Don’t know how a single person could live on NHS wages.

You live in the wrong part of the country then.
I could live (and have done) quite comfortably (as in I can still buy new cars and bikes) off the bottom end of the pay bracket in the OP.

If you don’t live in the SE, anything over around £18k is going into your pool to spend on capitalist luxury items.

I’m far from an expert, but when I looked at doing a PhD years ago, I very much got the impression that a PhD often didn’t get much in the way of increased salary. In fact post doctoral research roles seemed a lot of hard work for very little reward (at least early on in a career).

If they won’t budge on pay within that band, how will her prospects be for getting promoted into a higher pay band within a few years?

He certainly didn’t look to be going full gas on the final TT.
When he came over the top of the climb where everyone else looked a total mess he was still totally smooth and in control.

Runners like pain and suffering most mtb’rs don’t

Well MTB’ers do have a (possibly deserved) reputation for spending two thirds of their rides standing around eating kitkats interspersed with the odd bit of riding.

But in general, i find that a very small percentage of the population (be they runnerists, bikerists or gymbunnyists) actually like the pain and suffering, and most will ‘claim’ to be suffering, but their breathing and HR charts show that they’ve barely cracked open the door to the hurt locker – certainly a long way from clambering in and closing the door behind them.

Not that i’m a massive fan of petrol/diesel cars, but after the Sky News report on cobalt mining, I cant say i’m a massive fan of batteries either.

I’m also far from convinced that electric cars are the way forward due to infrastructure limitations, especially in rural areas. We already suffer from chronic under-investment in so many areas, so where is the money going to come from to A) build new power stations to charge millions of cars, and B) build the charging points (or induction loops under existing roads).

In the short term, i’d be in favour of banning SUV’s as they are utterly pointless in the UK, and just burn extra fuel so you can have a high up driving position and get one up on the neighbours.

Interesting comments from Landa.
Sure there were a couple of stages where he looked very strong, but then on other stages every time the pace went up, he went out the back and had to grind back on.
Certainly never looked to me like “In the second week, I had legs to drop everyone,”
Guess we’ll get the chance to see what he’s got next year.

Pretty easy really.
I have to keep my fibre intake down as Crohn’s has ruined my insides, and if i eat too much fibre it feels at best like a rubiks cube is slowly inching its way through my guts.

White bread, white pasta, white rice, meat, fish, dairy. Keep veg servings small, likewise with potatoes. Most unhealthy treats like chocolate etc are also safe 🙂

Keeping down below 6-7g per meal seems to work for me, but i don’t know what the actual recommended figure is.

Well i didn’t actually see any evidence of it in this years tour, but it should be possible in theory, but would be risky.

You’d have to hold back on the intensity a little in training and arrive well rested and slightly under-baked.

Many of the stages in the first half of the race were very flat, and sitting in the bunch, each stage wouldn’t provide particularly unusual training stress on a pro rider. And the intensity at the very start and very end of each stage would bring on the peak you are after in the second half of the race.

My impression is that’s exactly what it’s been like for 6weeks

Well, make that 8 weeks. Another two weeks of cold grey riding with the occasional drizzle, and i’m looking out of the window right now at gloom that’s verging on dark, and yet again, it’ll be the windproof jersey and arm warmers for the group ride tonight.

I will confess there was some blue sky yesterday – while I was mowing the lawn 😕

Just a fyi incase you didn’t know already, but you can improve the battery life of the 800/810 by turning off the backlight, and by only using the map screen when its strictly need it (its cpu intensive rendering the map).

If by nice day you mean 14°C and overcast…..
But anyway, think i’m going to try and get to the local APR tonight – might try the fast group for the first time, although suspect it’ll end up with the solo ride of shame home.

Two GPS… ?

May or may not be the OP’s reasoning, but the Garmin edge series are flakey as anything on long rides, and if it were me, i’d have taken two as I’d be a bit gutted to lose my ride data.

Don’t think the race king 2.0 comes in a sensible carcass does it?
The RaceSport isn’t officially tubeless ready, so its either back to tubes, or inflating tyres every day.

Bit late now you’ve put the sealant in, but if you are having trouble like that you can put a tube in for a day or so to get it seated on one side and in the right shape, then pop of one side only to get the tube out and add sealant.

Edit, bah, beaten to it, must type faster!

Not the same as being 2 weeks into a grand tour and all hell breaking loose.

