+1 for Hearts of Iron

Depends what you mean by ‘flagging’ if its upper body struggling then hit the gym, if you’re breathing out you’re arse man up and get some base miles in

WD40, then get an old screwdriver hex bit, insert and bash hard with hammer a few times.  Then stick said bit bit in a drill (lock it out) then leverage provided by drill handle should be enough to shift it.  Mine made a crazy loud cracking noise when they finally came free!

@anagallis_arvensis depending where you ride there can be a lot broken/rough road surfaces, and the bigger volume tyres are not only much more comfortable, but actually faster too.  I went to the local APR last year on my charge plug with 38c’s as my race bike was in the shop, was slower on good surfaces for sure, but theres a couple of rough sections where i usually struggle to stick with the bigger more powerful riders, but on that day the big tyres just glided over it and keeping up was easy.

@OP, how about a marathon supreme?

There’s all sorts you can try (most covered already) and i’ve had the misfortune of trying most of them.  Worth asking the doctor if they can get you/mother an appointment with a dietitian as they’ll have loads of tips.

I found fortijuice and ensure plus impossible to drink in enough quantity.  You can however get prescription for a carbohydrate powder that can be mixed into almost anything and bottles of liquid fat that can be mixed into stuff like mashed potatoes.

My personal favourite tip is ‘super’ milk.  Take full fat milk and stir in instant milk powder, tastes much the same and boosts calories of anything with milk in.

Depending on how bad things are, and any underlying medical conditions, some sort of tube feed may be far from the worst thing in the world, and a few weeks of good nutrition can really pick you up when you are run down.  GP/Dietitian are of course best qualified to advise on this.

Used my Evoc for 4 trips now, hasn’t let me down yet and still in good condition.  Expensive, but i’ve yet to see a better bag.

Dad has one too that’s done 2 trips again, no problems and pleased with purchase.

If i was to buy again, i wouldn’t be looking to go cheaper, i’d be looking at a hardcase box.

Not the type of rice cakes you are thinking off (although they might work too).

You’ll probably find the ones i meant in mtbtomo’s book recommendation, and in the following youtube link

Not great in mud, but as said many times already, hardly a surprise given that they are going the opposite way to the design of a dedicated mud tyre.

I have found so far though that due to the big contact patch they quite often dont slide out to far before finding something they can get a hold of again.

This should be quite achievable.

Enduro is very well suited to this type of diet restriction.  You’re going full gas for short stages, but the rest of the time you can take it quite easy (assuming your fitness is up to climbing at low intensity).

In terms of carbs on the bike you could do something very simple like plain bread, or be a bit more ambitious and have a go at the rice cakes that are popular with pro road cyclists.

In terms of becoming better adapted to burning fat at a given intensity level – that’s rather less good news.  That’s a case of grinding out the early morning 2hr fasted rides and the longer 3-6hr easy rides.

Depends how long the lap is, but for a 3hr event on a relatively short lap it’d be a bottle and a gel only.  And grab a replacement once an hour.

For a longer lap add a set of tyre levers, spare tube and CO2 inflater in jersey pocket to avoid a long walk back to the pits.

Would certainly never even consider a camelback on a lapped event.

Not a local, but i enjoyed it when i went there and didn’t have any problems with the local tribes.

A) Go see a doc, persistent saddle sore can need antibiotics to clear it up.

B) Try several brands/styles of shorts, and consider replacing any that you’ve worn regularly for a season or more – the chamois can lose its density which doesn’t help.

C) Try chamois cream directly on the shorts at the effected area

+1 for dodging as much of the A9 as possible, its pretty miserable.

Get a good quality packable waterproof and some water repellent leg/knee warmers

Don’t forget midge repellent.

Don’t expect to be able to get breakfast at any hotels unless you had a room there.

Don’t expect to get an early start if you want breakfast

The section between Lochinver and Unapool is brutal, make sure its part of a short day.

Budget a few £ more than expected for lunch each day.

BMC Agonist might be worth a look.  For your requirements Kryton’s suggestion of the 120mm Spark would be at the top of my list though.

With only a month to play with, no smart trainer and none of the appropriate sensors i’d be looking at the GCN training videos.  There’s quite a selection now, and by the time you add a short warmup and cooldown most give a solid hours workout.

Yes it’s really that slow, Maxxis only make one tyre that isn’t slow and that’s the Aspen.

Some tyres are advertised as fast, others seem fast, but its not until you ride one of the german xc tyres you realise what fast actually is.

That Lenovo 4 plus is looking pretty good for £150.
Might nip round to PC world to see if I can have a look at one in the flesh.

@mrblobby
Give up on power meters as they all seem to fail and need to go back under warranty. Spend the credit note on a lifetime supply of bar tape.

