Good pub meal :- Castle View in Deganwy (just across the harbour) cracking simple food, better than the average pub mean but not silly Gastro Pub prices. Lovely spot too.
Pen Y Bryn Pub again for really nice above average pub food (In upper Colwyn Bay near the mountain zoo mentioned by the poster above, who also kindly called my home town a craphole)

Yep, just swapped a 2.3 Eskar on the front of my Zesty for a 2.3 Bronson Race. Seems good so far, the Eskar was ok too, but has had its day and I did find the Eskar grippy enough but perhaps with a combination of my questionable technique I found a bit abrupt when it let go leaving my on the deck :)
The Bronson so far has been faultless, seems predictable and grippy. I only have one on the front so the race version seems tough enough. I run it tubeless with Stans rim strips and sealant on a DT 4.2D rim. Holds air fine and sealed & inflated with the normal amount of effort.
Seems about right size wise, the casing isnt as balloon like as the Eskar and not as tall. But from outside to outside on the widest part of the tread (which is quite a bit wider than the casing its bang on a 2.3 on my rims. So pretty accurate. for a trail bike I’d go 2.3 front and back. To be honest I wish I’d got two of them, becasue the price was reduced at CRC and now its gone back up again hey ho.
I bought a 2.2 WTB Mutano for the rear instead for a nice fast summer tyre, and thats way wrong on sizing. Its a 2.0 at best, and looks sttupidly narrow on my Zesty, but I think you can trust the Bronson sizing.

Yep agreed, great video. They are all better riders than me, but the lad in the bright flourescent green shorts is a damn good technical rider. **** Hideous shorts though :)

You can get round Penmachno Loop 1 pretty quickly so I guess that would qualify as a short blast, however to get the whole Penmachno experience then you should do the full trail (Loop 1 and Loop 2) and this you should commit 3+ hours to, and thats if you are not dollying around.
I like the Marin, its a good allround trail without anything too scary, but plenty to keep most decent riders interested. Dependent on how fit you are, it should take between 1 hr 30 mins – 2 hr 30 mins. Plus you can join the Marin easily from Betws in a couple of places so you need not even have to drive, which you would if you decided on Pen

The thing I love about Pen (and I am localish) is the amount of grip the rocks and trail surface offer compared with other local trails. I am not saying you cant lose it, but if you have ridden other trails locally, and you see a big slab of wet rock you usually think, this could be slippy, but riding Penmachno for as many years as I have the rocks and trail surface have so much natural grip its fantastic.

I am no geologist, but I am assumeing that a billion years ago give or take a week, the same mountains were formed from the same spewing volcano spitting out the same lava that created the hills around the Marin trail, so why does the rock at Penmachno stick like S**t to a blanket.
In all the years all my near misses and crashes at Pen have been coutesy of the trail offering so much grip and confidence that you go so fast down a 12″ wode ribbon of singletrack and eventually run out of room / talent :)
Brilliant place, tough on kit though, trail surface unleashes a grey grit paste that likes to eat pads / seals / transmission. But dont let this put you off, its an amazing trail

Shelina for me, Those little bhaji things she made last night looked gorgeous, Tom looks like he is permanently about to cry, and Andrew has no eyelids, and that weirds me out.

I really need to get around to changing my GP surgery, as it is truly appalling.
My doctor is actually really good, but the odds of ever getting to see him are remote. Despite trying to see him for one thing and the other, I think I have seen him once or twice in 5 years. They fob you off with the surgery nurse every time now. It used to be the case that as we had two young children that at least it was a given that the children would be priviliged with an appointment in a reasonable time frame, but recently even that has changed, and I doubt the kids would be honoured with an appointment with a GP.
For a routine pre-booked appointment the normal waiting time is 10-14days.

Is this normal, or are we been taking for mugs, we are not doctor botherers at all, in fact very much the opposite, I rarely ever ever go, neither does the wife. Which is what annoys me the most. The fact is if I ask to se the doctor it is not on a whim, its becasue I really need to see a doctor and I it is my last resort. And it is never for anything trivial

My last visit was to the nurse, was to have stitches removed from a 3 inch gash across my knee which happened during the latter stage of a MTB stage race at the other end of the country, the response from a slightly couldnt really be a**ed nurse was, “You should go back to where they stitched you up to have them removed” !! FFS !! a 300 mile round trip ! needless to say I questioned her advice on that one.

