Coming into autumn/winter, i’d try a set of CycloXKings OP.
If they are anything like the MTB version they’ll roll pretty well and not wear too quickly on the road and adequate (but not spectacular) grip in quite a range of conditions off road.

Similar to the idea above, the new Alu Pro-Caliber might be a good call.
Don’t think you’ll get a FS that’s not an anchor on your budget, and it only takes a look at the Womens XC WC to tell you that the lighter riders there select a HT much more often than the men as heavy bikes have much more impact on them.

Guess it depends on age, fitness and how invasive the surgery is.
Can be anything from a few days to several months.

since then I have been unable to get any fitness back at all.

Regarding that bit, I remember the thread. Sad to hear you are still having problems. Maybe look at this as an opportunity to start with a clean slate. Have the surgery, rest/heal, then a cautious return to the bike.

Might be a bit big, but a good deal..

Scott 2016 Genius 720 Plus Full Suspension Mountain Bike was £2900 now £1449 in Small

Approximate Weight 13.8kg / 30.42lbs

Yeah, too big, really heavy and not really an XC/Trail bike at all – exactly what the OP was after.

Yeah, that Grinduro plug looks ace (although maybe a tad over-geared)
If I didn’t already have a Plug1 and a Cooker SS i’d have got one for sure.

No creaking from mine so far, but only got around 400mi on it.

Fifeandy, will you be racing on your Plug? Just going back through some old threads, saw you had one.

Am tempted to split racing duties between the CX-ed Superfly and the Charge, mostly because I think it will look awesome with some spikey CX tyres on it

Whilst I think the plug frame would be great for the job, I’m not sure about my skinny little legs powering a 42/16 through gloop!
Fortunately, i’ve also got a Boardman CX which has the luxury of gears. Its set up as a road winter trainer right now, but wont take long to reverse that.

No, its hellish – even the jobs that should be easy manage to conspire to go wrong.

Last night I decided to give the bike some pre-NC500 (travelling Sunday) love.
Cleaned, de-greased, lubed, changed front pads – all good so far.
Went to change rear pads – retaining screws stuck – 30 mins wrestling with pliers for what should be a 10s process.
Thought I was done, picked bike up and went to turn it around and thought “headset seems a bit rumbly” (no idea how I hadn’t noticed previously – maybe a wet ride last week finished them off). So off come bars, stem and front brake – fork out – i’ll just stick new grease on the bearings.
Err, no you wont! Discovered that bike uses a pair of cartridge bearings.

Last minute panic trip to LBS this morning to get bike sorted in time to travel to Inverness at the weekend :evil:

Yes, I like them a lot.
They are a known quantity if you like – when you turn up to ride a red grade trail you can have a reasonable expectation of what you’ll find. No swamps, no paths that disappear into impenetrable gorse bushes, no hike-a-bike, no gates/styles.
Add that they are actually designed for MTB’ing and generally things flow quite nicely in a way that is rare on natural trails.

Obviously not all TC’s are born equal, but anywhere with onsite changing, cafe, bike shop/hire really just combine to make it an easy day out.

Erm – that doesn’t sound right. Mixing 4:1 and 2:1 is going to result in something roughly 3:1

RachelSo you would think, but they refer to different things.
High5 2:1 refers to glucose/fructose ratio.
High5 4:1 is 4 parts of 2:1 and 1 part of whey protein
So when you mix it 50/50 you end up with 9 parts 2:1 and 1 part whey

You failed to mention group of 6 at first!
Had us all thinking it was a monster hero ride and it was really a glorified bimble! :wink:

No concrete signings for Sky yet, although a few rumours

I’ve experimented a fair bit with the 4:1, and so far i’m not 100% convinced about a performance boost on the long ride itself, but i do think it helps stop your body eating its own muscle mass during multi day events or hard blocks of daily training.

In one off events i’ve found 4:1 from the start just means i’m getting less carbs and run out of energy faster. Now i tend to mix it 50/50 with 2:1 to create 9:1 from the 3rd bottle onwards, which still adds up to a surprising amount of protein over a long event.

