No, and I never have done. Finding a petrol berlingo wasn’t easy, but I found one and pray it doesn’t die on me any time soon! I don’t do enough miles and cycle commuting in a city has given me a real dislike of diesel fumes.

(I agree that lots of people won’t comply by may but people who at least have a plan will be in a much better position than those who bury their heads in the sand)

I also know quite a lot about it as I’m a data protection lawyer…

Do NOT leave it til April…

I have, and once I got into it I quite enjoyed it.

Just under an hour on a closed circuit on the fixie. Tailwind up the hill and headwind down it helped me keep a nice even effort.

9/11 – first week of my first proper job. Trying to work out whether it was acceptable to join the cluster of people by the to. We still went for welcome drinks that night, but it was rather subdued and more like group therapy trying to understand what we’d just seen.

Diana – at home just after reading an article in the Sunday times about Diana…

Brexit – in a campsite on Flanders having toured some battlefields the previous day. Realised I should have got some euros out of the cash machine the day before.

I enjoy TTs 🙂 plenty of chat at HQ once you get to know people. I prefer the non dual carriageway courses for the most part and this year mainly focussed on a spoco series (came 3rd in the end).

1st secondary school (girls school) – Austen, Bronte, Elliott.

2nd secondary school I couldn’t remember til I looked it up. Porteus, Hutton, De Grey, School House.

My feeling from commuting in Leeds is that it’s nothing like what the media suggests. Yes, there are inattentive drivers and there are red light jumping cyclists but I also get drivers who give enough room and give way to me to balance it out, and I rarely see any actual aggression. Maybe because it’s because I’m female (and visibly so – long ponytail and a quite often a hi viz pink gilet) or maybe it’s just not like London.

My car broke down a couple of times over summer. I was surprised how many people sounded their horns at me to get out of the way despite sitting there with hazards on (and in one case a breakdown truck…). Do they think I was parked there for the fun of it?

Sort of. I have 3 sets of wheels which I switch between my TT bike and my road bike depending what ride I’m doing. I usually use the ksyriums on the road bike and the carbon 50mms on the TT (or the front one with the disc) but sometimes move them over for road racing. I wouldn’t use the deep sections just for going for a ride.

Just renewed with pedalcover for the third year. have never made a claim but the renewal prices have been sensible each time.

We went for a (chain) pub meal last night and the staff were in elf t-shirts advertising their Christmas meals…

39 now and it has 9 years to run but I think it will be sooner than that as I have some overpayments I can chuck at it. Considering moving to an offset as my cash savings are about a third of the remaining mortgage but I don’t want to tie them up permanently in the house.

Warwickshire. Not a particularly distinctive accent but someone I’d never met before correctly identified it once so there must be something there. It also has Yorkshire bits to it (have lived here for over 20 years and my grandparents have always been here) e.g. shorter vowels than my Warwickshire friends and using some local phrases.

I believe that Evans do own the bike. They lease it to your employer who leases it to you. After the first year the employer drops out of the picture and Evans lease it to you directly. Or at least that was how it worked when I was involved in setting up a scheme for my previous employer.

I commute on the winter bike, and for weekend rides pick a bike depending on the weather. I may get another couple of rides out of the summer bike before it hibernates, although the TT bike is getting put away for the winter next saturday.

Yes, because I always do. I do try to put some pics on social media mainly to remind other people. Quite windy but only a light-ish shower as I got to works so it could have been worse. Couldn’t find anyone doing free coffee/breakfast this year which was quite disappointing 🙁

Anyway, it looks like they’ve extended it because of the weather, so I’ll be cycling to work tomorrow too 😉

I have a petrol berlingo and when it broke down recently I looked at replacing it rather than fixing it (it’s fairly old and needed expensive repairs). I couldn’t find anything 3-5 years old that wasn’t diesel. I decided to fix the one I have in the hope it will last a few more years until more petrols start tricking through.

fingers crossed!

My understanding is that the insurers do sell the data themselves or they certainly used to – I’ve thankfully escaped from the murky world of motor claims.