My zwift journey has progressed to zwift spectator. Dad has signed up, so spent the evening trundling along on my dumb trainer watching him smash out a mighty 2.5W/kg

This is quite ‘normal’ these days. The sound is designed to be loud in the cinema, and thats how it gets translated to bluray etc.
Most things have a dynamic range reduction function somewhere to combat this, but its often still not enough for some peoples taste/living arrangements.

@mariner
A 2.2 x-king is currently only really a 2.1.
At one of the bike shows last year conti announced their new tyre lineup,a part of which was standardising their casing sizes so the new 2.2 should actually be a 2.2 – hurrah!

Meh, power and hr data stripped out (as expected) so not really of any interest at all

Barzo, XR2
X-king is nice but might be a bit narrow until the new ones hit the shelves.

Edit: The new maxxis forekaster might be worth a look

Article here with several papers referenced to support it.
http://www.mysportscience.com/single-post/2015/05/14/Carb-mixes-and-benefits

@tj, a bit harder to search for papers on sports drinks as google results get contaminated will all kinds of media crap.

Pretty sure lucozade have a paper to support their 33% longer claim as they fought a false advertising case and won, and High5 have details of a study they performed in conjunction with a university.

But its one you can easily test out in a scientific study of 1, and pretty much anyone that races a bike will tell you the same.
Go try and ride flat out for 2hrs, almost 100% chance you’ll run out of gas and power will drop off somewhere around the 90min mark.
Do it again and try to eat solid food and you’ll get some combination of stomach cramps/puking/crapping
Do it again with an isotonic drink and you’ve got a good chance of hitting 2hrs if you’ve got the muscular endurance for it.

@ton, i can try losing a stone, but are you sure 8st is a healthy option for a 5’9 guy?

@tj I’m far from an expert, and i’m not about to spend an evening digesting entire scientific papers, but how about this one?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12235033

Surprised nobody has mentioned it yet, but tyres will make a big difference. The difference in rolling resistance between a pair of trail kings and an xc tyre could easily be 30W of wasted power.

6000kcal of chocolate a week!
That’s the stuff of legends.

Think molgrips covered most things pretty well already.

For my 2p worth:
You’re doing quite a lot of high intensity exercise, its worth fuelling with a sports drink for med/high intensity sessions over 1hr and a refuel (ideally a main meal) after.
As someone else suggested, use MFP to track your calorie intake/expenditure. Not going to say cut the chocolate completely, but maybe cut down to 1 bar a day and a square or 2 of dark chocolate for a treat.

Ads tried to deliver me a couple of trojans at work yesterday. No objection at all to ads, i even click some sometimes, but do object when they are giving redirects and viruses.

+1 for Highland Park 12yr

Worms!
omg, there goes my weekend

Best bike stays best.
Lives on the turbo trainer during the winter.

I’ve got an electric storage heater in the living room supplemented by electric panel heaters in other rooms. Very similar to @BoardinBob at around £45pcm

so aerodynamic drag as an aid to braking is not very effective other than at very high speeds

I don’t, I’m like an old woman.

Clearly you don’t descend fast enough – at typical alpine descending speeds getting out of your tuck and sitting up (still on the drops) to take the wind slows you significantly.

And for those of us who do hit the Alpine descents how many of us are really hitting them like a Pro?

Typically amateur riders will be harder on brakes than pros as they can hit the same straight line speeds comfortably enough but only have half the road to play with on the corners so have to slow more.

Maybe some meal replacement shakes (aimed at old people) if she is worried about nutrition?

They can quite often contain significant fat content, so might not work with a low fat diet.

Your better long descent strategy might actually be to drag your brakes gently to control speed thereby generating lower rim temperatures, rather than to roll to a higher speed then hit the brakes harder generating much higher braking temperatures.

The usual advice is the opposite to that – higher speeds mean more air cooling and more ‘free’ braking due to wind resistance.
Dragging results in more heat build up in the wheel and less ability to cool it.

It’s the laser eye surgery one. Accuvue? With Sarah Cox. Plays automatically, with sound, is supposed to be square but compresses into a banner and every time you scroll it jumps back to the ad. Chrome, Windows 10.

There’s another one too.
Chrome, Windows7.

In a fairly litigious society with a fair few carbon rims out there I’m sure we would have heard is any carbon rims had actually exploded in the ‘real world’.

It happened enough in the real world with the first and second generation of carbon rims that holiday companies running trips in the mountains were advising customers to leave them at home and bring alloy rims.

There’s a fair few descents where you can hold 40+mph for a good chunk of time – a nervous descender could easily be dragging brakes for 10+ mins over a long descent.

loving the new large video ad that gets compressed into a tiny banner but won’t let you scroll the page any more.