New SSer here. Been enjoying it so far, and looking forward to getting it down to Glentress to see how i like it on some longer climbs

As a result as I have loads of softshells, but in our climate I find them really useful

This, I can’t get enough of them

There is a third option of more eaten allowing an even greater quantity and quality of exercise.
If you try to restrict intake too much and cut carbs too far then it hugely compromises both how hard you can exercise and how soon you recover to go again. You in effect cause yourself to be ‘bonked’ 24/7.

Exactly my point. Yes it’s a chemical reaction, and yes mass is conserved, but to do so we have to expel the waste product causing us to lose mass.

You certainly did a better job of explaining it, but at the end of the day the body sacrifices mass to create energy and there’s really no way around that.

Merino socks and overshoes – job done

17%! Do you actually ride a bike sometimes?! 😛

I’d consider it for sure.
With a new wheel size or axle standard every month or two it’d save the headache of upgrades and compatibility over time – just hand it back at the end of the year and get whatever new thing has come along.

At £40 i wouldnt trust a car tyre to grip either. Does it say ‘ditch finder’ on the sidewall?

Shop around and you can usually get well under £rrp

Wiggle have Ardents @£31, Hans dampf and nobby nic @£32, and the grippier mountain kings @£23 if you can wait for them to come back in stock.

The £20 mountain kings are only £20 for a reason. You want the £40 ones if you plan on having grip.

Leaky piston seals leading to new pads getting contaminated?

Excellent to hear you got to work not feeling tired.
Yes, it does feel totally alien at first. You get used to it though, and soon enough you’ll find you are back to your old speed for less effort.
Give it a month and you’ll probably be seeing a difference already. Especially in your weekend long ride, should find yourself finishing it feeling much fresher.

Well, it doesn’t so much force you to eat more or stop, it just tries to steer you in that direction. That’s where a bit of willpower is required. Calories in/out still applies, it just becomes progressively more difficult both physically and mentally to keep it in defecit. If the body was capable of breaking that relationship then people wouldn’t starve to death.

So overall, fairly complicated underlying biology governed by a very simple rule.

Your body doesn’t turn mass into energy, unless you’ve some nuclear reaction going on.

i think you’ll find it does. or have you also found a way to magically create energy?

From a lower BMR tomorrow.

You can’t lower BMR indefinitely, and even if you could, you could still just go out and exercise beyond your intake.
No-one will argue that the body will adapt to try to preserve its weight – it still cant make energy though.

That’s not true.

It is calories in vs calories out

You just contradicted yourself and claimed you have a magical way to create energy. You should harness it and form an electricity company, you could become a rich man.

How do you think fat actually gets laid down? It’s the cells responing to certain hormones and stimuli in the blood. If those stimuli aren’t there then the fat cells won’t convert the glycogen into fat and store it.

No, but you can eke out the same amount of energy, and you can also shit energy out of your arse or radiate it from your skin. It doesn’t have to go into your fat cells.

And whoever said weight loss was only about fat cells?
If you don’t think the body (everything it does) is fuelled by turning mass into energy then go ahead and explain where the energy is going to come from to meet the shortfall.

Lets make it very simple – if the body requires Xkcal per day, even after various changes to metabolism to protect itself. If we then feed it X minus 250kcal, then we have a shortfall of 1046700 joules of energy for the day. If it doesn’t come from a loss of body mass, where do you propose it comes from?

Really? How so?

If you read the article, what it is explaining is that performing exercise has various other impacts other than the calories burnt during the exercise.
As pointed out in the article, you may be less active during the rest of the day after exercise, or you may crave (and consume) more calorie dense food.

So the quote should have been:
It’s not a clear-cut relationship between calories burnt during exercise and weight loss
A subtle difference yes, but quite a different meaning.

Only if you assume everything going into your mouth is converted perfectly into a single form of energy, and the unused part of that energy is perfectly stored as fat. Except that’s not the case.

No, we don’t need to make that assumption at all.
We only need to say, if you put less energy in your mouth than you burn in a day, you WILL lose a corresponding amount of mass, be that from water/fat/glycogen/muscle tissue.
It is indeed very simple as there is no-where else for energy to come from, and you can’t make energy from nothing.

A bit of an unfortunate quote taken a bit out of context compared to the point being made through the article.

However, until someone finds a way around physics and can create energy from nothing then the relationship is indeed quite simple.

You’re quoting from your “IT professional handbook” there. The amount of people choosing to reduce their hours are in the very small minority.

And do you have statistics to back that up?
I can’t deny that my personal circumstances put me closer to a lot more ‘IT professionals’ than those on minimum wage, but in my experience, those choosing to reduce hours rather than having it forced on them are in the massive majority.

So yes, I could be wrong, but until you have some numbers to say so, my theory is every bit as valid as yours

Bigblackshed makes a very good point regarding looking beyond statistics.

He makes a lot of assumptions, that may even be true, but nothing at all to back them up with. Very easy for anyone to paint a narrative tainted by their own views on the world.

