to work on and maintain, been able to upgrade axles easily as bikes have changed.

I would recommend when it comes to bearing replacement time to get £10 SKS jobs rather than cheaper alternatives. The relatively small bearing size benefits a lot from the higher quality bearing.

Raced a Canyon Al 29er this year. Originally purchases as a winter training bike and 29er experiment, ended up sticking light bits on it to use for racing as I liked it so much. Great bike, would not hesitate to buy again.

I think their size guide for 29ers was slightly off, like it was setup for longer stems than they supply. I ended up getting a medium (5′ 9″) against their recommendation, was within a few mm of my other bikes out of the box. I definitely would have regretted the small. My advice would be to get a bike fit on your current bike, measure the hell out of it, and compare to their charts and images.

The detail and features on the frame are fantastic, really well thought out.

Fergal – That’s near on a new topic about this every week for a month.

Just enter one of the races (Inners Day & Night on 28th of November) or follow Strava, the same as you get told in every single topic.

I’m running Stans Crow tyres

Good luck staying upright and near the front on most British courses with those!

I run tubeless on Ksyriums with a stans strip and Maxxis tyres. Works well enough, just have to keep the pressure high enough to not burp the tyres on hairpins. This is where a tub has an advantage, but tubeless is cheap and mostly hassle free for a handful of races a year.

D0NK – Sounds like your tyre-shredding incident would have happened on a tubed tyre and a tub too.

There’s a video of some guy being sucked into a fighter jet engine on an aircraft carrier somewhere online. He gets spat out the back with only superficial injuries and survives IIRC.

I call total bullshit on this.

The blades in the first incident you see are the intake blades, the compressor blades further back are much finer, there’s just no room for anything much to pass through without injury. Even if all the blades broke off, they’re going to embed themselves in whatever is passing though, it will be mincemeat.

aracer – The change in stiffness is very small, not zero. You also seemed to miss the bit about Pythagoras at school, not sure what you’re formula are, show your working.

The “vertically compliant by laterally stiff” thing is the butt of many jokes in the bicycle industry, but that’s pretty much what a double-diamond frame is.

I’m out.

Laterally stiff, yet vertically compliant? Er, no. Spoke tension makes just as much difference to radial stiffness as it does to lateral stiffness. How on earth could it be otherwise – does the spoke know which direction the force is coming from?

Because the two sets of forces happen on different sides of the triangle, those having substantially different lengths and angles. A simple fag packet calculation will show that increasing the tension gains a lot more across the small side than the long side. High school maths.

What benefit would lower spoke tensions give? Make the wheel less stiff?

There is Mavic research which shows that the spoke tension has no effect on the lateral (side-to-side) stiffness of a rim once it’s tight enough for the wheel not to de-tension.

What you do get with lower tensions is less radial stiffness, which gives you a bit more compliance and grip. Wheel suspension if you will. Of course the risk is going too low and having all the nipples loosen as load goes on and off them as the wheel rotates.

I’m not sure there is much benefit to lowering spoke tensions with an Enve rim, being as they are so stiff on their own. Over-tensioning a single spoke on an Enve build has much less effect on the trueness of a wheel as would an alloy wheel, thus it is easier to over tension one spoke and crack the nipple seat in the rim (seen this). If you’re building an Enve wheel, buy a spoke tensiometer to go along with it.

At a World Cup previous to MSA there was a video with one of the Syndicate mechanics who was talking about them experimenting with lower spoke tensions.

Bryceland’s failure looked like they went too low on the spoke tensions, and the wheel completely detensioned and collapsed. Rim looked fine.

The first rule of secret-trail-club, is that you don’t speak about secret-trail-club.

Evo and Evolution are the same thing, Schwalbe use the branding interchangeably.

Their Product Features page gives you an explanation of all the logos: http://www.schwalbe.com/en/produkt-features.html

Scotroutes – Don’t be a dick, the map is hardly a secret at this point.

http://eucc.eusu.ed.ac.uk/pentlands_map.php

Get the tools, a cheap headset press and a Park BB90.3 kit as mentioned above.

Get the Race Face BB, last much longer than a Shimano or a SRAM. Holder is alloy rather than plastic, they are designed to be removed without damage, the bearings replaced (RF do a tool for this) and the same holder re-inserted.

Bought a Grand Al 29 in December 2012. Arrived quickly, no issues at all.

Liked it so much I stuck an XTR groupset and lighter wheels/finishing-kit on it, racing it all this year. Honestly one of the best bikes I’ve ever owned.

Would happily order another.

Von – Make friends with a solicitor, have them make your phone calls for you. Gets things moving along nicely. ;o)

I’ve been 4th and 9th at this, both times on a very light 26″ FS.

This year I’m using a burlier 29er FS with a dropper post, with the post mostly being for the last stage which is a mix of steep rocky stuff and a flat fireroad blast.

It’s all rideable on a HT, Dave Henderson won it last year on a 29er HT by 1 point from the winner of the previous two years, Rhauri Watt, who was riding a burly setup Orange 5.

