Have you considered that they may not be imaginary, just invisible?

Hmm, in no particular order:
Relentless 24
Raid Pyrenean
Raid Alpine

They do indeed look like a fun bike, but yeah at £2600 is (at least) double what i’d be expecting to pay for an agro hardtail.
Would like to see a similarly slack 120mm FS at around 11-12kg – would be the perfect XC/Trail allround weapon

The thing i find most astonishing is that there was a poll on the Euromillions website asking people what they thought and 77% said they didnt like the changes.

So do they cancel changes, noooo, they put up another post telling people they obviously dont understand.

Played jackpots over £50m and the super fridays before, but will be voting with my wallet now.

I’ll be doing it in 5 days next year as part of a supported charity group.
Expecting 5 days to be challenging, but still enjoyable. Would be looking for 3 days if I felt like really beasting myself.

Can someone enlighten me to wtf ‘skinny fat’ is?

11-32 on 11 speed is pretty much the same gaps as 11-28 on 10 speed, which people have been running happily for years

If you are riding somewhere flat i don’t really think the alu brake track is any benefit. IMO its more designed for long or wet/steep descents.
And most reviews seem to think braking is vastly improved on newer carbon rims anyway.

2 smaller bags (multipack size) a week I guess.
Biscuits are much more of a nemesis.
Gradually succeeding in replacing with healthier snacks, but slow going.
With 248hrs on the bike so far this year and a BMI of 19 i’m generally not stressing too much about it.

Assume you have ruled out flappy shirt syndrome?
In terms of straps, Topeak used to sell a cheap replacement strap that you could clip existing module onto.
Or just get the new garmin strap – its much nicer.

Nutrigrain bars.
Zipvit ZV8 uncoated.

Cliff bars are tastey but get really hard when cold.
Anything from powerbar makes me jet propelled around 3hrs later 8O

Lacking a blue route, so no good for families or mixed ability groups. Worth it as a stop off if passing, but not enough there for me to make it a trip in its own right.

Sadly didnt really fit in schedule for me this year, definitely on radar for next year though.

SXC round in Forfar on the 18th, although obviously thats on totally the wrong side of the country.
I’m not aware of any smaller local series as you have down in the south.

Doubtful.

You’d know if you were overhydrating as you’d be stopping to piss every 30 mins.

As others have said, the two roles you are looking for more realistically fit 3-5 people. Plenty of people are versatile enough to train into the roles, but few will have the exact experience you are after.

Been working as a Firmware/Software engineer for 10yrs or so now. Anything from dabbling in .asm for an 8bit pic, C for 16bit micros, right through to sqlserver scripts, and C#/WPF. So pretty broad skillset, but dont exactly meet any of your requirements.

Realistically, your hardware guy does hardware stuff, your firmware guy does cortex and the hardware guys control code and an experienced linux guy may be able to do both driver and app development.

Two main differences for a new HT are proper size wheel and the fact that they are designing some compliance into the rear triangle.

personally I wouldn’t recommend lithions, I’ve had punctures with them, I am now using Michelin pro4Endurance on the front of my fixed commuter and will put one on the rear when the gatorskin is done – good protection and good grip as well because they are a supple carcass and two compounds of rubber tread

Totally agree that pro4 Endurance are godly (roll almost like a race tyre and I’ve had 2 punctures on them in ~10,000mi) Sadly Michelin have decided they are too popular and are discontinuing them. CRC are due more stock end of September, so if you like them as much as I do, may be worth getting a couple of sets when they come in.

Athletes and swimmers are more like golfers than cyclists in that they earn through sponsorship and prize money, and generally don’t have the earnings potential of a golfer. Cyclists and footballers actually have contracts. Football goes some way to counter this with the U23 rules, but i don’t think they should be there either.

@Hobnob, as ghostly said, easy in, hard home. If you do a quality z4 workout you should be a bit mangled to be working after.

Wouldnt try to do the full hour hard nor on all 3 days. 2x20mins with a short warmup/cooldown on 2 of the 3 days.

edit, blobby beat me to it

Same as a number of others have already said:
Football
Tennis
Basketball
Golf
Horse Dancing (they can keep the jumping)

Also the cycling road races (not that I dislike them, but because i dont think athletes who are in some cases on million £ contracts should be there)

Going to buck the trend and say i disliked them. For trail centre you’d have been better off with 2.2 Trail kings.

MKII in 2.4 doesn’t have enough large flat blocks for grip on trail centre hardpack. Very much a tyre for soft natural terrain and light mud.

Also on rims at the narrower end of the spectrum the profile is far too round and the side knobs are half way down the sidewalls. Lowering the pressures enough to square them up makes them roll like a hog.

allan, glad you found it a good workout, however that particular advice was targetted at @on and on for his particular goal of going faster round loop of around 140 mins.
Generally i wouldn’t advocate riding in zone3 that often, it generates quite a chunk of fatigue without having a massive training benefit.
Also, for max speed on a ride under 1hr, cut the z3 out, should be z4 all the way, just have to learn to enjoy the suffering! :twisted:

Schwalbe Marathon should do the job, if you want ultimate bulletproofness then Marathon plus.
Either option is a bit heavy and slow, but for commuting i’ll trade a little rolling speed for puncture resistance any day.

Its been like winter near enough every day since May, not sure i’d know what dust looks like any more. Think Sunday was the first proper summer day of the year.

@epicyclo, glad you said your humvees are made of tissue paper – i seem to have worn 2 holes in the arse of mine, was wondering if that was ‘normal’. Guessing it probably is if other people are wearing them out.

To be honest, baggies are a bit of a blessing in the UK. There’d be way too many moobs on display if the avearge trail centre hero wore lycra.

Thats because the likely user base of a mtb forum are the same ones that buy mtb mags and get brainwashed into believing they need 160mm of suspension and silly coloured flappy outfits.

It hasnt been debunked at all, its not about the ability to produce power, and indeed your body is actually more efficient at lower cadences, but pushing a bigger gear causes more muscular damage. Better to load the cardio system with a higher cadence wherever possible so muscles are still in best shape possible when you need them.

Yes, so full of shit near enough every modern pro does it.

Always amazes me how many people still grind big gears considering how long (since Lance) its been known that spinning a little gear to preserve legs is better.

@tthew, what makes you think they run high pressure? XC riders are generally running 18-22psi i believe. Combine that with flimsy race specific casing and you get pinchflats quite easily.

Nino seems to have moved to maxxis, has been spotted at previous races running what appears to be a prototype aspen.

Given STW have declared the course a glorified blue route there sure seem to be a lot of pros that have crashed.

Nino is a beast, just wait wait wait then open up the taps, crazy speed up the climb.

120 rides, 3100mi in 2016, does that count?

Well never without strava as obviously the ride never even happened if its not on strava, but yes, most of my rides between nov-june tend to be just hopping on the 29er and riding a mix of gravel, dirt and road.

Edit: also done some mtb orienteering this year which is almost exactly what you describe, just going eyeballs out in the paincave

I’d be amazed if more than 10% on here could clear all the climbs, and maybe 25% or so could ride all the A lines.

Sidewall recommendation can be a bit hit and miss, sometimes they lie, othertimes they speak truth and you pinchflat first time you ignore them.

Regardless, i’m similar weight to you and would try 85/90 as suggested by others to start with.

Would be interesting to know the breakpoint where adding low intensity volume trumps intensity. Would imagine most people working full time struggle to recover from more than 2 intense sessions a week, so benefits to be had from just adding volume of Z1/Z2 for anything over about 6hrs/wk.