When you go and have a friendly chat with them you could take them a smoke buddy and ask if they’d mind using it. It’s a hand held filter designed to be exhaled through to reduce the smoke and smell. Or if you don’t want to talk to them about it perhaps a fan next to the window is preferable to closing it?

I had a TentBox for a couple of weeks a few years ago, bought direct. Used it once at TweedLove, it leaked in not particularly bad rain, I returned it. The return was agreed with the owner, a guy named Ollie. When I arrived at the warehouse at the arranged time he was nowhere to be seen. Eventually I found a guy who worked for a different company but shared the warehouse space who let me drop it off. He said the Ollie was never around on that day of the week and that he’d seen a few returned. Then I had to chase to get the refund processed. A poor, overpriced product sold by a badly run company. Would recommend avoiding.

In Oxford, Hamblin on Iffley Road do excellent cinnamon (and cardamom) buns and Proof Social Bakehoue in Kennington do great cinnamon rolls, which are also sometimes available at other Tap Social venues in town.

Not all the videos say the same thing – same with coaches actually. I guess it’s trying a few of the things out and seeing what works.

I think this is an important point: a good coach will help you correct whatever you’re doing wrong, which will be different for different people. What they tell one person might even be counter productive for someone else, so reiterating what one was told in a coaching session might not be helpful.

Having not ridden it for a few years I was going to explore Yair on my next visit to the area, but after the helpful advice above I’ll give it a miss. Does anyone know what the new trail off the start of No Social is like?

The Strava heatmap for bike vs foot is interesting. Around where I assume the slab is: a) both those on bikes and foot are taking various lines b) the trace from bikes gets very faint, imply most walk it or go slow enough for their GPS to cut out.

I have little to compare it to, but I’m very pleased with the 1zpresso Jx Pro. It’s our only grinder and is still like new after a year of being used 3+ times daily, including camping and music festivals. Easy to clean and very easy to adjust. Both mine and ImpatientCow’s grinding muscles must have developed over the year as it seems much easier to grind now than it did when we first got it. Overall time to make a coffee is no longer than for an automatic if you’re grinding while waiting for the machine to heat up or water to boil. Would recommend.

Interesting question. The shares won’t be in your name, so I’d expect at best option 2. There may be complications if you invest in none UK stocks which are held by a foreign custodian that isn’t covered by the FCSC.

I haven’t told Virgin yet, but I’m considering a similar switch to YouFibre. If Virgin can drop their price I’ll likely stay with them, especially as they do cheap(er) O2 mobile contracts if you link your Virgin and O2 accounts. But I don’t have (or want) a TV package (which would favour Virgin) and I don’t need fast uploads (which would favour YouFibre).

The bit towards Monmouth that we don’t talk about was in great shape on Saturday. Didn’t even need to get changed to drive home. Some logging happening, so ride it while you can! Old Red is already gone, and judging from the notices pinned up I don’t think Billy’s or Rusty Cable have much time left.

If you ramp up and too much more or too much more hard stuff too quickly you’ll only end up knocking yourself back again with illness.

I’m slowly learning this at 43. Applies across all activities, i.e. you need to balance the gym work with the cycling. I’m finding it helpful to slow down the progression, compared to 10 years ago. So I’m programming 21 weeks at a time in the gym, rather than 4, and I’ve recently started using the adaptive training in TR to try and stop myself pushing too hard.

I use the ‘lose it’ app and typically try to work on 1700 net calories a day. So more exercise = more calories but I’m probably in a small deficit at 1700. Intend to weigh a lot of food as it’s very easy to eat more calories than you think and burn less during exercise than you think you do.

I’d recommend having a look at MacroFactor if you like tracking what you eat. It infers your energy expenditure from what you’re eating and what you weigh, which they claim is much more accurate that trying to figure it out based on estimates of calories burned by particular activities.

Has anyone found an ultra soft super trail 29″ MM in the wild recently? Can’t find anywhere with stock.

It doesn’t offer a return of 11%, it offers a fixed annual coupon of 11%. That 11% is based on the face value, rather than the market price you’d currently pay to buy it. On maturity you get the face value back, if you still hold the bond. Basically you’re loaning the company money and being paid the coupon in exchange for the risk that involves. Your investment isn’t guaranteed: the issuer could go bust. It’s just like buying shares in that respect. Corporate bonds aren’t a scam but the person, presumably your broker, who it trying to sell it to you isn’t representing it particularly accurately.

Edit: at least that is how the corporate bond that the Co-Operative offers works. The person you’re in contact with could still be trying to scam you.

I use Boldking razors, which I’m happy with but haven’t tried anything else for a few years. I think their main advantage is that the blades are quite spaced out so they don’t clog as easily as some others.

I’ve recently modified by technique as follows, which has helped with irritation: shaving with the grain, I start near enough to the edge of the hair line such that each stroke finishes outside of the hair line, rather than what I think is the more typical technique for shaving the face of start at the edge and working in to the beard.

We should all have black boxes fitted to all cars all the time period.

If black boxes were required in all cars then there are other possibilities for how they could be used:
– average speed checks enforced everywhere, all the time (assuming sufficient GPS coverage etc.)
– congestion data for satnav companies to buy, and for the government to use for road planning

An older Bird Zero AM, if you can find one second hand?

