New Spark.
https://www.scott-sports.com/gb/en/products/249541008/SCOTT-Spark-900-Premium-Bike

Lets assume a generic Chinese 2xXML bar light and 1xXML on the lid.
Average current draw of 1A per LED.

P=IV = 3×7.4 = 22.2W.
So for a 2hr ride on full beam we get to 44.4W/h
Units of electricity are measured in KW/h, and according to Mr Google, currently average £0.154
44.4W/hrs = 0.0444KW/h

0.154×0.0444 = approx 0.68 pence per ride

I get up at 6am, bowl of cereal and then out the door at 645am

Might not be the cycle or nutrition at all.
Not being in any way a morning person, i’d be no use to anyone if I tried to do the above.

Yeah, not very popular with me either.

To be useful they either need to make sure they are clean, smooth tarmac OR clearly mark which sections are in what condition.

I’d have no confidence at all setting off to follow an unknown sustrans route on anything other less than a CX bike with beefy tyres on.

Strava Premium £3.99/m

Sizing has seemed fairly normal for me so far.
2 sets of humvees, a FS260 Jetstream LS jersey and a Equip Classics SS jersey, all in medium (175cm, 58kg), and all fitting fine.

Geometry is always going to feel a bit different between bikes, and always going to be better/worse in different situations.

My 2014 Spectral for example is well documented in many reviews to be a bit short in the top tube, which can feel a bit cramped when pedalling around on fire roads, but once pointed down with weight behind the saddle I feel right at home on it.

There’s what appears to be a plus sized Magic Mary on one of the bikes in the Cylce Show news articles.

You do need to find and accept your riding profile – some are climbers, some arent

100% agree with that.
The one thing I’m good at on a bike is 45-90min climbs between 6-10%.
Unfortunately those are somewhat lacking in the UK 🙁

Doing plenty of 2×20’s for the last 5yrs or so, as i’d identified them as a key session for long mountain climbs in europe. As you point out, they help you maintain a high effort for a long time. And they’ve worked great, but focussing exclusively on longer efforts has i think made my improvements a bit lopsided.

Maintaining a high effort for a long time is enough to put your performances well above average, but its not good enough to produce really top results.

To put it into context i was lapping in top 15% of male pairs at 10 under – however the solo winner was lapping slightly faster than me. Its safe to say the ability to go fast is a prerequisite then build endurance on top.

In what riding scenario do you find that a limiting factor? Be good to understand the specific situations you are trying to address.

On a MTB, short punchy uphill features, and rougher pedally terrain. On a road bike, trying to go with brief surges/attacks etc. Often feels like i just don’t have the leg power rather than cardio being maxed out. I don’t have a power meter, but if I did, I’m willing to bet I have an extremely flat CP curve.
I feel that there’s probably not much room to push the tail of the curve up much further without just being able to push harder on the pedals. Lifting the top of the curve = cruising at a lower % of max.

What sort of events are you looking to improve in?

Mostly long events, 6-24hrs. Dragon Ride, La Marmotte, Relentless24, etc

Did the big gear intervals help much?

Yes, for sure, I put in some great laps (~1hr) at 10 under this year, and feel that whilst i’ve lost some strength since then it has helped my sustained power during longer rides.

Just ride a singlespeed all winter? SImple but very effective in generating strength.

Purchases made – thanks for validating them 🙂

If you’re struggling to get the power up, you could always get the weight down… In fact, unless you’re planning on being a track sprinter, this is likely a better way to help your cycling.

At 58Kg and single digit body fat can’t really go further with the weight side of the equation. In fact for UK riding where climbs are shorter i’d bargain that an increase in weight(as long as its power producing) may be beneficial

from a team sky interview a while back. 2 x 20 at FTP. first at 110 cadence second at 50. they were doing them uphill in majorca.

Had not heard that one, sounds right up my street.

More to the point, what sort of crazy terrain are you riding to require something as burly as a DHF on the front with something as racey as an Ikon on the back 😕

A fully electric bike would have to have significantly more power than an e bike to work off road.

Clearly you are not very familiar with power outputs.
250W is getting very close to the peak power of a recreational rider, and certainly more than they can sustain for 60mins.

It’s not a f***ng sport!

The IOC disagree

And to quote wikipedia:
Mountain biking is the sport of riding bicycles off-road, often over rough terrain, using specially designed mountain bikes. Mountain bikes share similarities with other bikes, but incorporate features designed to enhance durability and performance in rough terrain.

Because of the hard work they have put in, that e-bikers have largely avoided.

