Sorry, but I don’t quite follow?

It’s easier to build muscle when you regularly provide the body both excess calories and protein – this causes you to bulk up and gain the muscle you want, but also a bit extra unwanted weight.
You then drop the calorie intake but keep protein high preserving your new muscle mass but cutting the unwanted fat

For my zone 2 2hrs 20 mins commute each way to work twice a week, I just use water in the bottles. Trying to avoid sugary drinks on the bike and tune the body to burning fat rather than glycogen. I could be doing this all wrong mind!

That is not a wrong thing to do, but at 4x per week probably being slightly overdone. Maybe do two rides like that and 2 fuelled. Or use water for the first hour and energy drink for the 2nd.

Haha. Now it’s been pointed out to me, I’d say no.

Everyone has loads of fat to burn, even with a very low body fat %.

I’d be looking at your total calorie intake.
At 73kg, including your z3 intervals you are probably burning 600kcal/hr on the bike. 12.5hrs x 600 = 7500kcal. Add your two PT sessions and you are looking at ~9000kcal per week or 1285kcal/day on exercise. Sticking your weight into a BMR calculator along with average height/age came to a BMR of 1670kcal/day.
This leaves you needing ~2950kcal/day, which from what you’ve posted it doesn’t look like you are getting close to.

In my opinion, 2gs protein per KG is a lot, and would be the intake that someone wanting to ‘bulk up’ should be taking.

Agreed.
1.5g/kg would be a more normal amount for bike cycle training.

Would like to build lean muscle on the quads rather than slim down even more.

That might be more easily achieved bulking then cutting.
You also need to make sure you are getting adequate carb/fat intake, as if you are falling short on those your body will burn protein/muscle as fuel.

Quite a few folk are now heading across to Arran, Kintyre and up the West coast, even including some Hebridean Isles on their way.

My partner for Relentless this year did a LEJOG including some island hopping in 2015. Bit of a long route, but definitely scenic.
http://nefifemtb.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/outer-fife-penzance-to-thurso-via-lands.html

All these standard changes have meant I have bought less bike stuff and no new bikes.

Same – i’ve bought a couple of very cheap winter bikes to ride until they die, but can’t see me spending serious money on a nice bike until wheel/hub standards stop changing every year.

Go to your local carpet store and get some good quality (not cheap ****) underlay. You probably want enough for a double thickness.

Big alloys not at all practical, but do make you smile every time you look at your car

Do you always buy tyres at random without researching them first?

Dunno, RS4 ownership seems quite simple based on this thread.
Buy it and don’t worry about maintenance as it’ll be stolen inside a year 🙂

@legend, cos in my experience as a skinny boy, most coils are designed for lard arses – guaranteed to need replacing with a less stiff one. At least air can be tuned to some degree before resorting to replacement parts.

I suppose you posh southerners wash them while wearing them then?

They don’t wash them, just wear a new pair every day

as I walk in he is walking out with a hot drink and the kettle is empty

That is how kettles work – you put in just enough water to avoid wasting electricity, you boil it, you pour it in your cup.
The next person then repeats.

Could potentially be problems – there was a thread popped up the other day on a similar topic. The low air pressure required for a very light rider can cause suspension not to fully extend effectively reducing its rated travel.

If you cannot spin your pedals round without your feet being strapped to them that indicates bad pedaling technique.

Care to explain?
It seems perfectly normal that the foot that’s unweighted comes off the pedal very easily, particularly noticeable around 8-10pm as there should be virtually no pressure on the pedal there, and at around 12pm as you want to start applying power over the top.
If this wasn’t the case, then do you care to explain exactly why toe clips and then clipless systems were invented in the first place?

Any Cree XM-L based light is likely to be pulling approx 1000ma from a 7.4V battery per LED on full power.
You can roughly approximate battery life by doing:
Battery Capacity (mah) / (1000 x NoOfLeds)

So for a 2 LED light using old magicshine/fluxient 4 cell pack:
4400 / 2000 = approx 2.2hrs
Pretty sure I read somewhere there’s some new 4 cell packs rated to 6400mah, so the best you’d get on 4 cells would be:
6400 / 2000 = approx 3.2hrs

haha, I don’t have a most disliked month because:

May: 2 weeks of Summer
June-April: wet, bloody miserable and nothing going for it

Therefore May is my favourite month and I dislike all the others equally.

This sounds like a case of decent shorts and chamois cream needed more than FS

Christ, not this again….. I suspect the OP isn’t planning on being a ‘XC pro’ any time soon…

That wasn’t really the point. I was just objecting to @idiotdogbrain being an idiotdogbrain……

The point was that if the OP has a nice smooth round pedalling style he may find it irritating having his unweighted foot come off all the time.
And since the topic is titled “what to expect”, it seems quite logical it should be mentioned.

