I guess it depends on  what kind of riding you’re planning on doing but aside from the aero benefits etc personally I couldn’t imagine descending on a road bike without using the drops. I would consider drop bars just for that reason if nothing else.

Absolutely I would, I prefer rim brakes anyway and currently on a custom Gian TCR with them that I don’t plan on selling or updating any time for the next 5 years at least. If buying now I would look for rim brakes for sure.

They’ve never not stopped me and I’m not someone who really enjoys maintenance so the simpler the better for me.

Get yourself a velosock for hiding and keeping bike and room protected.

I have one of these. In a sense, unless your bike is really dirty it shouldn’t really be needed but its useful to ward off any potential questions about storing your bike/peace of mind and technically your bike is just the same as any other piece of luggage when its got the sock on.

I do think I would love to try bouldering but have really short hamstrings and poor posture/flexibility and am pushing 42 now, not sure if its too late?

I’ve always been into running and came from running to MTBing and then road cycling. I’m 41 now and try to make sure that I always keep up both running and cycling in parallel rather than switching between blocks of the two. In  fact, I have a duathlon scheduled for this weekend.

Also, I find that in terms of being able to do events and race people/socialise a little, trail and fell running races are so much easier logistically than cycling events and its cool to just drive to a race with a pair of trainers and a waterproof in the boot and set-off and be done in 2hrs.

I do a bit of bodyweight conditioning at home but don’t think that counts and its purely to try and ensure I can keep running and cycling past my 40’s.

I’ve often wondered about this when I’ve been at various events. I know at triathlons and similar multisports events I’ve done that bikes are usually stickered with the sticker matching a wristband for when they are in the “transition” area with somebody checking each entry/exit and the last one I entered also sold optional theft insurance specifically for the event too.

I’ve no idea what ard rock or mtb events are like and how big they are but is it not possible for something similar in terms of bike storage, at least for those without vans/locks etc? If it was me, I would gladly pay rather than risk it.

I agree with much of the OP, I have always been a bit mystified as to why many bike shops seem to be excluded from the most basic sort of standards and expectations that would be required of literally any other industry.

I’ve dismissed using at least 4 local to me for dumb or annoying things like missing spacers before big events, large chips in the paint/top-tube where bike has obviously been dropped onto something and literally just wordlessly handed it back to me. Bottom brackets not fitted properly. No call from them to notify me my bike is ready and then when I phone them they ask me why I haven’t been along to pick it up, its been ready for days….etc

Having said that, I have found a very organised and professional one near me recently so I guess its just a matter of using the good ones and spreading the word.

I don’t have garage or a shed so rely forced to rely on them to one extent or another really.

I think you’re being unreasonable. It’s a dog not a tiger, they’re pretty common. Anyway, isn’t there a distinct chance your kids will totally love it after like 3 days or something.

Intrigued to know if it was difficult to replace the batteries, anyone who has done it?

It might just be me imagining it but I had the sense a couple of years ago that Raleigh were trying to get back into the “serious cyclist” kind of market but then I have not really heard or seen much of them since.

Tbf I don’t know if they were ever considered a serious/professional brand but they seemed like it to me as a kid in the 80’s!

Went over this morning and it’s open but there’s just 3 sets of temporary lights on the ladybower side quite far down. So anyone going from the glossop side can climb unimpeded and enjoy the descent to ladybower until towards the very end where you hit the lights. But yeah, it’ll be shut 22/5 onwards.

Also did Winnats Pass for first time in ages, can’t believe I used to go full gas up there, I thought I wasn’t even gonna make it up at one point this morning.

Also, predictably, that part of the peaks today is insanely busy.

Would be cool if Strava had some sort of challenge or achievement for ‘most new stuff ridden’ or something. Filling out the heatmap is about the only metric of my riding which is improving these days! 

I am vaguely heading towards this these days too. Adding stuff to my personal heatmap is quite satisfying and also motivates to take my running shoes on holiday or hire a bike when away or enter a trail race that uses some private land and stuff like that.

