Direct messages on twitter have destroyed my need for SMS these days, never send more than 50 a month.

I can't see how it could be. :?

Tomorrow I'll post the winner's name, without using the word spoiler.

It's on! First person to get the name up today wins a lifetime of notoriety, or at least an evening of hatred.

Man up and do pairs! More laps of a quality course.

Yep, same.

Who's going to do the housework while she's at work?

…he's actually one of the most ugliest people I've ever seen in a bike mag, ever.

And that's really saying something when you look at the rest of the 'talent'.

I remember reading the issue where Doddy had just been signed on as 'the new boy'. The next month was when it became Doddy's MBUK.

If you want to avoid spoilers, avoid forums, and the internet in general.

Lance looks resplendent in his Yellow Jersey this evening. ;)

Hard to see from the pics, but our EUCC man Tom has snapped 2. This one went at the top tube-seat tube weld:

Not both were Scandiums, one was a steel frame. He also snapped a Marin, possibly confirming that Tom isn’t the smoothest rider in the world, but seemed happy enough to take another scandium frame to france for the summer. I loved my original so much I bought a second one. James Ochterloney races one full time, Gareth Montgomerie has one as a winterbike. Etc etc etc. Race bikes are meant for smooth riding, not ramming into things, including roots etc.

Looks like Astana sat up a tiny bit at the end to keep them out of Yellow. No point taking it now and having the team do lots of work.

12st isn’t whippet light, 9st is! And 4th at the Scottish Champs in Vets?

Is an odd failure given the description of the incident, but it might have been the culmination of a few crashes or such. Nice of Kona to offer a crash replacement, especially since their warranty states void if raced.

Member.

£1200 for a frame. At trade. Complete bike is around £5k insured.

Current client buys himself and his wife new £8000 road bikes every year. Seems nuts to me, but then I don’t have bling unless it’s going to last, or someone else is buying/replacing it. Both of my road bikes together are < £2k.

I had this with flat bars so low that the shifter pods would hit off the top tube of my race bikes if the bars spinned. My solution then was to just not crash.

Running risers this year, so it’s no longer an issue.

If it’s just the levers touching, most lever blades will release when they hit something. If not, run them just loose enough so they pivot up when they hit the TT. This is pretty good practice anyway, since the lever spinning round the bar in any crash is cheaper than snapping it off.

Carbon – Can be brittle, doesn’t hold bottles that well.
Alloy wire – Works well enough, marks bottles, wears eventually.
Ti wire – No marking bottles, no wear, no corrosion, light, expensive.
Stainless steel wire – No marking bottles, no wear, no corrosion, light enough, not too expensive.

SS best IMO.

Juicy Ultimates – Awesome brake, the pad replacement is a major flaw though. Swapping to some XX brakes when they appear.

Definitely rate the Elixr, though I’ve only ridden them on bikes with bigger rotors.

Heads south from here… http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=&daddr=55.896732,-3.261802&hl=en&geocode=&mra=mi&mrsp=0&sz=16&sll=55.897923,-3.260343&sspn=0.00776,0.014355&ie=UTF8&z=16

As Iain has already said, check out the EUCC forum.

Top tip for keeping your bike in your room: Keep your cleaner sweet, that way he/she won’t report your (tidy/clean) bike storage.

Very unbrilliant story about dog in car deaths this week: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/highlands_and_islands/8126382.stm

Cadel Evans will never win it because he doesn’t know how to attack. Big chinned wheel sucker.

So you didn’t watch the Dauphine then? He attacked every day there.

The bigger issue than Lance for me at the Tour is all the armchair critics who only watch the one race a year, and base all their assumptions on any riders abilities on three weeks out of an entire year. Glenp has just provided a perfect demonstration of this.

I think skills matter more than fitness on the downs… I was dying on the ups, but that’s what nine years off the bike will do to you I suppose.

It’s a trail centre; I think you’re maybe confusing skills, with the bottle to go fast over bumpy (not technical) ground.