But didn’t you put the hard work in because you enjoy it?
In which case, whats the problem?
You enjoyed it, they enjoyed it, happy days.

Good thread this, has brought out a REALLY wide spectrum of opinions.

No, but whenever a company releases a new aero doodad, they make a big deal about how many watts it will save you over a ride. Again, seems a little silly saying you are allowed to reduce the amount of watts a rider has to put in for a desired speed (or faster for the same effort), but are cheating if you add watts to what the rider puts out, to acheive the same speed. Different means to the same end, say I.

If anyone ever invents an aero doodad that can save 250W going up a 10% grade, they are going to make a LOT of money.

The cost is all in the battery and a warranty with a UK based seller.
Typically the ~£100 2000lm lights are all much the same, they are all using 2xXML U2 with similar housings/optics etc.

Since you’ve already got the battery, you can spend ~£20 on a head lamp from ebay, or you can spend ~£15 more to get it from a UK distributor that’ll help you out if something goes wrong.

I’m pretty sure leg hair doesn’t give an extra 250W……

Pretty sure you can press space – game doesn’t penalise you iirc.
Screenshot with alt+prntscrn then hack image in paint and upload to your favourite free image storage.
And fairly sure i’d have been thrown out of internet cafe pretty quickly for screaming at my monitor about how if noobs really are human the species is doomed. 😆

Yet again another nay sayer who has no experience of e-mtbing.

Actually, not so much.
I’m not even sure i’m against people buying them to compensate for being a tub of lard. Mostly, getting people out on their bikes that otherwise wouldn’t be is a good thing.
Lets say i’m firmly sat on the fence for now.

For the sake of argument we could also ask how many people only think climbing is hard as they’ve been somewhat misled.
For example take a plucky weekend warrior who reads the magazines which tell him he absolutely HAS to have a 160mm endurosled with super gnarrmax soft compound tyres in quadruple ply casing. What they didn’t tell him is that the tyres are going to eat 100W of his power output as rolling resistance, and the rear shock is going to eat another 25W even ‘locked out’, leaving him with only 15W to propel him grunting and wheezing up the hill at 1.7mph.
Maybe what he needs is a light/efficient hardtail not an e-bike?

but many people are not blessed with physical attributes that allow them to reach and do trails that are great

This may be true in many cases, but in an equal number of cases it translates into ‘i’m a tub of lard and can’t be arsed actually riding my bike cos it makes me sweaty and out of breath’

I think the whole thing depends on whether you mountain bike purely for the fitness side of it, or you tolerate climbing hills just for the descents

I really don’t understand why climbs need to be tolerated?
What exactly is un-fun about them?

Yeah, 8-11yrs old, 90-140k.
Either/both stand every chance of falling apart as soon as you get them home.

0, Yes

Its not quite as simple as matching up the current.
99.9% of cheap power banks like you linked are designed to charge 5V devices that are usually charged via USB.
Exposure don’t publish the details of their batteries, but there’s a good chance they are 7.4V. No idea what would happen if you plugged in a 5V power bank to the smart port, its entirely possible your light would try to deliver current to the power bank rather than the other way around.

OK, so who else is attached to a coffee drip this morning after z-typing into the small hours? 😳

~3370, 98%, 38WPM was as good as it got.

Well ebygomm is a clear winner. My effort is a bit tame by comparison.

Interestingly, I never actually learnt to touch type properly, just kinda learnt to mash keys in roughly the right order through online gaming as a lot of noobs needed telling exactly how bad they were 😆

http://phoboslab.org/ztype/v1.html

An adventure/gravel bike with 32-35c touring tyres and mounts for full guards.

My day job is programming embedded systems with cheap micros in them.

Not unusual for us to be writing complete systems (i.e. including an “operating system” and “drivers”) that run on less than 8KB of RAM, 32KB of ROM and a bit of flash.

Always an eye-opener for engineers that are used to writing code on PCs

Similar, I was working on a ‘quick’ update to a legacy product designed to sell it into a new market last week. Required me to increase the size of an array by 30 bytes – unfortunately this meant I ran out of RAM and spent the remainder of the day grinding through the code base looking for variables that could be sacrificed to find the 8 bytes I needed.

Of course as is the nature of such things, when completed and sent to customer for field trial they decided what they had requested wasn’t what they wanted afterall 😕

I’d probably start by downloading the free version of visual studio, then just google for C# tutorials.

https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/products/visual-studio-community-vs.aspx

They will be perfect.
I’d suggest one on the helmet and one on the bars.

It’s just the same, except its dark. I don’t get what’s awesome about it – maybe I’m just used to it.