Apologies rant over, but it does get on my t*ts when I pay so much NI.

I suppose I should spend less time typing it all out here on a forum and get my surgery changed

shifting that wok you are smuggling

Wok smuggler :) Harsh

Isnt the Dyfi really about getting as p***d up as possible on the Saturday night, passing out in a tent, being physically threatened if you dont shut your face at 2am.. and just about surviving on the Sunday, rather than actually racing against other people who arent actually racing you ?

I also know the OP, and can confirm that all that whytetrash says is sadly true :) He has a rubber fetish and a half !

or do the oil the foam rings bit

My fork service place, took the foam rings out and replaced with an oil seal.

Thanks Rickon, I have an annual service, but have never dropped the lowers at yet. Not sure thats been the issue this time, becasue the wear was very sudden and with no clue beforehand. But will get in the habit of giving my forks a refresh

but if you buy Fox again – drop the lowers regularly

Are fox known to be more prone to this than Rockshox or other manufacturers ?

And when you drop the lowers, do you need to replace the oil each time, or do you just take the lowers off leaving the fork upside down and retain all the oil that way

I dont think its a lack of maintenance issue, if like munkyboy I’d noticed a slow wear rate then I’d have said yes I’d ignored a problem and it got worse, my own fault, however they were running fine and the stantions had no marks scratches or wear at all, one hour into a ride, I have this sort of damage, I just lifted the seals and its all pretty clean in there, I am wondering if there is something amiss inside the lowers

So this is not a first then ? :)

I’d say everything Kitz said +1

The love of road riding, as thats where a hell of a lot of the training will be done.
So none of this weird prejudice that seems to go on from both road and mtb sides. Plus pure genetics that you cant train. A lot of people can get train to the point of gettig a great power weight ratio, but then it still leaves them way short of the mark to compete at the very very top. Its natural physiology.

I just bought one of the forums here. It is undersized when I set it up, I also will be interested in how it rides

My Zesty was going through lower eyelets and hardware every 2-3 months. I bought a heavy duty mount kit with a polymer eyelet from TF Tuned and 18 months later its still showing no signs of needing replacing. Highly recommend

I have a mate, who was doing some sort of quick bike maintenance to the crankset area of the bike but from the other side of the bike (i.e leaning over the bike, head upside down, with chest on the saddle. He then decided to compress the rear suspension using just the force and pressure of his chest on the saddle and promptly broke a rib

Stendec are who I use, but then Dave is local to me

Similar thing with mine, Really noisy, for the firdt few pushes down, then quitened off. I figured it was cavitation but it returned to being noisy, bvery shortly after having a proper fox service. Still works fine, so I am gonna leave it noisy until its die a proper scheduled service in the summer

the descents are turning into races of late

I cant begin to imagine who’s turning it into a race pal ;) Its only a race if you want to be :)

I bought some G-form pads from them TBC the other day, after some odd bod questions about sizing, which they helped with (I know it may not be everyones cup of tea, but I think that little chat window on the website is an ace idea) It lets you actually get an instant reponse from a man/woman on the shop floor, in work hours :) without having to phone from the office, or play Email ping pong for 2 days.
Any how I digressed, pads arrived next day, their advice on sizing was good. So well happy. I ordered some other stuff off Merlin at the same time, and the stuff arrived on the same next day schedule, being as that Merlin are regarded as the benchmark in most cases, I think its a fine recommendation

I have the sub zero one, its super warm, and probably the best bit of winter cycing kit I own. Cant ever imagine being cold with it on, and it breathes suprisingly well, it is very much a 6 degrees and below garment. You cant go wrong with Craft

La Marmotte and TransWales in no particular order

I definately wouldnt go without a remote, the whole point of it as far as I am concerned, You go down a nasty section of trail, you can drop the post mid section if needs be, or if you forget to do it at the top. And if a downhill gets pedally for a short section flick the button on the bar, and you’ve got your saddle back. The advantage for me is that you can raise and drop the saddle several times during a mixed downhill section and you arent committed to dropping it before you start a downhill and then raise it back up when you are finished.

