@aa, Rudd didn’t do that badly. Got her points across, did particularly well diffusing cuts to police numbers, but muddled her words a couple of times which was a bit clumsy.
Policies set aside, a very similar performance to JC.

Did you read my post? I said JC was doing a decent performance. Didn’t really do much wrong, but didn’t stand out either.

He was certainly better than Farron (who i’ll most likely be voting for), the welsh and greens.

@Junkyard, you dont need to like someone or their views to evaluate if they’ve done a good job in a debate or not.

I’m never going to vote UKIP or SNP, but they’ve both done an excellent job making their respective points.

@aa, JC is far from smashing it out of the park.
He’s putting in a decent performance, but Nuttall and Robertson are doing a MUCH better job regardless of what you think of them or their views.

Farron has been poor, and greens + welsh have pretty much let themselves be sidelined.

Poor at keeping things under control too, just standing by watching them all talk over each other like children.
Useless

@weeksy, had a think about this a bit more while out for a recovery spin this evening (yes, i’m that sad).

Whilst weight is still a big part of the equation, i reckon you’ve still got a lot of scope for improvement through fitness/power too. There’s plenty of big units on the time trialling scene churning out 350W+ FTP. Got to bear in mind your quite new to ‘training’, you’ve probably gobbled up the easy gains, but still plenty more to come by sticking at it.

as will Landa unless he gets excused

Not really expecting Landa at the TDF myself, they’ve plenty of other strong climbers and he can realistically have a strong go at the vuelta.

Froome
Thomas
Poels
Henao
Nieve
Lopez
Kwiatkowski
Stannard
Rowe

Yes they are. But instead of parties politically slagging each off, media trying to influence etc,. it would be better to have non politically aligned and non-biased information broadcast, sent to all in post etc,. so at least the clueless are given a chance to understand what the parties are offering, what the differences are, what it means to each person, what it means to public services

Whilst I agree with you, unfortunately I think 90% of people would file it straight in the landfill bin – because its closer to the door than the paper recycling bin.

Issue with that is he’s then hanging about from 9.00am until 11.30am for his race… Which is a little unfair

Maybe he might enjoy watching for Daddy coming past pulling pain faces?

it’s now a lose, lose situation for her.

It always has been.
She has nothing personally to offer, she has a likeability rating of 0, a competency rating of 0, and no policies to ‘sell’ to the public – although to be fair, i’m not sure anyone would be able to make a good job of selling ‘our balance sheet is a mess, things are a bit crap, and their going to get crapper before they get better’

There’s simply no point going to a TV debate and trying to compete against 6 other parties screaming ‘spend, spend, spend’ as loud as they can. Spending is always appealing.

Her job was really always say nothing, do nothing and wait for JC to screw up. However that’s not really worked out on 2 fronts, as she decided to give pensioners a kicking, and JC has come up with a fairly radical/exciting manifesto to capture peoples imaginations.

Hence why Fifeandy is always bemoaning the lack of Hilly courses

Indeed, stupid flat country!
I’m actually in the slightly odd position of actually working to gain weight (as muscle mass obviously) as for riding in the UK, i’ll take the increased power over the risk of a slight drop in W/Kg. I mean its nice being able to float up climbs giggling at all the normal sized people for the week in the mountains each year, but that comes at the expense of being the runt getting his legs torn off the other 51 weeks of the year.

What are everyone else’s experiences of campaigning at a local level?

I get home from work every day, push the door open, and stumble over yet another days knee high pile of leaflets from the Lib Dems and SNP. Current leaflet score is along the lines of 1Con, 1Lab, 1 Independant, 1000Lib, 1000SNP.
Almost want to take a day off work so I can catch them and tell them to **** off and not come back.

So I think there is a calculation – isn’t it 1kg=1min per 1000ftm of climbing?

Depends on the gradient and surface, but on a steep smooth climb it really is ALL about the weight.
I did Col de la Bonette 2 years ago and put an hour into a guy with an FTP 60W higher than mine.

Edit: I can’t find the link, but there was a coach did a study with one of his riders in training and found ~1min per kg on alpe d’huez

Fifeandy- there was only 3!!!

Sorry, my bad, since we were talking about bridging to a break I kinda assumed that would be the group you were closest to 😆

Speaking of breaks, launched my own at the local APR last night, small hill and I blew things to bits, had to sit up and wait a bit for a couple more to come to me as I didn’t much fancy 2mi solo on the flat into a 20mph headwind!
I fear next week i’ll have to go with the fast group (full of cat2/3’s) and cling on as best I can.

Also, judging from the size of that ‘break’, are you sure its a break and not the peleton?! 😛

Excellent, that sounds great!
Will drop you a message tomorrow (tablet battery is about to die right now and left charger at home)

Sorry CH, that definitely doesnt count.

Hope all the DH teams don’t see this thread, they’ll be throwing their new 29ers in the skip just days before Fort William WC.

You know the reason they have gone 29er in the first place right?
Because underneath the external appearance of baggies and a cool laid back persona, they are all really just excited by having a

full physics wankathon

^^ 75mm object 😆

Assuming you start and finish your ride at the same point you will be riding around in circles, so all is well.

Fifeandy/Bez; the losses that you refer too are created by tyre deflection. Tyres are mostly elastic – therefore as you roll off the ‘object’ the tyre returns to shape and imparts the energy to the forward motion of the wheel. So energy is again recovered.

There is a tiny amount that is lost to material hysteresis – so tiny that the tyres barely get warm. I honestly don’t believe that anyone would find any advantage created by wheel size increase.