I’m currently amused by the fact that they have sold information about a breakdown on. My breakdown cover is via my insurance and since I had a couple of breakdowns recently I’ve been plagued by calls (from people who know my name/mobile number) asking about my recent accident. Yes, the insurers sent a recovery truck out, but there was no accident involved. And due to the fact that no-one else was involved it’s pretty easy to work out where the data came from…

We’re doing diegem and gp Sven nys over new year (Saturday evening/Monday-NYD). Last year we attempted to combine gent and koksijde but it was cancelled 🙁 the season before that it was the worlds. Plus NYE drinking Belgian beer in Brussels.

I’m on V718 on Saturday too. I’m not riding well at the moment so I’m not quite sure why I entered it but we’ll see what happens.

My season has got a bit disrupted due to an ongoing car issue (it broke down on the way to a TT in mid June and still isn’t right!). I’ve been hiring cars for weekend events (although I’m trying the train on Saturday) but have missed out on midweek evening TTs. I’ve even resorted to bunch racing instead as that’s easier for me to get to.

I’m a time triallist and race on dual carriageways. Not all dual carriageways are equal. Some are fine and there are others that I wouldn’t choose to race on again (Etwall).

I actually prefer spocos to drag strips and wouldn’t mind if racing moved away from DCs (that said the only race I’ve done where there has been an accident was on a single carriageway course). But while the DCs are there some of our club championships involve riding on them, as do any club record attempts which you’re not going to get close to on a sporting course. So I do race on them more than I’d like.

Actually, ban racing on DCs tomorrow, as I currently hold the 10 and 25 records 😉

I usually feel safer in a race because of the other riders and signs. I’m unlikely to be the first cyclist a driver sees. And it will have been risk assessed unlike my training routes. Scariest race I’ve done was as last rider off on V718 with no one behind me (plus I’d forgotten to pick up my rear light that day 8O). I should add that I was only last because the rider behind me DNSed, not through a good seeding!

For non-racing I try to avoid dual carriageways out of town although there are some in built up areas which I will happily use. But as above sometimes there is no alternative provision so there’s no choice.

My problem with podium girls isn’t so much that they exist, more that they’re often the only place where women are visible in cycling. This week the Giro Rosa is taking place with virtually no tv coverage, whereas the podium girls at the TdF are on TV every day. I want to see women in a variety of roles in cycling and elsewhere rather than just acting as trophies.

Ouch! That looks sore! No 100s for me, but hoping to find a decent 50 to replace the one that was cancelled last week. 25 spoco this weekend but it’s looking like I’ll miss the club TT on Thursday due to a lack of transport (it’s not far to ride out but there is a hill on the way back that is a bit too challenging for the gears on my TT bike!)

Jimmy savile. I live just down the road from roundhay park and mainly tried to avoid him when I spotted him 😉

I can get into most opens being female but all the main stretches of road used for Yorkshire courses seem to have roadworks on them this year – loads of v718 races have been cancelled, and the a168/a19 dual carriageway round thirsk has also had roadworks for a few weeks. So with temporary traffic lights also popping up on the red wall (old a1) this week (and apparently it’s being surface dressed soon too) there aren’t many decent courses available at the moment!

I’m in a run of bad luck too – entered two events for this week. Broke down on the way to Tuesday’s hill climb which was a DNS. Hired a car to get to the 50 I was meant to be doing today and then got an email through to say it is cancelled because there are roadworks on both the original course *and* the standby course.

Both actually organised by the same guy. This year I’ve entered four YCF events. Three of them have been cancelled (two for roadworks, on different courses, one due to the weather) and I broke down on the way to the 4th.

Grr.

I may also share some of the blame – my car has broken down so I need to ride everywhere for a few days.

We got one for our trip to the alps – didn’t end up needing it but it was so cheap that we thought we may as well. But equally I don’t think it would have been an issue if we hadn’t. (We took the motorway through Lyon and went past Grenoble but not properly into either of them)

In terms of cutting down – I have over the last 12 months.

I changed jobs this time last year. At my old job I had free parking. I cycled three or four days per week and drove one or two. I now work next door but have to pay for parking. I’ve driven twice in 12 months.

We seem to have grown really fast – when I joined a few years back there were only really the sunday rides and one social option every fortnight – the other rides have started up because people say “does anyone fancy this” and it takes off from there
So just because there isn’t much off road at the moment it doesn’t mean there never will be and doing a few road rides may help you meet the people who would be up for it.