It’s exactly the same – either you dip into the red to follow the attack and hope it slows down again, or you trust your judgement and ride a TT effort to the top. Those are the two choices any time you are riding hard up a prolonged climb.
The likes of Froome goes to Teide for weeks at a time and rides TT type efforts of different lengths up it over and over, and has been doing so for years. He’ll know exactly what 30/45/60min pace feels like, not just in terms of leg pain or respiration rate, but in subtle ways like the pressure of his feet on the pedals, and that feeling will likely be just as reliable as a power number that he may or may not be able to meet by the end of week2.

Womens racing should in theory make for great TV. The lower speeds involved mean less advantage from drafting, which should open up more attacking racing.

Need to find some decent commentators though or no-one will be able to survive watching more than 10 mins no matter how good the racing is.

I wouldn’t, but please go ahead and then post here afterwards:
http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/dumb-self-inflicted-sports-injuries

End of the day removing power data from the screen in front of the rider won’t magically change the race, but it will make them have to be more human and ride on feel, not by the numbers.

Won’t make any difference.
When i go to my favourite local interval hill, its around a 10 min climb and I can group 4 repeats within 10s based off RPE.
If I can do it, you can be pretty certain every pro can do it too.
USPostal/Discovery didn’t need power meters to deploy exactly the same tactic SKY use to shut down attacks in the mountains.

Levers don’t, but I did somehow manage to spin the bar and get the gear shifter stuck on the wrong side of the top tube.
Much to the hilarity of all involved, had to take shifter off to spin bars back around 😳

Aim for 3-4 hour rides by December.

You’re a harsh taskmaster 😉
Poor guy just wants to get a bit fitter and you want him grinding out 60mi rides in December!

Tweak one element, like making teams smaller for example, and then people will be whinging that teams aren’t supporting their GC contenders adequately because they’ve concentrated on their sprinter instead, or there are loads more pro conti teams doing doomed breakaway attempts.

For sure, its an interesting balance to strike.
I’d be interested to see how 6 man teams work and invite another 4-5 wildcard teams to make the numbers back up. More riders for breaks, and less teams with the strength to control the break without help from other teams.
If your a sprinter, do you risk letting the break go and let others do the work, or do you use up your leadout pulling the break back and have to sprint solo.
If you’re a GC rider, do you need your mountain domestiques to pull on the flat and be left unable to set a controlling pace in the mountains.

But more than anything else, as I posted above, I think its about picking an interesting route, and imo, whilst the riders actually did a good job of racing what was a dull route, this years route just made for a mediocre tour.

Something is wrong with the breathing somewhere!

Yes, it’s breathing out of its arse!

When you say ‘stress factors’, is that just exercise or would it also be lack of sleep?

Yes, basically anything that isn’t ideal resting counts
Sleep is the most important for recovery (says the guy that stayed up till 01:15 this morning 😳 )
But other stuff too, pressure at work, mowing the grass, running round after the family, even standing washing the dishes is putting load on the legs when they want to rest.

You definitely need to find a way to keep the weekend ride easy if your doing two hard interval sessions during the week.
I’d be tempted to try a ride-by-feel regime, where if you feel fresh when starting your session, ride hard, otherwise, ride easy.
It’s easy to get caught up in all the research and articles saying how well HIIT works, but it’s not going to work long term if you are running yourself down.

Yes, recovery rides do something, but for novices you are typically better just taking a rest day.
Sounds very unlikely based off 3-4hrs/wk, but legs constantly feeling heavy is a sign your overdoing it – not necessarily just on the bike – could be other stress factors not giving enough recovery.

Don’t know what the sessions are like on a Wattbike, but for turbo sessions, I’ll typically do a 15-20min ramped warmup, and 5-10 mins easy spinning to finish.

How many days are you doing Wattbike sessions on? You don’t really want to be doing high intensity more than twice a week, so maybe if you are doing more you could replace with an easy ride there.

This thread is wrong.
Any thread disparaging pasta has no place on a bike forum.

Almost needed rum to watch the skin removal, looked horrific, and we only saw a tiny fraction coming off.

Not sure what sort of bacteria the OP has growing in his crotch, but if it can do that to a saddle someone needs to get him in quarantine asap!

Depends how big your 2″ are!
Seem to be plenty of folk squeezing a 2.1 Thunder Burt into frames that only officially take 2″, and if one of those fits, thats exactly what i’d take.

@13thFloorMonk, OP is going to be racing, so doesn’t need a relaxed upright position, and in terms of frontal area the hoods won’t give significant improvement over a narrow flatbar.