I actually don’t mind seeing people’s zwift rides, walks, weight training and whatnot, not really sure why it bothers people so much.

I was literally planning on riding over it from Glossop side to Ladybower tomorrow am…is is still open/rideable all the way over?

Didn’t realise there’d been another landslip.

Tomorrow’s plan was plan B after our plan to ride in Bowland was scuppered by the train strike.

Still really like it here. Its cool to see what others are up to and can add a bit of motivation to head out if I can see others are. I really don’t mind scrolling past people’s Zwift rides, it takes like 3 seconds.

I’m not fast enough to really trouble any segment top ten’s but I’m always interested to see how I stack up against myself on local ride climbs.

I use the training calendar and the fitness and freshness function too in an indicative/vague way to monitor training stress. Its my go to route planner too and its handy to quickly copy and paste road routes that others have done local to me if I fancy doing it.

If I’m planning on riding or running abroad its handy to pick a local segment, find the “local legend” and then just check what routes they have been doing to get a quick up to date idea of where’s best to run/ride in the area.

I don’t think Strava does anything that other apps can’t do for you but it seems like the easiest single place for all of the above so happy to pay for it.

Ultegra calipers on a Giant TCR here, alloy rims, use Swisstop pads. They’ve never not stopped me, I like the simplicity so will stick with rim brakes as long as I can but concede that at some point they are inevitably going to look like some kind of antique curiosity.

Lol similar thing happened to me in a road sportive which rightly or wrongly, was being treated as a race by a lot of people. I got dropped from what you might call a “lead group” very early on and then spent an age ploughing ahead solo without seeing a single sole in front or behind.

Next thing I know, the exact same group appear behind me, say their hello’s for a second or two and then drop me all over again. Transpired that the entire group had taken a wrong turn, performed a reasonably significant detour and then re-joined the course behind me- where they promptly reeled me in and spat me out the back again. So I manged to get dropped twice by the same group despite never catching them in the first place.

Hi All,

Apologies, I started this thread and then went AWOL with work. Thanks for the suggestions- loads of food for thought here!

I’ve always really fancied Corsica especially after the TdF Grand Depart there a few years ago, it looked amazing. Shame about the driving standards though, I don’t think this would bother too much but as it’s really a “normal” holiday with my wife and a bit of cycling thrown in perhaps I could do without nagging doubts about drivers in the back of my mind when I’m there.

I’ll report back when we pick and somewhere and if its good.

PS to the people who suggested the UK, I do take this point. One of my favourite ever rides of the last few years was a road ride around Bowland in Lancs.

Off topic but in my first and only 24hr MTB event I did in it in a team of 4 with a local club I had only just joined. I’d never even met the other 3 in my team until the day we turned up. Just so you get the full picture, I was a newbie riding a £450 hardtail with some running shorts and a really old football jersey.

In any event, on my 2nd lap (which was probably a fair few hours into the actual event) I started and immediately dumbly took a wrong turn where some tape had dropped and then got called back by another competitor after riding maybe 50-60metres so I realised what I’d done and went back.

Didn’t think much of it until the guy who called me back went absolutely nuts, screaming at me for cheating, following me around the whole course yelling at me, bellowing at bemused spectators and their kids about how “number 131 is a **** cheat” and they have to report me and so on. There was no reasoning with him at all and I eventually just dropped back to try and avoid the whole unseemly spectacle but then had to listen him yelling insults back at me about how I couldn’t keep up with him despite being a dirty cheat.

Anyway, there’s literally no point at all to this story other than it still really annoys me years later when I think of it and I assume some competitors must genuinely cheat in even the most casual of events if silly mistakes triggers reactions like that from people.

In retrospect, perhaps it was the riding in a football jersey which triggered him, in which case fair enough really.

Same here- I did get a refund but no notification or anything like that, just a random income into my account and I had to go digging to find out what had happened.

I noticed when I used to go mountain biking that the sorts of people who were often calling you out for some spurious offence, shooting you dirty looks or generally getting the hump about something were often, to my mind, the exact same people who would cross the road to avoid me if I was walking home from the pub or I had met them in literally any other context.

