+1 for bike hike.

And major A roads are for time trialists. Unless you feel a burning need to show how fast you can go whilst being sucked along by passing trucks do yourself a favour and ride smaller roads.

We have to suffer him for more than 1 tune? 🙁

Get a turbo, report for duty in the Zwift thread.
Sorted!

@chilled, despite improvements in training methods for time crunched athletes, there is still a very strong correlation between volume and results.

Read up on polarised training – it seems most elite athletes across all endurance sports are still doing huge quantities of low intensity work.

Think most riders up around your target power are doing 15-20hrs/wk on the bike, and i suspect in many cases that means they have a particularly understanding/flexible employer.

Definitely keep us updated though as it’ll be an interesting journey.

As a small bugger i’d dispute that, being small isn’t all good at all.
As sebgt pointed out, with small weight comes small power and over rough sections (which are pretty common when mtbing) you are at a serious disadvantage.
Where being small is at its best is a nice smooth steep road climb.

Hate to put a downer on the whole thing, but raising FTP from 280-350 is probably a 2-3yr endeavour on its own without the weight loss.
A lot of people train properly and don’t ever break 4W/Kg so 5 is very ambitious – as others have said, thats getting into the territory of getting paid to ride your bike.

As far as i’m aware the riders keep asking for fresh cut tech sections, and the reality of that is there is a risk they become unridable after heavy rain.

Maybe needs some creative thinking like bringing in giant fans or industrial gas heaters to dry things up quickly once rain stops. Or take the cricket approach and shut section of track and cover it during practice when raining

Tyre volume over frame material for comfort imo.
I’d be ruling out anything that doesn’t at least have the option to fit a 650b Thunder Burt in there.

Lmao, ‘making a rubik’s cube of getting back on that bicycle’

RBTV reporting Rachel Atherton out with a dislocated shoulder

Perfect car, fits in just as well at the horsey club as it does handbag shopping or a white tie fund raising dinner.

Hard to tell without knowing the road surface, but based purely on the distance and gradient, around 1:10 on a road bike with nice tarmac, maybe 1:25 on a 29er HT if its a well surfaced dirt road.

So i guess 2-2.5hrs for up/down round trip

+1 for the looks to small club.
Agree with @Ramsey, i’d be getting it checked to make sure it is indeed the right size.
Using that extra spacer combined with a longer stem might get you closer.

Saddle definitely too high in latest pic. I’d have moved it a fraction back not up based on first pics

Not really sure.
They were punished for no reason for doing a good job as a minor partner in a coalition.
They got the increase in tax free allowance started, which is an excellent policy and now continuing without them, and they stopped the conservatives doing some more rightist stuff that they have indulged in since.
I’ll be voting for LD, and luckily enough i’m in a seat where that may actually count for something.
Agree with @kormoran, think they’d do much better outside a FPTP system.

Not sure i’d consider sizing down on a relaxed sportive style bike, they already tend to be a bit squashed. Something a bit racier 1 size down will probably be closer to the fit of what you had.

So @dazh, just to be clear, if in 5yrs time North Korea decided to nuke London, you’d be quite happy for our PM to pick up the phone and say ‘i say old chap, that wasnt very sporting, would you like to pop over for tea to discuss things?’

@dazh, he was evading inside the first 2-3mins when challenged on how he could be trusted to be responsible with spending. He more or less dodged it completely and just told us more of what he wanted to spend money on.
And ALL he did on the ‘button’ question was evade. ‘Politician’ speak with the odd sprinkling of honesty today from both sides.

Well JC’s surely having quite a hard time of it. And he’s written the front pages for the next couple of days by refusing twice (or 3 times?) to say he’d press the button.

He’s done quite well at deflecting questioning about the money tree though.

Oh yeah, ‘politician’ speak is extremely frustrating. We certainly need more that just speak their mind.

@dazh Yes and no. Some tough questions to give satisfactory answers to.
She’s answered some, and twisted her answer to avoid some others quite well.
Based on what i just saw i’m not quite sure why she’s been hiding from debates/media, she seemed just as competent as anyone else.

And i apologize most sincerely for calling your wonderful light an abomination 😀

@renton, absolutely thats what its all about.
Social rides are great, hope you all have a fabulous day out.