If you are pulling up with your trail leg are surely you cannot be pushing down as hard with you lead leg.

Don’t know the answer to that – you’d need to ask someone into biomechanics or something I guess. It seems to work, although as I say, not something that gets used very often.

The biggest shock in this thread is she’s made it to 14 without being punched or punching someone before.

Why would an Eskimos ass cheeks be particularly cold in Glasgow?

What happened in Glasgow stays in Glasgow 😯

normal late autumn early winter weather innit

No, -5°C and needing a blowtorch rather than a scraper for car windscreen is not normal for mid November 😐

Meh, if he’s going to have a full on midlife crisis then an RS4’s as good a way to scratch the itch as any 😀
Also, the extra BHP may get him home 5 mins earlier which is 5 mins more on trainneroad – marginal gains!

100mi/day with mud tyres on – rather you than me!
Ice spikes may also be more appropriate north of Pitlochry in Feb as I would hazard a guess the cycle path isn’t gritted.

Flippin ‘eck.

May have been what my sisters cat said last night when it found itself locked out in -5°C by a frozen cat flap 🙂

I don’t get this, it is hardly like 2×11 is complex.

No, but it can be a pain when your average cruising speed is very close to the point where you need to swap rings.

The wheels will both be 135mm, the cassettes will be the same width, and the rotors in the same place. There’s no need to reindex anything.

That is the theory, however sometimes theory and reality are not the same thing sadly.

Remapped S4

A friend has one of these, it’s:

“Epically fast”
“Lovely place to be”
“Boot swallows anything”
“not an RS4”

Just sounds like you did too much too soon. Lots of stretches to try and loosen it off now, then return more gently and hop off a bit earlier for a bit.

Yes, thats what I think/hope.
Last week was spent feeling sorry for myself.
This week a bit of light stretching and some flat 30min Z1 rides in a nice spinny gear i think.

I don’t race on the road, just the odd sportive and social rides.

Almost certainly a good candidate for 1x on the road then.
I’m convinced I would prefer 1x on the road for the bulk of my riding, but generally once a year i’m in the mountains in Europe so have stuck with the compact.

I got the short sleeve version of this recently and it is definitely race fit (which is fine by me). If you don’t want race fit then probably size up.

although SSing is very good at building up core strength (a sign of poor core strength can be getting a bad back after cycling) so the more you do it the less it should happen

Yes, that’s one of the reasons I got one. Also got myself a book of core exercises to incorporate into training next year.
Did a couple of rolling rides and a couple of lesser hills and was fine.
Sounds like i’ve just made a newbie mistake that others have made to some extent too. Too stubborn to accept defeat and get off and walk!

One thing I’ve found to be very helpful is having bars a bit higher, so when you’re at full thrutch up a steep hill, you’ve got the right distance between feet on pedals and hands on bars that you’re hauling with a straight back, rather than bent – I guess this relates to the “form” you mentioned

Yes, exactly – or at the very least I can make sure I focus on keeping hips forward to maintain straight back

Caterpillar beetle with custom led lighting – now thats something you dont see every day

Be prepared to step over puddles of drool every time you leave it parked in a public place.

So lovely:

Definitely do the biketreks demo day.
Great store/staff and ‘proper’ riding on 2-3hr demo loops.
Amazing what you learn when you try a bike out too. Something that looks perfect may not be, and something else you hadnt considered may be brilliant.
If you’ve got the fitness definitely sign up to ride different bikes in morning/afternoon.

thecaptain has it, 2 hard workouts a week, all the rest easy, maybe a 3rd hard workout if you do much lower volume in the week than usual.
Combine that with cutting volume and intensity in half every 4th week to recover.

Hmmm, RS4 thread.
Let 100 pages of drooling commence

Don’t have one myself, but did ride recently with a chap that had one. It did roll up and went far enough into his jersey pocket not to fall out, but i’d hardly call it packable.

@Adam, check your wheel size setting. Should be around 2096mm for 700x23c

@paton, yes, i agree, not really feasible to pull up at any sensible cadence. Only really works when climbing something horrifically steep and cadence has bogged right down.

No, its not just me.
If you are pedalling circles properly its pretty much impossible going across the bottom and unweighting pedal as it starts upstroke.
Theres a very good reason every XC pro rides clipped in.

Can anyone comment on how much hassle it is with the bike you want always seeming to be at the back?
Been looking at one for a while, but can’t help feeling it might be a chore lifting bikes in/out whislt trying to make sure they dont rub each other.

Expect frustration and mangled shins.
I also got some flats to try to learn basic skills better, but find they irritate me non stop as you cant pedal properly without lifting feet off the pedal every 30s 😡