Cheers, interesting article! I like running as much as I like cycling and have a vague obsession with reading about ultrarunning and ultras- it seems like such a unique sport.

I recently finished Rise of the Ultrarunners by Adharanand Finn which was a really interesting read and it seems there’s so many unique/eccentric personalities in the sport.

Not sure if I have an ultra in me though- I’ve ran close-to-marathon distances by myself out in the hills before but the thought of 40, 50 miles upwards is really quite daunting.

Thanks folks, all useful and good to know! And nice to know in theory it would be OK to go to the GP if it did become a reasonably significant issue.

Good point about equipment tbf- now I think of it, I’ve been using the turbo a lot and wonder if the combination of static position on there (its a very old bike and saddle) plus cheap, old generic padded shorts from Amazon might be the issue.

I always just assumed I must be immune to this sort of thing, but clearly not. Good to know I’m not the only one anyway 👍

“Finish earlier when it’s a nice day and work later when raining etc.”

This is good advice- if its 29degrees outside and I’ve got no meetings after 3pm then I tend to take a “life’s too short” attitude to work if WfH.

Though of course my employer may take a “your contracts too long” attitude if they knew. But now most here WFH most of the time I think the scales have tipped more to results achieved than being available all the time.

I find that repeatedly opening the same empty cupboard at different times throughout the day to see if any food has magically appeared really helps

Yeah its totally subjective of course but personally I’d consider a 4 hr ride a pretty long one- I reckon I only did a few 4hrs rides last summer and I doubt I did any over 5hrs.

I do fit-in about 7-8hrs of exercise a week (this is a mixture of road riding, running and workouts) and use the Trainerroad calendar to plan this time at the start of every week, so I know roughly how it will pan-out (in theory).

I don’t have kids but I do study part-time on-top of my full time job so am a little time-pressured but am quite lucky with my WfH routine too if I’m honest.

I think if I was really determined to I could maybe carve-out a single 7hr session most weekends but I’d rather do several 2 or 3 hour sessions across the week but obviously everyone’s different.

I’d second a road bike or a gravel bike if you’re really not into road riding. I only road ride these days and I’d never bother doing rides I couldn’t start from my front door except on special occasions of some sort.

Also I don’t want to sound too preachy but I’ve found that a weekly planner really helps- if you google “168 hour week” there’s a template spreadsheet with 7 days split into 15min increments and it really helps to see it in black and white if you mark down all your busy time and see what’s left- it’s usually quite surprising.

Get up at 6 am six days a week here, usually try and grab a lie in at least one day a weekend but it’s not compulsory.

If I’m working from home then it’s either an  hour or so of bodyweight exercises or sometimes a walk out for a coffee. At weekends if I’m cycling then I like to be out the door before 7am.

It sounds weird but I find it easier to just get up earlier and take the decision making out of it, than to  maybe get more sleep but constantly have to decide when to set an alarm.

I go to bed at 22.30 though lights out properly at 23.00. I prefer the time gained in the mornings over just watching TV at night but I do agree our preferred schedules are probably just inherent in us.

I’m siding with yes you’re being unreasonable OP but I do think some of these responses are a little harsh- especially as its not an official club holiday but a bunch of mates who go regular together.

I get why it stings to have to be the one who can’t go but equally not sure the lady in this scenario has any easy options either.

Surely the best (least worst?) option is to re-arrange your flights so you arrive on the actual start day and then just suck it up as best you can or tactfully arrange your itinerary so as to avoid awkwardness as far as possible.

If she’s there with a new partner that nobody else knows it sounds like they may naturally end-up doing their own thing or being a little separate from the main group anyway.

Good lord, I have a £1400 TCR and I wouldn’t even dream of riding it to the shops and I still wince if I’m out riding it in the rain.

if the rural roads near me are anything to go by the white Range Rover and Audi SUV drivers are way more of a threat than the tractors and farm trucks.

Just had a couple of Eurofighters over Manchester Airport. They did a couple of loops East of Stalybridge and have now headed out the the North Sea where there is also an F15.

I live in South Manchester and heard it go over…instantly knew what it was. Escorting a passenger aircraft down to Manchester with lost comms I think.

I’m not 100% sure where the proposed car-park would have gone and I’m not au-fait with the names but one thing I notice about Lyme Park when I’m there is that the views are great and it really can feel like you’re out in the middle of nowhere at some points despite in reality being 15mins walk away from the cafe and the car-park/A6 etc.

