I did coast and castles on my pompetamine (alfine 11). Only 2 panniers and I stayed in b&bs so not heavily loaded.

I’ve been out the last two nights (well, if night starts at lunchtime ;)) so this evening will mainly involve a sofa and avoiding the madness I think.

I used to have a 500 and would transport 2 bikes on a boot mounted rack – just one of the strap on ones. The bikes were wider than the car and I never felt entirely happy with it there (more a rack issue than a car one though) but it did many trips (including France) with no real issues.

Door keys in door, car is a berlingo so I don’t worry about it (unless there’s a bike in the back…)

My parents own a dive school in the Canaries. My sister and brother in law are also both instructors (but gave it up and got “proper” jobs in the UK when they wanted kids).

I did a try dive once…

I’m staying at the hotel opposite the pub. Wasn’t there last night but have been inside the cordon this evening. Lots of activity and TV crews, the police seem to be getting refreshments etc in the hotel. Not sure how well I’ll sleep with that outside my bedroom window…

I have an interview on Tuesday and the “work for us” page on their website where all the job postings are found quite clearly states that they don’t pay expenses. Doesn’t bother me in the slightest.

I don’t find it too different, although the “recognising an unknown phone number” thing worked nicely – I got a call inviting me to a job interview yesterday and it told me who the call was from 🙂

I almost always wear pink and my rather anecdotal experience is that it seems to make more of a difference than hi viz alone because I look more female (I am, by the way…). Most but not all of my pink kit is hi viz but even the non hi viz stuff seems to give me more room and fewer angry gestures than hi viz yellow.

Mind you, I was wearing hi viz pink the time I went over a car so it’s not perfect….

I currently have three bikes in the front room, one in the dining room, two under the stairs and some in the garage. Two rideable hardtails and three old commuters in various states of disrepair. I think. My OH still has one at his old house he needs to move over here but it will have to be a garage bike not a house bike I think. There are also two turbo trainers stashed in a corner and he has talked about getting some rollers.

Actually, I think there might be a fourth in the front room but it’s his good road bike and still in a bag from when we came home from holiday (weather not good enough to take it out since we got back) so I’ll ignore it for now.

My housework mainly seems to consist of putting any random bike bits in the drawers next to the tv so at least they’re not covering every surface.

Installing now…

I tend to carry over the same number of days each year – so I always use the full annual allowance and have a buffer spare so if I have an emergency near the end of the year I can eat into the extra 5 days.

My OH is an engineer and it’s quite easy to set him on a full blown rant if americans use imperial measurements on something he’s working on. He always uses km although he might just allow a 10 mile race to slip through.

I prefer miles for some reason. Habit mainly I think as I use metric for anything shorter than a mile.

5 days here. I always go away for a week in January anyway even if there was a timescale for using them (which there isn’t) I’d be fine. I do tend to carry the 5 days over every year.

My mum “apparently [insert random rant or story about cancer]…”
Me “was this in the daily mail?”
My mum “yes…”

It wasn’t me either, although I haven’t heard from my OH today. That’s not unusual to be fair, but would be nice to rule him out!

75%, not bad considering I was born in Warwickshire. I have lived up here for longer than I lived down there though.

I have a trek domane 2.0 with 25mm tyres and full mudguards.

In running terms fit enough to be in the top 3 women at small parkruns and top 5% at big ones but not fit enough to get into the prizes at races where the proper fast people turn up in bigger numbers. Usually end up being my club’s last scorer in team events.

Cyclingwise probably a bit less fit, although that could be because I end up comparing myself to men rather than women…

It was an excuse for a new bike 😉 there is a local grass track league near me and after a trip to the velodrome Idecided to get something with a flip flop hub. I tried I out singlespeed at first and loved it! I actually flipped it over to fixed today but not sure how long it will stay like that for.

Depends where I am, but on city roads (the bulk of my commute) I use flashing. I drive to work a couple of days a week and cycle the others so I watched out for cyclists on car days and made a note of what I could see best. The main difference was that a cyclist filtering from behind with a flashing light is far more likely to get my attention in the mirrors as it stands out more from a stream of solid lights.

I will switch it to continuous when I get onto quieter/darker roads though.

My route in was a week in Italy and discovering espresso. I’d never been into instant but discovering what coffee should taste like got me hooked.

I dislocated mine (middle joint, middle finger, right hand) running in the woods (well, tripping over a tree root…) in late July. It popped back into place straight away and the mobility is pretty good (it doesn’t go quite straight but is fine other than that), but it’s still swollen and a bit tender, and yesterday I really noticed how sensitive to the cold it is.

I can do most things with it although climbing would probably be beyond it, and occasionally I knock it in a way that makes me wince slightly.