Bought one, its quite useful, if it broke tomorrow, would I buy another ? Doubtful to be honest. Sometimes I will ride a trail, and only when I get back to the car, do I realise I didnt drop it once ! So lugged around the extra weight, cables and still hae to give it the same TLC that I would have, had I dropped it a dozen times.
I have to admit though, I found it more useful at the more tech places like Coed Y Brenin, than the likes of Llandegla.
When I first used it, it was a weird sensation of having nothing there, suprising how much I subconsciously I must have used an undropped saddle to feel the lean of the bike and to have that bit of resistance to work against.
Its mighty handy when things get a bit out of shape though :)

It is 31.6

Its ok, I did it last year, organisation is a bit hit and miss, parking is definately an issue, we were miles away, and we werent that late. And just had to park half in a ditch at the side of a fire road, and walk about a mile to sign on (in hindsight we should have jusmped on the bikes and rode to signing on, but there was no indication of how far it was !) and by the time we realised it was touch and go whether we got to the start in time.
All said and done though the course is good and pretty tough, very hilly. We got fairly luck with the weather condidering the time of year, but as you are riding on a purpose built trail centre for pretty much all of it then ground conditions are less of a big issue. Was a bit indifferent as to whether we will do it this year

I have a an X9 groupset which I was going to migrate over to my Zesty soon. Having plans to build my other bike with a new 2×10 X0 or XT and swap the full 9 spd X9 groupset to the Zesty. Surely Lapierre wouldn’t design a frame which is dedicated to Shimano shadow types only.
In respect to the carbon guard I was planning to just space it out as necessary.

Mine goes over the top, it was how it came
will email you a piccie, (although mine is a 2010 bike, I doubt its changed)

5 mm Allen key, some long nose pliers (to pull out the nylon / delrin bushes) and a dab of loctite blue and a torque wrench was just about all I needed for re-assembly

Ah, research error, I thought there was one main 3 day event

Did mine recently, pretty easy. the nylon spacers come out pretty easy, and presumably if yours has a lot of wear and play the almunium spacer will push out easy

Nothing silly steep or technical, just blasted it round Llandegla, cant say it was quicker uphill than my epic and guess I could have got my epic downhill as quick, but there would have been a lot more drama trying to do so.

Rode a mates Titus rockstar for a couple of hours at a trail centre recently. Very impressed. But then It was my first proper 29er ride, so dont know whether it was being imprssed at 29er or that specific bike. Its been built up pretty light mind. (about 26-27lb) stable and safe, yet covering the ground at a deceptively swift pace.
The rebadged on one frames are a grand

if the saddle gets uncomfortable only after 5+ hours it’s unlikely to be the saddle at fault. get the same saddle they are great.

Couldnt agree more, if a saddle starts to get mildly uncomfortable at the 5 hour mark, then I would buy the same one again and again because its obviously the right one for you. Gobi’s are ace

Not saying that’s you though OP

No problems, people do the strangest things. Na I am in the engineering industry, and work in engineering design amongst many other hats, so whilst I am no Adrian Newey, I feel I understand the principles of most engineering.
To be honest this is the main reason why its confused me as there is so little that can go wrong, othre than the cam not seating and then settling or the nut on the other side loosening which is highly unlikely. My only thoughts are if the brass liner on the concave section is too high friction and grabs the cam as it closes down before it settles in its lowest position. Never had this with any other QR

In the instructions it says that all brass bearing/bushing surfaces MUST be coated in grease and maintained to remain clean and free from dirt

Cant remember every greasing, worth a try

Would make a good dancer though

A 29er would dance like my dad !
A 26er would dance like my 8 year old nephew after too many tizers !

But at 11pm my dad would still be dancing in the same dismal way, my Nephew would have gone too far had a smacked a**e ended up hurting someone and been sent to his room. So I guess the similarities are there too

If its your one and only bike, then fun and playful is important, if you have it as your marathon event bike and have something else for hooning about on then thats different.
I doubt many people do a marathon event for same sort of “fun” as going to the local trail centre with your mates after work on a Friday.
For me the “fun” of a marathon is improving your relative performance, the buzz of covering the ground faster and in particular arriving back at the event village an hour earlier than your mates, being stood there freshly showered with tent packed away and clean bike in the car, giving them a shout out whilst already drinking a cold Heineken as they cross the line. Now thats the fun of a marathon ;)