My girl did something similar last year for her 8th birthday, she wanted a ‘top model party’ so we built a red carpet runway in the garden, friends in the trade did hair and makeup we hired loads of dresses and I took the photos and printed them out for them to take home, all the kids loved it and most of the mums! If you think it’s ‘weird’ then I think it says more about you than them.

I run in Salomon Sense Pros for hard packed trailed.

+1, use them for a mix of road and dirt and they seem fine.

Longest run to date is 67 miles without too much hassle.

-1 for this bit though!

Similar thing happened to me once when I got passed by Chris Boardman off 5 minutes in a 25, the speed differential was depressing.

I used to ride that course a lot and it’s not the most pleasant place to ride, but it is very quick especially if you get a slot when the ferries are unloading. Judging purely from that video the cars and lorries were giving the riders a lot more respect than I seem to remember, helped I’m sure by Wiggo having an outrider.

The easiest way would be an IF statement, cell H252 would contain;

=IF(F252=”burk”,”that’s me”,””)

then for the second part, cell H558 would be something like;

=IF(F558=”burk”,H252,””)

That’s a little unfair THM, as I assume you are aware the SNP promised in their manifesto to abolish all student debt, I’m sure they will get around to it some time, maybe after their child care reforms.

I’m planning to relocate back to the UK without a job. Eek!

I’m relocating back to the UK at the end of the month with a job after 5 years in Holland and still bricking it slightly nervous!

On topic, I moved a few times around the UK with work and it’s never been a horrid experience (Sheffield and Bristol) – it takes a while to make friends, but on the flip side you have the opportunity to socialize with people that you choose to rather than guys you knew from school / uni etc.

£40 of brake work and he expected his threaded headset adjusted for free.

and he’d been quoted it for free so I didn’t charge

He was asking for something he’d been quoted – hang him, hang him high.

When I were a lad there used to be a local road race league (just checked and it’s still running; East Yorkshire RR league) It was on a week night, the race was usually around 30miles and was handicapped into 5 or 6 groups. It was great training and a good introduction to racing before jumping feet first into crits. I have no idea but don’t other areas have something similar?

I’ve always had good stuff from these guys;

http://www.drill-service.co.uk/Tools.asp?Tool=020520000000

I normally buy drills (HSCo or Carbide), mills and reamers but would assume their masonary bits are of the same quality.

It depends how extreme a family pootle is, I use my commuter or mountain bike regularly with normal SPDs and trainers and can’t remember having any slippage related incidents.

Er, no. I was referring to staying with her for that long on her marathon, which as just pointed out is just over 16 minutes for a 5k.

She would have dropped me in the first 5k on Sunday (17 something through the first 5k)after missing heaps of training and she was ‘jogging’.

I can’t find what the splits are but I’m sure she had sub 5 min miles in there. That’s FAST

It was mentioned in commentary that she was one of the only women on record to have run a sub 5min mile in a marathon.

I leave the EPO and HGH talk to the haterz – she’s a legend in my eyes and they don’t come along that often in British atletics.

We had membership when we lived in the UK and never really tried to justify it in terms of savings vs. supermarkets, some of the things were cheaper but overall we just thought the price vs. quality was better than the local supermarkets. We bought the usual bulk stuff, loo rolls, razor blades, nappies, washing powder (Kirkland stuff – which is generally pretty good), meats, tins etc. I loved the fruit cake and if you take a tray of the muffins in to work then everyone comes to your Monday morning project meeting! The lamb and mint shanks were great for emergency roast dinners and the birthday cakes were great value for money.

There was a pair in our kitchen the other day when I got up (must have flown in thought the window), my daughter thought it was the funniest thing in the world when I told her. She did get a token telling off later when she said nonchalantly “theres some old tits now dad” when her mum walked in!

The Netherlands. Just a big flat field

The Netherlands and Belgium are brilliant for cycling off road – obviously the majority of cyclepaths are “off road” and there is a massive trail network (certainly in the south). My local loop is 70km and the only time I go on a road is to cross over, the rest is all off road – I could easily extend that by adding in other loops. Where I am it’s flat and more suited to 29er hardtails than 6” enduro rigs of course but over into Limburg it gets pretty lumpy.

Here’s one from tonight, I think bugs look amazing up close;

I did it once, when I was a lot younger and more reckless. About 5 miles from the finish I had 30seconds and was flying (averaging almost 20mph probably) lights started, barriers came down, I saw the train in the distance and weaved through. About a mile down the road a police bike pulled alongside and I was politely requested to ‘retire with a mechanical’ or else accompany them to the station.