I’m not optimistic about the swelling going away completely tbh – my ankle is still swollen from where I broke it and that was 13 years ago…

I use the amdro bootjump conversion. Folded up it sits in the boot with the rear seats up (and usually with 2 wheels off bikes and other assorted bits and pieces on them). To convert you take everything off the back seat (we have a drive away awning to dump it all in, if you don’t have too much stuff there are places inside the car it could be stashed), push/tilt the front seats forward, drop the back seats and unfold it. There is enough room to sleep as long as the front seats are far enough forward. You can either have it in “seating area” or “bed” mode, and the stove pulls out from underneath.

I used to drive a Fiat 500 which was seriously impractical for biking. I knew I needed something bigger but hesitated for ages because the Berlingos were just so van like and uncool, but within about three days of owning it you’d have to prise it out of my cold dead hands. The multispace is officially a car and insured as a car.

I bought a berlingo after getting jealous of my mum’s kangoo. There’s not much between them, both ugly, both swallow bikes, neither feels quite as van like as I originally feared. I’ve got a camper conversion which is fab and love the thing despite its looks.

I was a runner before I discovered bikes and I now tend to run in winter and ride in summer. I’m not amazingly fast but tend to be in the top 25% of women at races and at the moment I’m adding a bit more structure to my training to get faster. I’ve given up marathons though – I did loads of them a few years ago and got my time down to 3:44 but the training is too much to fit in alongside the other stuff I want to do.

I wear a skirt for work most days, and as I’d need to shower at some point in the morning anyway it’s easy to cycle to work in Lycra and shower when I get here.

There are a couple round here which are useful on my commute to save me trawling round a busy one way system. Both are properly segregated from the main carriageway. Sadly it doesn’t stop delivery drivers for Pizza Express bumping up over the kerb into the cycle lane on one of them which then doesn’t leave anywhere for me to go (legally, at least).

As with many things, they work if they’re done properly and that’s where the problem is rather than the concept in itself.

I have SPD’s on my commuter bike and winter bike but KEOS on my good bike. I concur that they are made of cheese, annoyingly although I have a spare set at home they’ve died on my last 2 cycling holidays meaning I’ve learned the Spanish and Italian words for cleat… The covers help a little but I have a tendency to lose them so seriously considering changing to spd-sl or something else. I do find I get hotspots when doing long rides on the winter bike with SPD’s so would rather have something roadie, but preferably less cheese like.

We’re in Italy for the giro di lombardia so today was 53 road miles, 1300m of climb including the ghisallo.

I’m rather looking forward to it. Not least because I’m flying out to Florence on Thursday 🙂

At a work “awayday” in July. It involved beer and curry in Birmingham on a Tuesday night and although I felt at the time like I’d stopped drinking before I got too drunk, my inability to keep anything down the next morning rather proved that I hadn’t. Sadly there were colleagues in breakfast who couldn’t understand why I had about a spoonful of cereal and a sip of coffee before disappearing and I missed my train back to Leeds, reappearing in the office over an hour after everyone else.

Whoops.

That was a bit of a wake up call, and since then I’ve cut my drinking significantly with no midweek drinking and one 14 day spell where I didn’t touch a drop. I’m not intending to give up completely but I am trying to be far more sensible about it.

Heading to tuscany next week. Carefully timed to watch the road world championships 🙂

I have an insulated bottle which I use for winter commutes. If I make coffee just before I set off it’s just the right temperature when I pull up at the first set of lights in the city centre. Suddenly I don’t mind the stop start stretch at the end of the ride because it gives more time to savour the caffeine 🙂

I was on honister 🙂 (and on lime kiln edge on sunday in similarly grim weather). Loved it 🙂

I pretty much don’t watch tv. When it’s on it’s usually the Simpsons (OH watching as I get in from work), cycling on Eurosport or rugby league on sky. Or we’re listening to 6 music through the telly.

I don’t really do films either. Or celebrities. Or fashion.

I’d actually be happy 99% of the time with just a radio as I much prefer listening to stuff than watching – on training courses I find I take it in easier if I shut my eyes and listen rather than trying to read slides.

Yes, like I do every thursday (OH’s day to use the car). No more cyclists than normal and no sign of anything going on to mark it. No free bacon butties for me 🙁

I always used to do 2 years but I completed a remortgage on tuesday and went for 5 years. I’m on a tracker for 2 years then it fixes for 3 (rate for the fix is already set but a bit higher than where the tracker part is now).

The running club I’m a member of does handicap races where we’re all set off separately and run the route with the intention that we finish at roughly the same time. On one of these runs there was a “thing”. As most of us were running on our own at the time no-one was quite sure whether the others had seen it or whether we were just imagining it. Some debate on facebook followed with no-one quite wanting to reveal what the thing was until it was confirmed.

I still have no idea how a giant rubber cock found its way onto that stretch of pavement, and on reflection I’m not sure I want to know.

It tends to be c in my house. Mainly because my OH is in charge of the washing up and I’m not so bothered about it to spend my time nagging him. It tends to get done when he realises I don’t have anything clean left to cook with or serve it onto…