B pace isn’t too bad. I rarely do the group rides these days because I always seem to be racing but they are essentially a long social ride rather than properly pushing on.

I’m a (female) otley cc member. We don’t do too much off road stuff – I did go on a MTB ride a couple of years ago with them but they fell away a bit. Some of the social rides end up a bit more cross style as one of the people who leads them has a tendency to divert down tracks. I’m more of a roadie though anyway so haven’t really explored the off road side of things since I got into time trialling!

We do Wednesday evening rides and Tuesday/Thursday “mountain goat” rides and I think the chevin shop rides are Tuesday evening (or at least it was this week).

Let me know if you need more info.

Not very. We both cycle to work, there is a sainsburys local at the end of the road and we get veg delivered. there’s also a bus stop at the end of the road with buses every 10 minutes or so to the city centre. We could get by just fine for the essentials (work/food) without it.

What it does enable us to do though is race bikes. This is very much non essential but I’d rather drive to an event with kit/tools/spares in the car than ride there without, even for races within riding distance. And it’s even nicer not to have to ride home again!

We also use it as a campervan so it does decent mileage on holiday. Again, non-essential and without it we’d go on different sorts of holidays.

I used to be car free and just hired when I needed one which was quite freeing but my current car doesn’t cost that much to keep running even if it only goes out once or twice a week.

Almost none. City centre premises with some visitor parking but only the very top dog partners get parking.

Crap night last night. The aim was to use it as a kit test for the new tub on my disc (first one I’ve ever fitted).

Got there nice and early, took 50mm wheel off and put the disc on. Faffed. Got onto the bike to ride to sign on and realised there was a problem with the drivetrain. Took disc off and put it back in again in case I’d done it wrong. Put 50mm wheel back on to check that was fine. It was. Tried the disc again, still not working. Decided to go with 50mm.

Then noticed that during all the wheel changes I’d knocked the brakes out of alignment and it needed tightening back up again to stay in the right position. Silly aero frame with hidden away bolt meant I needed to take the wheel off (again!) Then I realised that the toolkit didn’t have anything that would get into the gap properly and the set of Allen keys with rounded heads were at home.

Swore a lot.

Decided to dismantle a part broken multitool I had lying around but although the Allen key fitted in the gap once the body was removed it didn’t give me anything to hold on to to turn it.

Pretty much gave up on riding until with about 10 minutes to go I got it tight enough to hopefully stay in position and be rideable. Rushed to sign on but being so late meant I was off pretty much last and had no real warm up.

And of course the first bump I got knocked the brake back out of alignment and it rubbed for the rest of the race. I put out more power than I did last time I did that (15 mile) course and went 5 minutes slower…

Fingers crossed it’s fixed for tomorrow – the brake is now tightened again and the problem with the cassette seemed to be the lockring so we’ve put a new one on.

In a postscript to the above we’ve just realised that we beat last year’s bronze medallists. Maybe we’re not as crap as we thought!

Hello! I’m back from holiday and back racing 🙂

We got back on Wednesday and straight back into things on Thursday with the club 25 mile championships. I won the women’s title 🙂 we also had a rather special guest rider who broke the two lap record and equalled the one lap record on his second lap – Alistair brownlee 🙂

Nasty evening in other respects though – nasty wind and rain, and one of the juniors was hit by a car at about 20 miles. Thankfully no bones broken but he needs a new bike.

Then the national TTT yesterday – completely different weather! An 11.10 start time had us out there in 30 degree heat. Our expectation was that we’d finish last but we didn’t! Possibly the only time I’ll ever finish 7th in a national championship! We rode together so much better than in our practice sessions and kept safe too – I was surprised how many teams crashed!

Back to the same course for a 15 tomorrow if my legs recover in time.

Currently into the 2nd week of a camping holiday in France. It’s ace. Previous trips have been to Ireland, Scotland and Belgium and while they didn’t put us off, good weather (and good wine!) Makes it so much more pleasant and as a bonus the car doesn’t stink so much of wet kit when we move from place to place.

Problem tonight is a concert across the road. Hoping it doesn’t go on til too late as we rode up alpe d’huez today and need to collapse shortly!

No racing for me this week but we’re off to watch the dauphiné TT later 🙂