So, it would have been a shame if that, um, “vibe” was ruined by having the cars made visible.

I hate cleaning my bike (especially in Winter) but I wouldn’t pay someone else to do it.

Partly because on some weird level I’d be a bit embarrassed about having someone else do it and also because the cleaning process is quite useful for spotting future maintenance jobs and other things that may need looking at, e.g. flint slowly working its way into the tyre tread or loose spokes or whatever.

If I was on a riding holiday or event of some kind then yeah, absolutely I would pay then.

I’m not sure if this is fully related but I have read a few times somewhere that there are various people trying to make bike leases a thing- i.e- you “buy” your bike the same way people buy cars now, on a hire-lease basis. I wonder if that took off, whether there’d be opportunities there for washing/basic servicing as part of those types of hire-lease package.

Also, trying to ride my road bike as fast as I can with some pals

Anything other than liquid lube in a dropper bottle to place a drop of lube on a chain.

Amen to this, chain waxing looks like the biggest waste of time ever to me and I could not be bothered even if I was stuck on a desert island with nothing except a chain waxing kit.

I do a poorly-executed prison style bodyweight workout in my extension twice a week, so a doorway pull-up bar is on my list.

Serious question though- they are actually OK to use in a proper, standard wooden doorframe…right?

I might mean potholing, not caving tbf 🤔

Lol no I don’t see why I should deconstruct why I personally find road cycling more fun than mountain biking- just accept that some people do, it’s a demonstrable fact.

I personally cannot see the appeal of caving, it looks to me  like something that would happen in a nightmare. I accept that lots of people love it and even dedicate their lives to it though.

I always thought the “miserable roadie” stereotype was just a low level cliched bit of internet banter, which is fair enough, but interesting/amazed to see that some people really believe it.

More interesting that those same people still refuse to accept roadies might enjoy the pastime they undertake voluntarily, despite:

A) Loads of people on this thread saying they enjoy it and explaining why,

B) the entire history and concept of road cycling the world over- which, let’s face it, is in terms of participants, is likely several factors larger than mountain biking.

It’s a pretty wild take.

Seems to be a bit of a revolving door of high end cycling, I’m not convinced that there’s the market there for all of it. It’s almost like the shops/brands are going “right, where are all the affluent places…?” and then having opened, they find that although it’s affluent, no-one is buying £10,000 bikes…

This, basically. It sounds like a great idea on paper but so many appear to fail. It seems to me that they become essentially a fancy coffee shop with some amazing 9k road bikes that just become very expensive decor whilst all your patrons buy a flat white and some flapjack.

Whenever I see one open I always hope they make a go of it, but also know deep down that despite being a local(ish) road rider I’ll probably never end up going in as I don’t really do coffee stops and the traditional LBSs in the area are cheaper for maintenance and sales.

Having said that, I’ve not been in Velo Edge but did have a bike fit with Crimson Performance who I think have now moved to above Velo Edge cafe and I’d recommend them to anyone wanting a fit, as they were really great.

I play tennis a lot

Tennis 😂

-5 here, I’m WfH and wanted to go out and get a coffee early doors at 6am as a bracing start to the day but had a home workout scheduled so performed some sub-standard press-ups, squats and planks in my living room instead.

Weighing up whether it will be safe to go for a run later or if it’ll be an ice rink and maybe turbo instead.

Yea but any roadie worth their salt will try to drop everyone on a climb and then take advantage of a gap. That’s the whole point of fast club rides surely? If they wanted to just ride, chat and look at the view they’d be on gravel bikes

I assume this comment isn’t serious, but just in case- no, and no.

Yeah I agree it’s likely more risky than riding by yourself.

Then again, I’m not aware of tonnes of RTAs/crashes of club pelotons on the roads- I’m sure we’d here about it if it was common, so statistically doesn’t seem so bad, but that’s clearly just a hunch. 

As has already been said, the point of the ride isn’t to drop people. It just means that it’s a ride where you can’t keep up, they won’t wait.

This is clearly better than not labelling it as such and then just mercilessy leaving people off the back of the group at random intervals throughout the ride. Naturally, rides advertised like this Will likely be the faster ones and not the social ones.

I genuinely can’t tell if all the comments about people “not having fun” are serious, like have you never tried to see how fast you can go, ever? Or are all amateur competitive hobbies supposedly miserable? Like no one in an amateur athletics club, rowing club, karate class, weightlifting competitions are having any fun?