Can’t see him winning. Is guaranteed that even as a domestique he’ll set the race on fire. Really looking forward to seeing the Schleck boys doing their thing now they’re ‘off-leash’.

What is that blue, welly boot thing hanging off the crossbar?

Sawn of cordless-drill battery holder by the looks of things.

Frame is 1600g bang on with a Fox Float RP23. Medium, whatever that is in real measurements. How long will it last? Doubt I’ll get to find out, as I’m only 59kg and will likely receive a 2010 one for next season. Has been very reliable so far though, about 40hr racing and 100 or so riding without anything going wrong.

Is pretty much as light as I’m comfortable taking it. F99 stem or Pace/DT forks are both items I’ve owned and disliked due to the lack of confidence they inspire, so I’m not willing to go down the route of weight for the sake of it again.

Silly tyres though!

2.1 Ignitor on the front and a Crossmark on the back? Silly by ‘not a downhill tyre’ standards maybe. Don’t believe in paper bag tyres, Maxxis 285/310 Schwalbe Rocket Ron etc.

20.57lbs. And that’s with risers, not the silly flat bars in the picture.

No silly german stuff. Nothing with a weight limit.

Rego always felt like drinking suspended sand to me, and generated horrendous wind as mentioned already.

High 5 Recover in ‘Gourmet Chocolate’ flavour is lovely with milk. Like a proper good milkshake.

Forks should come with the spacers. Is roughly a 15 minute job. The only really odd tool you’ll need is a very deep socket to slide over the negative valve in the LH lower.

If the spacers aren’t in the box, drop me an email and I’ll fire you some in the post.

Manuals on the SRAM site, and relevant videos on youtube.

Compared my 2G to a client’s 3GS yesterday. Speed of rendering (not downloading) web pages is much improved. Just going between apps is also a *lot* quicker and smoother.

Have two UT Veloce chainsets. One compact, one non-compact. Both have done ~7kmiles each. No problems at all.

Bearing lifetime seems excellent, especially when compared to Shimano HT2 road BBs I’ve had. Cost of replacing these bearings is cheaper than HT2 or even square taper. Word of warning; get the actual campag bearings, as non-campag ones with the same ID aren’t in fact the same. Campag ones are narrower, as they are a custom bearing with only a single seal on the inner side. Mute point anyway, as to get similar smoothness you’d have to spend similar amounts of cash on a pair of SKF.

JoeNation – Sorry to hear about your pedal washer issues. As for the centre bolt coming undone, it sounds like you need to have the BB refaced, as this is a common symptom of non-parallel faces.

Used a Hope 4 LED also, with a Petzl E+lite as a backup hung around my neck.

Ran on low power most of the time, one rider shouted at me to switch my light on going up the last climb, I noted that his light on full power was drowning mine, and was pretty unnecessary on a climb. Why low power? Bit paranoid given previous races doing laps with failed lights, in reality I could have run them at full power and been fine.

Ignitor on the front, crossmark on the back,

Pete Laing (father of the 7-Stanes) had a spin stix break while descending. Didn’t look like much fun.

rOcKeTdOg’s – http://www.flickr.com/photos/rocketdog/sets/72157620247608290/

Why is there not a trade stand just selling groceries? Would go down a storm I reckon.

A few years ago I was out on a ride with a mate. About 40 miles in he was having some serious problems with his digestive tract, so decided to stop and shed some weight before the big climbs started. Devoid of any sort of wiping equipment, he used one of the two tops he was wearing to clean up, before pocketing it for later sanitation.

he took some slick ninja high tree root lines

High rooty lines in the Somme section etc were considerably faster than some of the low lines. The roots were dry an unpolished due to the lack of people riding them, so were grippier than expected.

did it rain this year?

For about 20minutes at 2am. Made the somme section into an icerink, and the last climb a bit sticky for about two hours after.

(Double post)