These days I do a bit of trail running as well as cycling and I often feel more relaxed doing it as it seems to be the only activity that doesn’t offend somebody or other.

Yeah 5′ 10″ here and on a 2019 TCR- size medium. I’m not really a bike fit ninja and tend to ride them off the peg after some basic adjustments but for what its worth it feels fine to me after 4 years of riding.

OP, I feel your pain, that sounds uber disappointing. I always thought Evans were pretty good in the past despite everyone saying they’re garbage, though I’m not sure if I was just lucky with my local store but they were always helpful and their workshop got me out of a last-minute hole a couple of times and once or twice didn’t even charge me.

I’ve not used them since the takeover but I also probably would have bought something on a calculated-risk basis from them if the deal was good- but not now, so I appreciate the heads-up.

Yeah I use them all the time, great shop 👍

Excellent, thank you so much 👍

This is all relevant to my needs…was literally this morning going to ask what “nice, summer, semi-aero (ish)” wheels for a 2019 rim brake giant TCR.

Excuse my ignorance but how much attention should I pay to rim width?

Do manufacturers state a specific max width for a given frame or if I just buy a relatively common pair of wheels from a well known wheel manufacturer will it be a moot point and they’ll just fit?

Is there a widely accepted “best” width at the moment? I don’t think the TCR has super big tolerances, not even sure I can put 28” tyres on.

I posed exactly the same question here several weeks ago, thread below for info.

Useful Stretches for Lower Back Pain?

In my case after several months of trying various stretches and yoga poses on Youtube without any success I saw a physio and had some pretty greats advice in the space of 45mins. Within the one session he ruled out any slipped disc(s), sciatica etc which was a relief and diagnosed it as a posture issue- in my case it is something called “sway back” and is an exaggerated leaning back posture when standing and walking.

I had a load of exercises to do daily which for once I actually did and also he gave me some pointers on how to adjust my posture. His view was that the exercises will help a lot but in the long term adjusting my poor postural habits would be the key driver of recovery.

To be honest I have seen my physio several times before for totally unrelated strains and injuries to hamstrings and calves etc and I think he had already clocked my poor posture as he had mentioned it to me in passing previously but I hadn’t really paid much attention. So whilst he was thorough in diagnosing me I suspect he was already pretty sure what my problem was before I even walked through the door.

So whilst a lot of people struggle to diagnose the exact cause of their issue in my case I was lucky and the physio revealed my exact problem within less than an hour. Its a lot better now but I do think I’m kind of on a sliding a scale of “not very good” to “really good” at any given time depending on what I’ve been doing, rather than simply “cured”, if that makes sense.

My wife did for the semi-final though I suspect this means I might have to drive her back from Liverpool to Manchester when it finishes

Hopefully it sends a message to those wandering about fuelled by DM rage, to wait a moment before barging their righteous way into a manslaughter charge…

Totally agree with this and I do think this applies to public life in general, not just disputes that happen to involve a bike. I haven’t seen the judges reasoning (though I’m sure its available somewhere) but I do wonder if he or she passed the sentence they did because they’re tired of seeing this sort of thing happening due to turbo charged media/internet hate campaigns infecting all of our lives.

I’m not sure if its totally relevant here but in common law there is something called the eggshell skull rule. Meaning, if you punch someone and hope merely to hurt them but it transpires they have a medical condition (like a thin skull) and they die, this does not absolve you of responsibility.

I.e. you’re liable as a defendant for uncommon and unforeseeable reactions to an intentional tort (deliberate harm). Hence why its a good idea not to punch someone at all unless you really have no choice.

I’m not sure it applies in a legal sense to the facts here but to my mind it does go some way to explaining why you’re going to be charged if your actions have consequences (including that you didn’t expect) but not charged if, lucky for you as a perpetrator, they didn’t.

In this case, it seems the actions were even more irresponsible to me anyway- it was actually totally foreseeable that lunging at someone on a bike next to a busy road could force them into the road in front of a car.