Being comfortable on the drops however will buy best part of 1mph.

Kinda disappointing tour for me overall.
Too many mountain stages not finishing up mountains.
Gutted we didn’t get to see what Richie Porte and ‘G’ had to offer.

Things i’d like to see, more mountain finishes – particularly ones suited to out and out climbers – mountain stages finishing at the end of long valleys are a total waste of a stage.
1 steep mountain TT, maybe something like:

And one long (60km) pancake flat TT

So 21 Stages:
4 Sprinters stages
6 middle mountain stages (2 of which with a glimmer of hope for sprinters)
7 High mountain stages (with 5 summit finishes)
2 Classics style stages with punchy uphill finishes
1 Mountain TT
1 60km Paris TT to finish

actual food, sandwiches and the like, not gels’n’shite

There is a middle ground there somewhere.
Both have their places.
Eating nothing but gels for 6hrs would be stupid.
Likewise trying to eat a sandwich whilst red-lining up a climb would be equally stupid.

I think because my weekday rides have been a bit hit and miss over the last 10 months or so I have struggled with the weekend rides….

Regularity is important – a little and often is better than binge and burst.
Until you are sort out the regularity, you’ll find it hard to make the improvements to up the distance at the weekends.

The main disappointment of racing with someone who is significantly faster than average in your team is that they will get more rest than you! Assuming, of course, you ‘forget’ to turn up in transition…

Kinda depends on the rules of the event, and how you organise it.
I was cranking out fairly nice lap times at Relentless like clockwork much to the despair of my partner who was gradually slowing, so I took a couple of double stints to equalise the riding time, which gave him more chance to rest up.

Note – the spike in the times is quite interesting – the weather closed in to the point that lights didn’t seem to light anything up, so were both around 8mins slower on the downhills due to not being able to see!

For the basic goal of completing a 100 miler ride you are already right on track. Just keep on building up the long weekend ride by 10% and you’ll be there in no time.
So if you can do 40 miles already, you can build up something like:
44, 48, 53, 26, 53, 58, 64, 32, 64, 70, 77, 38, 77, 85, 100

No need to worry too much about HR zones etc to begin with – they are more for getting faster once you’ve already got some solid riding under your belt.

Make sure to plan to take on ~250kcal/hr of food and 500ml/hr of liquid on the longer rides, and adjust to suit as you gain experience.

The cranks on this in the RN ad are what’s bothering most at the moment.

Yup, everytime it’s on. To be hoped they don’t let him fix a naval gun. It’ll be pointing at the deck rather than the target.[/quote]A bit like what happened with the most recent trident test firing? Maybe they let him loose on the missile guidance system 😆

Edit: And what sort of nutter walks about with an image of a talking horse and a battery with a staple in it in their head?! If there’s really people like that in the world I feel a lot less safe walking around the streets.

There’s not a huge amount of places to go wrong buying an entry level road bike to be honest.
Basically 3 things to consider.
1) Make sure it fits – if you’re not comfortable in the drops, you’re not getting any advantage over a sporty hybrid (a BMC or Boardman for instance)
2) Budget an extra £60 for some decent tyres – the difference between a cheap nasty set of training tyres and a proper racing tyre (but still with puncture belt) is ~1-1.5mph.
3) Don’t forget you’ll need new bottle cages, spare tube, etc

https://www.dolomiti.it/en/alleghe/

I’m still waiting for summer to start, so i sure hope its not over

Faff is greatly dependant on the rider.
Have a friend that’s totally OCD, cleans and polishes bike so you can see reflection in cassette at all times.
I’m at the other end of the spectrum, and by a few weeks into the winter you cant actually tell what type of bike is under the mud – so long as wheels and chain go round i’m happy enough.

Can’t get enough of riding atm, not been on the MTB in a few months as i’ve been doing road events this year, but will be back on the MTB in September.
Doesn’t really matter which bike for me, just like riding, and when i’m not riding, i’m thinking about riding.
Think if i won the lottery i’d probably just live on a training camp somewhere – thats probably a bit sad, but if the cap fits….

Looks like weight miles forward for some reason, front seems to nose dive as soon as it goes over the drop.
Agree with @DiskJockey, doesn’t appear to be a lack of speed unless camera has flattened things and its a much bigger drop than it looks

Pretty much what @CH said, if you’ve got a 300W ftp you can sit on a bunch round a fairly flat course all day long. Once you get a nice solid block of 10 riders in front of you, you just get sucked along for hardly any effort.