Search for ‘tweedlove’ on Flickr.

I think http://ianlinton.com will have some up later in the week.

Bruuummm!

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@nick – Calling your bike a ‘race bike’ might be taking things a little far. ;o)

Just had a message from Martin. He bailed after I saw him, ended up in an ambulance with shock and hypothermia. He’s OK today, just feeling pretty bashed up.

One of the solo guys (from Bicycle Works I think) hit a tree really hard and had to pull out… don’t know if you know him or how he is?

Martin Graham, was with him for most of the race. We had a discussion on lap three about whether you were solo when you opened the afterburners on the climb, I was gurning a lot having just fallen off.

Whole race for me was done at ‘I can still speak’ pace, even on the first lap I was holding back a lot.

HAHA, just read your blog. I’ll stick to stopping for natural breaks. Congratulations to your wife and yourself on the birth of your son.

EDIT: Martin went out for an eighth lap, was was feeling properly sick when I caught and spoke to him. Think he went straight back to base after that, lap numbers would support this. Shame, as he was flying.

Awesome course for my first solo endurance event. Was pretty happy to take third solo overall, and the fastest lap overall. Not so happy with the crash I had leaving transition for my third lap, resulting in lots of lost skin and a ruptured thumb ligament which is now splinted. Possibly looking at an op’ to fix that.

@Rich – Didn’t realised (a) Who you were, Keith Forsyth filled me afterwards and (b) that when you asked me if I was riding solo on the first lap that you were also riding solo.

Thanks to all the lovely people who were very gracious in letting me past.

@chrisdb – Boo! Look forward anyways.

Hopefully at the start they just stick everyone up the fireroad on the first lap, otherwise it’ll be pandemonium if you’re not in the first couple of riders.

Zoom of Bust is good, but I have a feeling the section before will have people wetting themselves in excitement if they’ve never ridden it before. (assuming my guess on the climb is correct)

Guessing the second climb is from the bottom of Pennels up the blue, then right at the fireroad, left onto the Spooky Wood climb. SXC did it one year, lots of people hated it. I loved it.

Do you normally ride a bigger bike?

Lots of people complain of this when riding XC race bikes, something most people need to work on to get past it.

Bikeradar reviewers seem to suffer from this a lot.

The Scott Swisspower guys have some photos up this morning of yesterday’s ride round it, looks better than the other photos I’ve seen.

Scott Swisspower is on track for the Olympic Games 2012 in London

Posted by SCOTT Sports on Tuesday, May 24, 2011

This bit in particular looks awesome:

The pros gave it a universal thumbs-up, even Geoff Kabush was giving it praise on twitter.

Getting a bit hard to follow now, but:

– The climb TJ is talking about up to the flagpole at Capelaw ridge is a lot harder than it used to be. The grass seems to be clumped up. I’ve not cleaned it since 2009, probably would help running a proper tyre on the back even in the dry.

– The steeper of the two tracks from The Howe up to the back of black hill is probably too loose to get up these days. I haven’t tried it in a few years though, enjoy going up the other way too much.

– West Kip is a no-go I reckon. Hard to see a good line on it, and ignoring the ground conditions, it is pretty steep on the scale of things. Rest of the five peaks are doable with a decent headwind.

– The climb from The Howe to West Kip is pretty broken up now around the corner, not managed that in a long time, although the only times I’ve tried it this year have either been with the CX bike or MTB with a single ring.

Everything else mentioned here is ticked off, a fair number in the middle (32-32) or single ring (34-32) too.

You have got to be kidding?

They’re cutting another new section today.

Unrideable? I had no bother last year even though I ran semi-slicks for the whole race.

Andrew:-

– Sell the Yeti, it’ll probably snap after only 18 rides like the last one!
– Sell the Pronghorn, so that when it does snap some other punter can deal with warranty issues due to Pronhorn going bust (again – how many times is that now?).
– Stick with your hardtail.

Aspens are not renown for their tubless prowess but work nicely once tamed!

One of the best eXCeption tyres when it comes to getting them on, no bother at all for me. Seems to a be a new-generation Maxxis thing, as all the tyres from last year and this go on dead easy (xmarks, aspen, monorail, rendez, ignitor).

Aspens whilst great tyres are utterly cack tubeless, the side walls are way too thin.

Never had this problem, despite most of my riding being races with plenty of pointy rocks. The eXCeption sidewalls are thin, and you will see the threads after a single muddy race, but nothing to worry about.