Which is why the advice is to save into a pension AND an ISA. Draw down the ISA between when you want to retire and when you collect your pension, then draw down your pension when that door opens.

Totally agree. I was just addressing the point that the earliest withdrawals from your private pension isn’t usually a detail of your particular scheme, but dependent on the state pension age.

Only if you will be dependent on the state pension topping your private pension up, otherwise it is up to the rules of your scheme when you can start drawing from it.

Not true in the UK. You can only access private pensions from at most 10 years before you’re eligible for the state pension.

The Worx Hyrdoshot is great for carpark/layby bike cleaning. Amongst my riding group there are a few items that an increasing number of the group own having seen how well they works for others, and this is one of them.

Probably not your problem, but make sure that the bike is “in gear” when it’s put away. I’ve had batteries drain over night and (more annoyingly) in the car when I’ve accidentally knocked the gear shifter when putting the bike away. When this happens you can hear the mech impotently ticking as it tries to change gear.

IANAP, but I’ve found that hip hitches help when I have similar issues:

Why You Should Consider Adding Hip Hitching To Your Clients Programmes

The last line of the study:

“In conclusion, this study found an overall modest protective effect of the bivalent vaccine booster against COVID-19, among working-aged adults. The effect of multiple COVID-19 vaccine doses on future risk of COVID-19 needs further study.”

As mentioned by Edukator on the thread you started but has since been closed, reduction of infection severity and morbidity is/was the goal.

I’ve not bought or sold anything with them, but they were great to deal with when I put down a deposit on a bike that didn’t turn up during the great bike drought. They buy and sell second hand bikes, and also sell new bikes:

https://projektride.co.uk/

I’ve you’re happy to drive to ride then you’ve also got the trails at Badbury Clumps near Faringdon about 30 minutes away. Short but fun jumpy DH lines. For ‘proper’ riding I’d head to South Wales. Risca is about an hour and 15 minutes along the motorway.

I know people who have written their own for the Paris marathon without issue. When I did it years ago by GP provided a letter, but he was also a runner and had an interest in sports medicine.

The bead hook on the Rotae lever is brilliant:

https://www.rotae-tech.com/tyre-lever-set

And they’re a nice company too. I was an early adopter and they sent me an extra set for free once they’d scaled up manufacturing. Both sets still going strong.

We fit two commuter bikes in the 3 bike police approved one. They fit comfortably, but it would get tight with 3 in there. Internal footprint is only 1725mm x 807mm, so I think you’d struggle with 3 modern 29ers.

On the security front I’ve always thought an angle grinder to the hinges would be the easiest way to attack one, but it would be noisy.

Giro DND or 100% Brisker most of the time, depending on the temperature. If/when it gets really cold I wear a pair of primaloft mittens over my riding gloves to get to and from the trails, and on the climbs.

Following up on this, does anyone know what’s up with the fences at the bottom of Mynyddislwyn? I’m guessing it’s an attempt to stop motorbikes going up?

Thanks, sounds good then. Only need a trail or two to include in our loop on Saturday.

Perhaps it’s the fitness watch equivalent of a choke collar. Were you eating cake at the time?

Worth it for me just for the heatmaps. Interestingly I can’t find a link to it from the global heatmap from the main page, but it’s here: https://www.strava.com/heatmap. I think you can see it with a free membership, but only at a fairly low resolution which is less useful for sniffing out off piste trails. The heatmap in the route planner is a less bright version of the main global heatmap, so I often cross reference them an manually plot roughly where things are. Also useful to overlap both the global and personal heatmaps on the route finder to spot new trails in familiar areas. All that said I don’t contribute my data to the global heatmaps. That can be turned off under privacy settings (at least on the web interface).

Delicious, but probably not the ideal post workout snack: not much protein and a lot of fat which will slow down the absorption of the carbs. But like I said, delicious. And do you even need the ideal post workout snack?

I considered a Clash but ended up with a Transition Spire. Very happy with it, although it’s more ‘enduro’ and less ‘park’.

I got the Patagonia Altvia 22L this summer and it’s probably the best pack of it’s size I’ve had, including various Osprey models. Good amount of packets without going over the top, and works well whether full or half empty.

it wouldn’t have had the same effect at all. the only way to have the same effect would be to have a 60% rate but only from 100k-120k (or thereabouts), then back to a 45% rate.

Which is what I meant: increase the higher rate, leave the additional rate alone. Apologies if it wasn’t clear.

Hunt missed an opportunity to simplify the income tax rules yesterday: when dropping the threshold for the additional rate he could have also increased the higher rate from 40% to 60% and done away with the personal allowance taper. Same effect, easier to understand, but likely even worse headlines.

everyone always builds them as gaps not tables… but why

I think in general it’s because doubles require a lot less earth to be moved than tabletops.

It really helped with my sciatica. Not painful at all. You know that fizzy popping candy? It felt a bit like that, but in the muscles.

This is a nice and boring 90min Z2 workout:

https://whatsonzwift.com/workouts/zwift-fitness-ftp-challenge/endurance-odzwifters-z2-90-mix

The 15 second sprints every 10 minutes, combined with Netflix/Youtube, make it tolerable for me. ODZwifters have a bunch of good workouts that you can download from Whats On Zwift. All straightforward VO2 Max, Sweet Spot or Z2 intervals without the usual rainbows of many Zwift workouts.