Definitely some fair points clodhopper.
Although i’d contest that the example of a 40hr job being split into 2x20hr jobs is necessarily ‘underemployment’. I think more and more people are becoming unhappy with work/life balance and opting to work less hours rather than being forced into it.

What’s the problem with this?

No problem with it at all, but it is quite an interesting statistic

Yeah, don’t bother ever listening to anyone who might actually have some insight and knowledge of something, beyond simple numbers, eh?

Maybe some of us have the insight and knowledge to know that despite their faults (yes, not all stats are perfect), statistics tend to paint a fairly accurate picture.

As I keep saying; don’t rely entirely on numbers, because they don’t tell the whole story.

Much better to rely on the story made up in some blokes head on a bike forum, bound to be much more accurate.

Quite the opposite; tory cuts have led to countless job losses, and the degradation of many essential services.

With all those job losses you are on about you’d think maybe unemployment wouldn’t be in continual decline?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36844302

http://www.craghoppers.com/pro-lite-softshell-jacket-black.html

I also have one of those – not tried it on the bike, but think it would be decent. Maybe too warm though unless riding at ~0°C

He is trying to get work

But only when he can fit it into his busy microwave schedule

maybe me they’ll let me stroke/sniff them…

I thought it was just me that had those desires – glad to know i’m not alone

That evolva light looks like a very good deal.

Anything wrong with the ever growing range of DWR treated softshell options?
Or even just using some wash in DWR on a thick roubaix pair?

Good lord zippy, no offence, but that thing is an abomination.
If all those T6’s were run at full power it’d drain 4×18650’s in about 20mins assuming it didnt melt due to lack of heat sinking first.

Good to see Labour also want to keep the benefit cap and also reduce in certain areas

http://www.labour.org.uk/manifesto/social-security

Don’t worry, there’s enough communists in this thread they will claim labour are a right wing party and don’t have any humanity either.

Speaking of Facts, what effect do you reckon 300k+ Annual net immigration (184k from the EU) has on jobs and homelessness?

Thing is the immigration is needed cos Steve is too ‘busy’ heating up his iceland ready meals to squeeze a few hours work between.

Canyon Spectral CF
Scott Spark 700 Plus

guess I’m better off keeping rested for Sunday as won’t be able to boost fitness before then anyway

You already know the answer.
CTL will probably look like its in freefall, but in reality, if you’ve had a solid season training behind you, you aren’t suddenly going to become unfit in 2 weeks.

@scaredypants, in a lab they take blood samples and measure the concentration of lactate in the blood at intervals during a ramp test.

I’ve got the first NV jacket (before they made Evo the next year). Cut is a bit flappy, and doesn’t breathe that well, but is still totally waterproof and material has held up to 6yrs of abuse.

I generally look at more upmarket kit these days, but I’d happily buy another NV jacket.

Really depends what kind of riding you are doing.
If its XC stuff (which i assume it is on a rigid) through deep slop then a narrow low volume tyre is what you want to cut down to the hard beneath.
Bigger volume is more comfortable, but more likely to skate about on top of the mud.

Can you clarify doesn’t cost a fortune?
If i had all the bits and just needed a frame i’d be getting one of the lovely new Highball Al frames with the special dropout kit.
Not exactly relaxed geo, but certainly didnt feel excessively arse in the air when i rode one.

Regarding you being lost without bpm to look at, that’s a bad place to be – you need to learn to RPE.
How is you breathing?
How do your legs feel?
How does the pressure feel under your feet?
Are you spinning smoothly?

Take all those things and then use HR to verify your feelings.

Warm up, 30mins flat out, press lap after first 10 mins so you can capture last 20mins of data.
If using garmin, set up a screen that only has lap time, fill any other fields with something useless like battery life.

Breathing should be very heavy, but not ragged/gasping.
At 5 mins, there’ll be a slight burning in the legs, but feeling good.
At 10 mins, its going to be starting to hurt and you’ll have the first doubts if you’ve gone too hard.
At 15 mins it’ll be hurting really badly and it starts to become a mental game
At 20 mins it’ll be horrendous, everything will be telling you to stop, but you keep mentally focussed on pressing the pedals and keeping the pain constant.
At 25 mins the pain is blotting out everything else, you begin to shuffle hand position etc and lose your form slightly – but only 5 mins left to endure.
At 30 mins you are a wreck, don’t forget to press lap again.

Enjoy!

Edit: it doesnt need to be a masterwork of accuracy. If you get the value +/- 2bpm you’ll get good zones, and the more often you do the test and do LT interval sessions the better you will get a feel for it.

Sufficient rest and calorie intake are a good starting point.

Then the obvious answer that if infection comes back when tired/cold then don’t get tired/cold.
Also, you realise that glands, achiness and meh are all symptoms of overtraining/underrecovery and may not be an infection at all?

It was my first solo 24 race. Really enjoyed nearly all of it.
No major issues and pleased with 24 laps and 9th over all.

Impressive effort – big thumbs up

i ended up doing them at 700+w

If you can do a 700+W 30s effort, why are you wasting your time at XC racing and not at the TDF as a lead out man?
http://roadmagazine.net/road_home/featurepdfs/08_Power_October.pdf