My main tip would be to get as near to the front as you can for the first descent

Get there, try and start the stage with a good gap in front you you. Last year I stopped for a toilet break at the top, but still caught some folk walking down the rockier sections near the bottom despite no-one passing me while I was stopped.

Other tips:

– Run tubeless, tough-sidewalled tyres.
– Jump the drainage ditches on the first descent, touching them could end your race early on.
– Cruise up the road climb after, only give it the beans once you get to the timed section further up.

Brilliant event, can’t wait for it this year.

I don’t remember any instance where other trail users caused an issue at the front of a Merida/CRC Marathon. Well, other than the one person who stole some signs on both runnings of the Penrith Marathon a few years back.

Dealing with other users is just part of Marathon events, same for British Champs, and those run on the continent.

Scotroutes – Most races are run without a Section 11 Order.

This isn’t a race anyway, just a timed event. Like a sportive *cough*.

TPbiker – The 1km climb is from Dreghorn Mains up to Fala Knowe. It is comfortably more than 1km even if they just use the steep bit. Here’s a Strava segment that uses it: http://www.strava.com/segments/1661467

11-34 with one of the smaller cogs removed and one of those ss 38t jobbies off eBay. Worked for me.

njee20 is right, this is a totally retarded idea.

11-36 cassette is a range of 327%.
13-38 cassete is a range of 292%.

So instead of buying a smaller chainring, you spent MORE money on some snakeoil cassette BS, and ended up with LESS range.

Did you fail maths at school?

Office water dispenser breaks, phone company with service contract, they say they’re sending an “engineer” round to take a look at it.

Not an engineer, just a guy in a van.

A lot of race frames are still built around 80-90mm forks anyway

Total rubbish. In reality very few are, the size 15in Specialized have 90mm forks, but almost every other bike is 100mm.

The guy riding it in the pictures looks like he could lose about 20lbs before worrying about losing the weight from his forks.

You must be pretty clumsy. I’ve not had issues with mine in six months of use, even crashing and bending it back it still works great.

I rode a Race Face Narrow Wide this weekend on a 29er HT. Day 1 was a standard rear mech, no dropped chains. Clutch mech turned up post-ride, so had two days riding with it, same deal. Massively impressed, I was expecting complete failure beforehand.

Will be interesting to see how it wears.

Gee Budd rode one at the National XC round this weekend, and judging by his raving on Saturday and very respectable result on Sunday, the chain stayed on for him too.

By new XTR brakes do you mean the M987 with the magnesium calliper and master cylinder?

Interested to see how these rims last, especially after Tom Evans smashing a Duke Lucky Jack at the weekend, expensive way to start a walk.

Quick bit of feedback for Progressive bikes.

Ordered some wheels on Friday, they turned up Tuesday. Not much wrong there!

120mm forks dropped to 110 with an internal spacer. This happens a lot with OEM 100mm forks too, means they can keep one fork in stock and use it for a number of different bikes and travel options.

Amazing event again.

Second male pair, thank you to all the lovely people who let me past, especially those would hear me coming and pull over when there was no immediate need. As usually I got loads of great banter and chat out of folk by being super nice and patient. The rider Northwind describes above is what I absolutely hate, he’s obviously having a rough time of it, shame he’s trying to ruin everyone else’s day in the process.

Didn’t enjoy the course at first, but once the gravel cleared and the roots appeared I was loving it. “That one root” was a prime overtaking opportunity in later laps, as no-one I saw was riding it.

Greig – You were in some state as you went out for your last lap, hope you’re healing well.

2.25 Ralph.

Unless it’s really muddy, then run Beaver.

If you want to stick witht he Apple Ecosystem then the Powerbooks are IMHO the better route to go.

Apple haven’t made Powerbooks since early 2006. Way to recommend Grandad!

I bought one of the £1100 Canyon 29ers in December, to try out this 29er thing. Great bike for the money, really capable. Probably the most sorted bike geometry wise I have ever owned, this is comparing it to the high end short travel FS bikes I have previously owned.

The Avid brakes are a bit kack, I swapped them out immediately for some XTs I had. I also snapped the KMC chain it comes with (not mentioned in spec), first chain snap in 9 years and 8 months. Everything else is good kit, all brand name stuff, like the Cane Creek headset and actual Syncros rear axle. There is zero OEM kit on the bike.

I liked it so much I put an XTR groupset, some lighter wheels, a remote lockout and lighter finishing kit on it, and have been using it as my race bike this year. I still use the Mavic wheels as training wheels, they’re stiff and reliable, and work great ghetto-tubeless with the supplied Schwalbe tyres.

Sounds like they’re the business. Yes, I think I shall be treating myself to the Pacestar/Trailstar combo that BDDE have on offer. Thanks for replying.

@robarnold – Are those 2.35 Hans Dampf? You don’t happen to have a picture of them through the fork and rear end. Considering a set for my Rumblefish, but worried they might be ridiculously big.

Here is this year’s course via the wonders of Strava.

http://app.strava.com/segments/3409136

edlong – Member
Not a hit and run. Taxi that he collided with stopped at the scene.
That’s okay then?

I never said anything to that effect, I was merely correcting the mis-information regarding this incident.