No, the losses from tyre hysteresis are FAR preferable to the losses in the diagram above – hence why its now commonly accepted that lower pressures are faster off road. The force depicted above is the somewhat futile attempt of our bikes to accelerate the earth.

Take the image above, and imagine what would happen if the obstacle were 3ft high rather than 3 inches – in that case it would be near enough all horizontal force and no vertical force.

What you are neglecting is that there are two components to rolling resistance. The traditional material resistance which you seem well aware of, and the so called suspension loss which has only really had widespread exposure over the last 5-10yrs.

Fifeandy; Increased torque or energy to climb on to an object is immediately recovered as you descend off the other side – so no loss no matter your wheel size. Just temporary conversion from Kinetic to Potential Energy and back.

^ this is NOT rolling resistance. Rolling Resistance is energy loss (not temporary conversion) via material hysteresis etc…

Actually, it is still rolling resistance, just not the traditional type you highlighted.

What you said regarding energy loss would possibly be true (you’ll still get friction losses) if all the forces involved in rolling over an object were vertical, but they aren’t (see the diagram below). Increasing the wheel diameter decreases the horizontal component of the force resisting forward motion.

No idea if its sensible or not, but yes when I have a particularly strong craving for something after a hard ride I usually indulge it.
Its usually one of 3 things for me – pizza, chicken, or very occasionally coke.

Reducing the torque required to overcome an obstacle (as you describe) does NOT make a bike faster. Nor does it reduce the energy required to travel from A to B.

Did you really just write that?
You do realise that less torque to overcome an obstacle = need to apply less force.
And applying less force = using less energy?
On what planet does reducing rolling resistance not require less energy to travel from A to B?

How bad is the crack?
I’ve a small one in mine and just stuck a screen protector over it and carried on.

Last week of the Giro was so hard, you could see they were all totally gubbed, no chance of recovering for a good TDF.

Froome has raced, but not for a few months, will be at the Dauphine next week.

Froome vs Porte for the win in July with Bardet 3rd.
Really hoping Porte can get the win, and Thomas can carry form and put in a strong performance on GC to somewhat make up for his Giro exit.

Surely a long stem is actually desirable on a touring bike? A short stem is going to lead to more twitchy steering.

More or less with the others.
Even if an XC race bike will be faster round some trail centres, its not always more fun. Something slightly slacker with clearance for bigger tyres is a more versatile option if not racing.

Soooo someone else who…..

slept through his physics lessons at schoolGuess I must pick things up quite well in my sleep then since I ended up with physics degree 🙄

Perhaps you’d like to enlighten us all and explain why reducing angle of attack doesn’t equate to conserving momentum better over bumpy ground?

That – is absolute rubbish

The sooner you people realise this the better.Go ride one – it’ll take you all of 2-3 mins to realise its true.
Do you think its a coincidence 99% of XC pros are riding 29ers – even when sponsored by brands with both wheel sizes available?
Short section in the latest of Emily Batty’s youtube series where she compares them back to back and says the 29er feels much faster.

Or a human being FFS! Sorry to break it to the weight haters but you are not Chris Froome and you don’t cycle for a living. Cycling might not be the OP’s only passion. In fact I kind of hope it isn’t. Not everyone is a one trick pony.

Yes, totally.
There’s nothing at all wrong with being a gym bunny, or a slightly tubby IT manager, or a big strong farmer that enjoys cycling. Enjoying the riding is the main thing. But in all the cases above there has to be an acceptance that its going to impact performance on the bike.
I did a riding holiday in the Pyrenees once with an ex gym bunny, he really had a remarkable set of biceps, but he had realised they were no use for climbing mountains and was happy enough to accept that limitation and enjoy the ride – just a bit more slowly than some of the skinnier people.

The OP specifically asked the question if a change in bike would be noticeably quicker for a heavy middle aged bloke, and the answer is yes a 29er will be quicker, but not as much quicker as losing 10kg, its up to him what he makes of that.

This light at the end of the tunnel you mention, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t exist at the moment…..

That’s because it’s not a tunnel, its as a deep, dark, scary hole with no obvious means of escape….

@ninfan, my point was $2 purchasing power in rural spain is vastly different to london, and yet both are on the same line.
Maybe an assumption on my part, but i doubt the purchasing power has been calculated down to a regional level.

Overall the main thing i see from the graph is we have it very cushy here compared to some parts of the world.

@ernie, see the footnote on the graph, its already been scaled for inflation.

Edit: $day is not a particularly useful metric imo, even within Europe money stretches a vastly different amount in different places.

@butcher, to continue your analogy, when the company has a lot of debt and is losing money, it has to care more about the figures in the short term or it wont have any employees at all in the long term.

None of the parties are putting any emphasis on it, but if we dont get control of the countries finances soon, then the cuts we’ve seen over the last few years will seem like the good times as we won’t have any money at all for public services.

Labour will try to borrow their way out of trouble(which could work, but could also ruin us), lib dems want to increase borrowing and stick their heads in the sand, and conservatives have carefully avoided the topic because the only options we can actually afford are crappy for everyone which is hardly a vote winner.
Folk that vote Conservative aren’t all heartless as many would have you beleive, they are just realistic (or perhaps cautious?) about what we can afford.

A neutral one not one with red tinted lenses.

Narrow victory for JC on both rounds imo.
Both did better than expected, but sad that they are aparantly the best we can come up with for PM.

Somewhat redeemed herself with immigration numbers, just straight up admitted she failed.
I like straight answers.

May definitely had it tougher from the audience, and its obviously a harder job selling careful spending than a massive giveaway.
She did better than I expected but JC was better.