Size wise I’m thinking Medium? I’m 5’10 (on a good day) riding 56cm specialized road bikes (diverge and roubaix) so looking at the geo charts it’s Medium – do you agree?

You could ride a M or L, if the reach and stack of the M is close to what you have now I’d go for that.

FWIW, I’m 5’9 and had a test ride on a friends ‘M’ Dolomite and found the stack a little high and the reach a little short.
Quite disappointing, as I was only testing it quickly to confirm I wanted the lovely new LTD edition and it put me right off. :(

Nothing actually happened in the last episode though did it?

Well, other than more or less confirming Jon isn’t ‘just’ King in the North, and Sam leaving the Citadel and becoming head of his house (although he doesn’t know it).

They’re a racing tyre aren’t they really?

Sort of. Conti actually do 3 faster tyres (Attack/Force, GP TT and GP Supersonic) that are out and out race tyres.
The GP4000 sits somewhere between a fast training tyre and a race tyre.

Just do the tubeless conversion yourself. You’ll need to buy your own fluid for top-ups anyway.

My 2011 Scott Addict R2 – I originally went to test ride a CR1, but when i rode the Addict I knew it was the one for me.
We’ve been together for 10,000mi so far and have had adventures in Alps, Pyrenees, Dolomites and Corsica.

10 hours riding hard is quite a big one – much more than a 10hr bimble.
Depends how fresh you were going in to it, the size of your base and how you recover.
For me, it’d take 1-2 weeks, but my recovery speed is slowish.

As an approximate rule of thumb,i find 1 day recovery per hr @ race pace fits quite well.

I don’t like the 2.4 for general riding where you can meet a wide range of surfaces. The side knobs are too far down the side, and the centre knobs aren’t big enough and are too widely spaced on hard surfaces.

It is pretty decent in soft conditions though if you have a lot of those.

It does size up a little smaller than advertised, but certainly not 2.2. Maybe 1mm narrower than the 2.35 Hans Dampf that replaced it.

but the French are as bad as the brits

lol, really not. I actually giggled, got off the bike and took a photo of the road surface within 2mins of first riding a bike in France because it was so smooth. By comparison, riding the flat here feels like riding up a 1-2% grade there.

Question – does squaring of in it’s own right cause a problem – i.e. should I change the back one soonish ?

I don’t really think so. I used to change my Pro4 Endurance once they got super square as they start to get a bit draggy. Not really noticed that with the GP4000s so far.
In theory they also wont transition as nicely when you lean the bike over, but in practice I can’t say i’ve noticed it.

Christ. God knows what you guys are up to but I fitted some new 25s to one bike and 28s to another back in April.
The 28s did 1200 miles last month alone and have only lost their sheen. No flat top or anywhere near the markers.

They have probably seen 2.6k miles so far.

The bike with 25s has been used less but still probably 1.300 miles and also look as new ( but without the shine )You are cheating though. The Swiss have learnt how to do tarmac, whereas road surfacing around here involves laying down some tar then tipping small abrasive stones on top and hoping for the best!

I’m well over 2k miles on the rear – beginning to square off and get a few small cuts, but expect to get to 3k before getting close to vanishing the wear markers.
Front is barely starting to show signs of wear.

Dad was around 2.5k on his rear when he changed it – again, front showing limited signs of wear.

Both weighing <65kg which I think helps a lot with wear.

Buying Bitcoin is easy, just head to https://blockchain.info/wallet and sign up.

Alternatively, you can do what our IT bloke did and spread them around several hard drives then lose them.
He’s not at all bitter about the 20k bitcoins he’s been trying to find for the last 6 months or so :lol:

Still, the 600 or so he has managed to find has softened the blow a bit….

Depends a bit what garmin you get, but on (for example) an edge 810 you can have OS maps, and when you load up your route it overlays a line on top of them, so you can ride along and follow the line in situations like you describe.
It’ll also cheep at you if you go off course – although that does throw up some false positives due to the trail on the ground not being exactly where the map thinks it is.