Ha ha, I was concentrating on work

That’s surely an absurd thing to be doing on a Friday afternoon

My take on it was that its not a race, I just go steady , keep my heart rate in zone 3, eat and drink lots and I should be fine? Will I die?

If you try to maintain a z3 HR for 6-7hrs off no training, yes you will die.
It wont even be a quick death either, it’ll be long, drawn out and painful.

Its a hand over fist money fest, and we are the mugs that buy it.

There is always the choice not to hand over money unless you feel its good value. Just need to flex the willpower muscle a bit.

So what to you guys like/dislike about what is on offer at the moment?

What would be your perfect/ideal/realistic MTB sportive?

I liked what is now the Scott series when CRC ran them as they also offered a road sportive on the same weekend. 2 days riding with free camping and pasta party made the long trip south worthwhile, can’t really justify it for 1 day.

Dislike that most of the events seem compressed into a very small corner of the SW of the UK.

I prefer a nice mix of terrain, but not too technical. I don’t think fire road is necessarily a bad thing on a marathon course, and certainly no need for anything harder than red grade trail centre – if I wanted that I’d enter an enduro.
Selkirk 2016 pretty much put me off riding it ever again, I don’t really want to ride steep, narrow, rooty, rutted singletrack on an XC hardtail – some sections were just a case of joining the queue of people carrying bikes down. Tells you a lot about a course when the most fun part was the climb up to Minch Moor.
It can be hard for organisers picking good routes, but given the UK weather they should make at least some attempt to pick trails that can handle some rain. I remember riding one in Wales back in 2011 that had a section nearly a mile long carrying through ankle deep muddy singletrack – serious humour failure that day.

If you’re light, nothing to worry about, just spin up the climbs fuelled by the knowledge that everyone else is suffering more

If you’re heavy, you’re screwed – enjoy 😀

Shame this side of stuff isn’t trickling down faster given how cheap the required electronics are.

Indeed, I appreciate they have to recoup their development costs, but the markup on the electronic parts is crazy considering the minimal cost of the electronics.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the internals of an electronic shifter were cheaper to make than a mechanical one.

Surprised no-one mentioned self trimming mech, no more noise or skipping as cable stretches.

Overpriced though, so i’m still in cable land.

Dogmas are pocket change for crazy inflated london salaries aren’t they?

Don’t think I’ve ever had one? Do we not get them in the North West / Peak District?

Anywhere you get deer or livestock you are likely to get them.

It does look very nice indeed – but at €11k I think i’ll pass

And finally Strava need to pull their finger out. There’s far too many quick win features that should have been implemented a long time ago. It’s like a half finished product at the moment

Agreed, more or less why I unsubbed.

Looks good but £699 for an alu frame seems quite steep.

+1

10 miles is quite short, similar to a 5k run race in intensity so not really something that should require 200miles a week riding.

Yes, 200mi a week would be excessive – 150mi is probably reasonable.
Building a bigger engine will help you cling on to intense efforts longer.
Also, there’s a theory that pedalling increases your efficiency at pedalling – very logical but hard to prove. With the exception of extremely time crunched plans most coaches will have you on the bike 5 day a week regardless of the nature/duration of your event.

Not sure I agree @ some media conspiracy
I think there’s a pretty clear turning point in the polls when the labour manifesto was released.
It contains more police, more education, more NHS, better trains.
That’s going to appeal to LOTS of voters, and he’s going to pay for it with corporation tax, which is something most voters don’t know much about and can’t see any immediate disadvantage to.

Run less, ride more.
100mi/wk is not a lot at all.
Include some 5-10min intervals above race pace.
Make sure you are rested when you want to perform well.
Position doesn’t look horrible – socks on the other hand…

@ulysse, setting record defecits is hardly what i’d call a path to recovery.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2009/apr/22/budget-deficit-record

@Junkyard, point taken, i do tend to prefer my houses with a roof 🙂

Well yes, thats true, defecit hasn’t come down as fast as they promised for sure – i guess you could argue its not such a good job. It is however trending the right way which given the mess they inherited is good progress.

@aa, what she actually said was very clear, you just didnt listen. She said they’d done a good job reducing the defecit (which is true). She said that had required some hard decisions on public spending (which is true). And she said we could continue to expect more of the same.

Like i’ve said in other threads, they don’t actually have any headline policies or enticing spending, just more crap times ahead until we are running a surplus.