In a country with the natural trails that Scotland has, it’s a crime that people flock to places like this. A symptom of society for me, it’s learnt behaviour to drive to Tescos out of town, so by natural extension you drive to a big car park to do your mountain biking. But there are so many natural trails out there

There are NO NATURAL TRAILS anywhere. Glentress is the one and only true riding location. Do not deviate from the path! Keep my trails pristine and traffic free Keep enjoying your Sustransed mountain-bike goodness.

Giro Ionos here, on and off road. Super light and well ventilated. Not as light as their newer one, but I would be swear to use that off-road due to lack of protection towards the back of the head.

Wore a £30 helmet for a race last year where I forgot mine; heavy, sweaty, and I could see too much of it in my vision.

Happy to drop £100+ on something I wear nearly every day. If you only ride once or twice a week, then maybe you can justify the cheaper helmet.

55kg. My MTB is only 12kg too..

12kg? I hope it has 160mm of travel at that weight! Lose the polka-dot jersey (there’s a thread from a few months ago discussing why this is not the done thing).

58kg, 5′ 9″ here.

The most miserable riders I ever saw were those at the front of the Selkirk Merida a couple of years back.

Really? You obviously weren’t very close to the front, as Nick Craig is always a good chat. Before he disappears half way round.

Totally rideable.

This thread is gold.

The folks upset that their bike isn’t the most bling should just crush the posers into whimpering submission. Works for me. Also, avoid sportives.

No brakes required, fantastic little section of trail. No doubt it’ll be full of braking bumps in a few weeks though.

GT Racing UK team are racing those this year. Only seen Gareth M and Dave H’s up close, they are lovely.

Really like the polished silver paint over carbon.

Have ’09 SID on one bike (raced for last two years), and ’11 Fox on the other bike. No competition, the Fox is a far better performing, you actually have to get used to a fork that works smoothly through it’s entire stroke.

Production Floats are to have the gold shaft only.

The club will be going down to dig this week.

When are you going to be there? Can pop along to lend a hand if I’m not racing/training/resting that day.

I’ve had a set of Khamsins on my winter bike for four years. One set of bearings and not a single true in ~10k miles. Great wheels.

I do like Mavic wheels, especially the Kysrium Elite, but the Aksium just doesn’t offer any benefit over the Khamsin for a lot more cost.

You must be really desperate to put up with that level of grammar, spelling and punctuation.

Tax is applied when you receive the cash. In this case, that means you will indeed go into the 40% bracket.

If it was applied as to when you should have received it, that would be a loophole to backdate earnings to years where you were below the larger bracket.

Looks nice. Any idea of total project cost?

If you’re not clipped-in, it’s definitely not the q-factor.

My left knee is massively sensitive to changes in setup, especially too narrow or too wide a Q-factor. My widest cranks are SLX (175mm), and my narrowest are some pairs of Campag Ultra-Torques (145mm), no bother within that area. You’d need to have some pretty tiny hips for 175mm Q to be too narrow.

Have you chased them up through the university? There must be someone there to complain to.

Details of who to complain to added to the Blairadam thread.

There is the option to take this further…

Luke and the St Andrews University Cycling Club were organising the event on behalf of Scottish University Sports. I’m sure they’d be interested to hear about the poor legacy that has been left at the event location. http://www.susport.org.uk/

The St Andrews Sports Union might also like to hear about how one of their member clubs is bringing their name into disrepute. http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/sport/au/

I’ll just leave those there.

The last picture shows a piece of ground that the race didn’t use. Went up the forestry road to the left of that.

Most of the rest (barring the bombhole-steps section) looks like typical Blairadam, in that it would be nice that it got a little hardcore as part of the race preparation/teardown.

Come on Luke, stop dicking about with your dissertation and sort this out. If you couldn’t finish the job you shouldn’t have started.

Particularly when it’s totally unique and precludes you from buying any other off the shelf rings?

3rd parties make rings already, there was another thread about it yesterday. Now if only MRP would release their chainstay-mount X-1. Maybe I’ll just have to ‘borrow’ Kabush’s next week.

5′ 8″ here. 49cm JtS 2011. Fits great with a longer stem on. For racing I would probably go the one-size up, as it would have more elbow/TT clearance when flicking the bike onto the shoulder.

56 will almost certainly bee too big for you.

+1 on the MRP. No jams or drops in five months of riding with it, been really impressed.

How you finding that Rocky Mountain Dougal?

Brilliant. Not much more I could ask of it really, it just does it’s job without an quibbles. Paint job is silly-good, definitely paying for that.

RM Element RSL. Mine is lovely.

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Rocky Mountain Element Team RSL[/url] by douglasfshearer[/url], on Flickr

Vees? Fail.

If you need those, you’re braking too much. See the road brakes thread from earlier today.