Not tried one myself, but if you aren’t interested in any of the other cycling specific stuff (HR, Power, Cadence, Workouts, etc) then you may be better off with a hiking one (eTrex?).

@Haze/kryton
The Chrono fluid has a pretty significant flaw. Since it has the floating design and uses your body weight for pressure on the roller, this also changes its power curve.
In the case of a very light rider, it doesn’t offer enough resistance for doing low rpm force work.

@Haze
The Fluid2 (assuming thats the unit you’ve borrowed) has a very nice feel to it, but has a very frustrating warm-up curve, and resistance can fluctuate significantly depending on ambient temperature.

What wheel size for feeling ashamed?

The problem with HIIT, is it’s not clearly defined what it is.
IIRC, it became popular after being on a documentary where the sample athlete showed good improvement from 3×30 second maximal sprints on an exercise bike 3 times a week.

But this seems to have spawned any number of different variations calling themselves HIIT, with no scientific evidence behind most of them.

Personally, I think it sort of fits in right along with fad diets – probably an OK shortcut for a few weeks, but not a replacement for regular longer exercise sessions long term

Depends where you live I guess

NE Corner of NE Fife.
Dunfermline an and Lochore Meadows are fine for me.
Glasgow, Falkirk and Aberdeenshire are a bit far for a 1hr event imo.
Irvine and Mull – err, no!

Anyone else giving the Scottish series a go?

Tempting, but when I looked before it looked like a LOT of travelling for not a lot of race time.

Will try and take a look and see where this year’s rounds are located this afternoon.

Would be interested to hear the logic behind people thinking its nutrition/hydration?
OP has mentioned he took on 2.5-3l over 5-6hrs which is in the correct ballpark. And he also mentioned he felt he couldn’t go hard enough to get out of breath – but when you’ve run out of carbs, you can get out of breath at more or less walking pace.

Bregante – Member
I’m not sure a 2.1 tyre would fit on the Arkose.

Maybe Jameso will be along to let us know for sure.
I took a look back through the Arkose thread and found this which suggested it would be possible but maybe not ideal:

View this post on Instagram

Testing some #650b x 2.2" rubber on the Arkose for today's #lunchride … #haybales #gravelgrinder #wtb #southdowns #shouldhavejustboughtamountainbike

A post shared by Pinnacle Bikes (@pinnaclebikes) on Nov 16, 2016 at 11:15am PST

I’d personally rule out anything that didn’t allow you 650bx2.1 as an option.

The Arkose LTD does look really nice, and think i remember seeing it meets the above criteria

Answer is: It depends!

If the electric cars have no KERS there will be an energy deficit as there are losses generating/storing the electricity.
With KERS on the other hand whilst you have less energy to begin with, you can make it go further.

In the OP’s case it sounds fully like a mental thing. If it were a case of lacking physical stamina then either muscles would give way (which he says is not the case) or glycogen stores would run out (bonk). And the latter results in you being very out of breath (whilst going no-where fast).

You actually want a recovery drink full of sugar in most cases. The idea is to re-fill the glycogen stores as much as possible within 2hrs whilst the window is open for improved uptake = need a fast digesting carb.
Same goes for the protein, which is why they all use whey as its absorbed quickly.

The protein/carb ratios are certainly interesting between brands: SiS 1:1, High5 2:1, Torq 3:1 iirc.

If you want fast, don’t buy Maxxis (except an Aspen). Crossmark is slooow, not tried an Ikon, but on drum tests it also shows as slow.

Thunder Burt or Ralph in 2.1 Snakeskin.
Xking 2.2 Protection is also only really a 2.1

So because the majority are fat lazy weekend warriors, then those that are actually interested in getting the best out of themselves deserve to be ridiculed.
Good to know.

In the meantime, my totally unscientific study of 1 has concluded a proper recovery drink works best, so will keep using it.

@wobbliscott, i assume you are aware there are quite a number of people on this forum that are indeed riding 5-6 days a week including some very intense work.
Don’t really see whats wrong in wanting to maximise recovery so the next (and subsequent) sessions are better quality.