When its dark you have a nice ‘friendly’ pool of light.
When its light you realise its the same cloudy overcast misery you’ve had for the last 3 months solid.
This may however not apply to people who live where the sky is blue rather than shades of grey.

The longest ride I have done is 53 miles at an average speed of 15mph with 3200ft of climbing (solo with no breaks).

The fastest I have done was 38 miles at an average speed of 17mph with 1650ft of climbing (solo with no breaks).

the long ride I did was completed with a ave. heart rate of 91bpm

Something here does not compute

Should be fine on hard surfaces – as you point out – surface area is important, and the semi slicks do that well. Only drawback is they tend to be in a slightly harder rubber compound than a proper knobby tyre.

Road riding in the dark

Is awesome with a decent light – and miserable with a bad one.

I had to go 1 size up for Castelli shorts as the straps are a bit restrictive.

You can’t get a car into the changeover area, but the trail goes right by the car park.

Some people do use gazebos, yes, but again in the car park not the changeover area.

There’s a hose round the back of the lift station.

My policy with this, and all 24hr races, is take every piece of cycling clothing you’ve ever owned, and some of someone else’s too. I bag it up so that I have a holdall with carrier bags in- each carrier bag has one type of clothing in it (jerseys in one, shorts in another, tights in another etc) so I can find it late at night.

Above sums it up almost perfectly.

If it helps, i’ll be taking the following (+ some things i’ve probably forgotten):
Shorts
Lycra Shorts x6
Tights x2
Leg warmers x1
Chamois Cream (Assos)
Chamois Cream (Morgans blue hard – for if its wet).

Tops
Soft Shells x2
Hard Shell x1
Short sleeve base layers x3
Long sleeve base layers x2
Thermal base layer x1
Short sleeve jerseys x4
Long sleeve jerseys x2
Gilet x1
Arm warmers x1

Feet
Socks x4(pairs)
Overshoes x1(pair)
Spare shoes x1(pair)

Head
Helmets x2
Buffs x2
Skull cap x1
Sunglasses x1
Clear glasses x1

Hands
Short finger gloves x1
Thin long finger gloves x2
Thin liner gloves x1
Windproof shell gloves x1
Winter waterproof gloves x1

Pit clothing
Fleece x1
Softshell x1
Walking trousers x1
Large Towel x2
Small Towel x1
Full set of dry clothes for after x1
Head net (midges)

Lights
Helmet light + battery x1
Bar light + battery x1
Spare large battery pack x1
Charger (with name tag on) x1
Spare bar light x1
Spare torches x2
Spare mounts

Nutrition
20l Bottled Water
500ml drinks bottles x4
High5 2:1 x1(Tub)
High5 4:1 x1 (Tub)
High5 Recovery x2(Sachets)
Energy Gels x12
Caffiene Gels x6
Energy Bars x6
Mini pork pies x6
6 Serving Coffee and Walnut cake x1
Peanut M&M’s x2(Movie size bags)

Spares/Accessories
Spare bike x1
Spare brake pads x2(sets)
Spare chain x1
Quick Links x2
Spare tubeless fluid
Spare tubes x2
Spare cleats x1(set)
Track pump
CO2 Inflator + cartridges
Tool kit
Bike cleaning brushes
Lube
Zip Ties
Sun Cream
Midge repellent
Small first aid kit
Paracetamol

Has anyone gone for the “Do you know what I won’t contest the starting sprint on purpose” strategy?

The reason I’m wondering is my weekend training ride was 1.6kmph faster, 16w more powerful yet 1 HR zone lower that the race 2 weeks before. Obviously it didn’t have a 0-HRmax start…

As ferrals said, can’t compare HR between a training/competition ride – thats why a 30min test is used for FTP/LTHR rather than 60min – adrenaline allows you to go a little harder during a race.

As to pacing, ask yourself if you are a strong descender or not.
If you are, then you need to get the strong start in to get ahead of any mincers that may hold you up. If not, then nothing really to lose by a more even pacing strategy.

@TiRed, can you elaborate a bit more on the wear indicator?
I’ve got a set of 2010 ksyrium elites with 10k miles, and have been wondering how i tell when they are done.

Doesn’t matter which formula you use, unless you actually test LTHR your zones are just as likely to be junk as they are sensible.
LTHR is variable between individuals, and levels of fitness.
Some people will find their LTHR as low as 70%MHR, whereas a very highly trained athlete may find it at 95%MHR.

Karvonen will give a better estimate of where 85% is, but it can’t tell you if 85% is anaerobic or not.