In summary, you face the actual consequences of your actions and not the expected consequences or the consequences that might have happened the other 99 out of 100 times.

“Everyone will have their own views of cyclists on pavements and cycleways”

Yeah I thought the same as you franksinatra, especially this quote from the Detective^.

I have my own view of the local police. If you know what I mean.

Completely foreseeable that lunging at someone on a bike next to a busy road may have catastrophic consequences so punishment seems just to me. For once, actions have consequences.

I think this just speaks to a wider problem though, more than just cycling and really is just what seems like a total lack of respect in this country towards anyone doing anything in public that isn’t basically driving to your local tesco. I am sure without the constant drip of culture war vitriol in the media against cyclists this lady would not have felt like she had licence to act like she did.

I tried a few after Dark Sky was killed off and settled on using Rain Today instead which seems pretty good

Yeah I know, wrong place to pose that question probably 😂

I am a recent convert from free member to paying subscriber- I stopped reading the magazine years ago as I’ve never really found the writing style to my liking. I never look at the main site and now pay for the forum purely because it is a great resource for advice on bike maintenance, training and races/events. I also find the chat about pro cycling entertaining too and usually there are some long/involved threads about the big grand tours when they are on.

In many ways I’m not the target market as I gave up mountain biking years ago and only road ride and trail run now and I wouldn’t say I’m particularly interested in gravel riding or bike packing.

But, as much as I love cycling I sometimes wonder how much can really be said about it as an activity outside of the competitive part of it. I buy a bike on average about once every 8 years so bike reviews are meaningless to me for 7.9 years out of every 8. Routes in the UK are well established- especially mountain bike routes that can legally be published…even I could advise someone on a classic peak district route and I’ve not ridden a bridleway since 2009. Like most people I know who are into cycling I don’t go on multiple cycling holidays a year to far flung sunny countries following a local guide around, so articles about riding in Andorra or Croatia or something are of limited value really.

I still buy the paper copy of Cycling Weekly as I can catch up on some pro cycling news and also I find the domestic competitive news interesting- the focus in general seems to be on things that are more local and relatable to me, local TTs, Hill Climbs and CX racing, club runs, events that I might actually enter, rides I might actually do.

I might be totally wrong here but is it fair to say most people own one bike (maybe 2) and rarely exchange it, ride local to them and perhaps go abroad on a cycling specific holiday maybe occasionally but probably rarely? The sportives or events the enter most likely will be within a 3 hour drive of where they live?

I’m not sure if STW is guilty of any of the above as I haven’t read it in years but most cycling media seems to be like that to me and it is fairly predictable/tired after a while. I always thought Cyclist magazine offered some different/insightful articles compared to the rest but there’s still only so many “Big Ride in Sunny and Faraway Country [x]” that can hold my interest and it is inevitably really expensive now.

I’m sure I read an article about this and the answer was basically no they’re not listening to you but often the algorithms dictating what you see are so accurate that it often feels like they are.

It sounds like the maps things is maybe a specific setting for making routing easier that you need to turn off rather than a passive listening thing?

Slightly off topic but the fittest I ever got for cycling was back in my early thirties when I ripped a training plan out the back of a magazine and followed the intervals from that on a dumb trainer in my kitchen without a fan.

I’ve somehow never really ever scaled back to those dizzy heights despite my setup being loads better now. Was some years ago though.

I think pretty much all of the various apps give you an initial free period of like 30 days or something usually, so you could try each one with your setup to find one that works best.

Personally if I had a non-smart trainer I would go with Traineroad as its widely considered to be the most effective anyway and I think would be easiest to use with a non-smart trainer. But I’m quite happy just looking at the static graphs on the screen which I know isn’t for everyone.

I have nothing to add here other than one of my mates told me recently that in Belgium they refer to non-e bikes as “muscle bikes” and that is how I will be referring to my own Giant TCR every single time from now on for the rest of my life.

Cheers Kryton, meeting is in half an hour so we won’t have to wait long, I will cross my fingers and report back.