Fair enough if it’s not your bag, but if you don’t think it’s fun (or social) you might be surprised if you try it.

In other news, sometimes runners race each other on a track and rowers see who can get their boat across an imaginary line in a river first.

Also, just because something is hard or competitive doesn’t mean its not social 🫤

Yes, maybe. I haven’t ridden a mountain bike in probably 15 years and solely road ride now, but I am keen to race in some form or another and whilst I enjoyed CX when I tried it, I really CBA with the volume of mud (or the cleaning of it, to be more accurate). And not prepared to race my one and only carbon road bike in crits.

The upshot being I think I’ll try some local XC races in the summer and so may buy a slightly racy hardtail.

Been watching the various “what hardtail” threads on here with interest, don’t want to spend loads but maybe a Chisel or Procaliber, or even a BMC Two Stroke.

Running is just painful and boring at first but there’s definitely a zen-type enjoyment to it once you get reasonably fit. I like it just as much as I like cycling- and also trail running is way more fun than road running.

In a winter like this one its also just so much easier to go for a run than slog through the soaked lanes or trails in expensive kit listening to my rims getting destroyed and then spend half an hour trying to clean a bike with frozen hands.

Accidently saw someone being decapitated in an RTA on Reddit a few months ago, not something I go looking for. I assume these things are done deliberately by the poster(s)- while I can’t remember what sub-forum I was looking at I don’t use it for anything controversial so deffo would not have been somewhere you’d expect to see that.

It seemed real but hard to say as closed it down as soon as my brain processed what I was looking at but I’m not really minded to go back and scrutinise it for its authenticity.

I’m 43 and it was unpleasant to watch so its a worry if these things are appearing regularly for literally anyone at any age to see.

I bought a road bike solely because, on a personal basis, I just cannot imagine really driving somewhere just to ride my bike around. That said, living in Manchester I still have to “commute” on the road bike through the suburbs to get to the nice lanes and hills.

I don’t mind driving for an event of some sort though. I’ve driven up to an hour and a half (each way) to ‘cross races and trail races and stuff like that.

Gravel bikes just don’t interest me at all, but looking at objectively they could make a lot of sense where I live- I used to ride my old XC hardtail along canal towpaths and the mersey river to get to the trails in Marple and Hayfield so I expect a gravel bike would be great for that, though perhaps avoiding some of the more gnarly trails when I get there.

First day back today but WfH and just scheduled admin in, so hoping to ease myself back.

Spent most of this morning looking for local trail races to enter. Having said that, I spent most of the holiday break either ill or revising for an upcoming exam in a week’s time, so whatever really.

Mainly just running, trail running and turbo here, but I do that most winters anyway. Like others have said, when it comes to cycling in winter its as much the cleaning, logistics and maintenance that stops me going out as anything else.

Manchester was actually relatively quiet last night, certainly in the centre where I was anyway,  I think the working from home phenomenon has taken some of the sting out of the traditional black eye/mad friday smash up when every office would pile out on the same day. 

I’m out for beers in Manchester at teatime so bring it on, I guess. Actually meeting an old mate who’s up for the football tomorrow and hadn’t realised it’s mad Friday when we arranged it tbf. 

Last day today until 4th January, working from home with a hangover, just about to switch to doing some admin tasks for the remainder of the afternoon I think.

I know the Giant warranty thing has already been done and isn’t the point of this thread but just for info they warranty-replaced my TCR frame about 2 months ago with zero questions asked and posted a new one to me in a week.

I understand there is such a thing as a “lifespan” and a “healthspan” and they are different things. I guess it’s the healthspan we should be looking to increase.

The Ion RTs are a great wee “be seen” light.

I would second this, really rate mine and my mate says he could see me coming from a mile off when he was waiting for me. Not noticed any battery issues with mine but it only gets used on my once-a-week road ride.

I’m the sort of person who hates breaking up the clean lines of my road bike but its so small and light its almost impossible to justify not using it.

Interesting, thanks all!

I’ll investigate the rear mech when I can it into the stand and if nothing is obviously wrong at least I can hopefully just adjust the limiter and be content that its likely the new chain/old cassette combination.

I don’t recall seeing any spacers so as far as I know they are not in the equation.

Yep got a front mech and shifting on the front chainrings is fine and same as always- there was no adjustment to the front mech at all.

Yes, its a new chain on old cassette- could that be it?

I don’t think cassette has loads of miles on it but I didn’t replace it along with the the chain and crankset..