It’s going to be interesting at PR, some of the onus should be on Etixx to make the race hard enough to hurt Kristoff but Sky always seem willing to pick up the pace early and unless the Wiggins plan is a huge bluff they’ve already shown their hand so may find themselves up front for a lot of the race.

The problem I see for Wiggins is I think he can only win one way because I don’t think he could out kick any of the Etixx lads and certainly not Sagan or Kristoff, which means gambling all his race on trying to get away inside 10k – they all know that so will sit on him for as long as possible.

The saving grace might just turn out to be Thomas, he obviously has the form to be in the front group at the end so will be able to support Wiggins into the final 10k and possibly even put in some attacks which Etixx can’t just watch, I think he will be Skys highest finisher.

I’m going for Stybar though – he’s been on good form so far this season but seems to have been playing second fiddle to Terpstra and he had a relatively easy time of it at Flanders. I think he’ll get his chance this week. That said, Sagan seems to be getting better each week and he seems to have the knack of being in the right places when winning moves go he’s also one of the few who would be confident to go into the velodrome in a small group and might be able to get over Kristoff, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he was involved.

Nope engineering is manufacturing.

Manufacturing is a branch of engineering of course, but the proposition that I was responding to was that because you can’t manufacture the parts in your garage then the engineering must be impressive – that’s not so. I engineer lots of parts that I couldn’t make myself, it doesn’t mean they are always ‘impressive’.

What you’re describing is doodling on the screen aka designing. And you won’t be able to find someone who can knock up a working cassette using that pin construction from a cad drawing.

I work with manufacturers day in day out that could easily produce that cassette from a set of engineering drawings. Producing them in volume at a marketable price is the tricky part.

I don’t see what’s so unimpressive about the engineering there – lets see you lot knock one up in your garage

I think you’re confusing “engineering” with “manufacturing”. It wouldn’t take long to knock up a model of the cassette in CAD and find someone to make one for you. It would cost significantly more than £115 though.

A related anecdote which is of no help whatsovere to the OP but shows that things could have been worse!

I used to work for a company where the HR director accidentally sent a spreadsheet containing every employees personal information including home address, phone number, national insurance number, salary details etc. (I.e. all of the information necessary to ‘clone’ an identity) to everyone within the corporation. She managed to survive the incident but did have a few months off due to a stress related illness until the dust settled. Appraisals were interesting that year!

Another factor which might make it look expensive is that the Dutch typically camp for a long time, 3 or 4 weeks at the same place, so will get a discount, the sites don’t really want someone staying for 3 or 4 nights tying up a pitch that could otherwise be on long term rental so the advertised price is often high.

irelanst what was your itinerary ?

We’ve lived in the Netherlands for nearly 5 years now – so no itinerary, just some of the places we’ve had trips to. In terms of a base, somewhere like Duinrell or anywhere in the Wassenaar area would leave you well placed for day trips to pretty much anywhere except Groningen or Maastricht.

I think if I was planning a trip, I’d head over to the eastern corner first, around Valkenburg so you can take a spin up the Cauberg. Maybe pop over to Aachen or to Liege or some walking in the Eifel parc (there’s some hills honest!). Then head over to the west coast maybe stopping at s-Hertogenbosch on the way. Then just do day trips from the Wassenaar area.

We live just outside Eindhoven, don’t go there, it’s the Dutch version of Milton Keynes.

Are you saying “Europe’s biggest waterslide park” = Duinrell? If you are then you might be disappointed! It’s OK, we’ve been a few times but there are only 5 or 6 slides and a wave pool. Outside there are some roller coasters and other rides. OK for a day but it won’t blow your socks off.

Places worth visiting;
Kinderdijke for the windmills (handy if sailing into Rotterdam)
Nemo science museum in Amsterdam for the kids
Volendam for Dutch quaintness
Scheveningen for the beach
‘s-Hertogenbosch for the river trip and some shopping
Baarle-Nassau, to be able to go from Holland to Belgium to Holland to Belgium in a few strides.
There’s a nice (if small) zoo/safari place at Tilburg
Every supermarket for cheap beer!

I chose boys names, Wife chose girls names, we had a girl, Niamh seems perfect.

Dingabell wins the internet, why would anyone want anything but Profiteroles

In fact there’s evidence that lying in bed too long increases the risk of a stroke.

I can say for certain that if I wake up at 4 (which I do most days) then there’s a good chance of at least one cocoa stroke

All the information about bolt head clearances is here;

http://www.roymechx.co.uk/Useful_Tables/Screws/Head_Clearances.html

I fish, and like most people who do have never received a fishing related gift from anyone that has been even remotely useful.

The boring answer for actual fishing stuff is consumables like line, hooks, flies etc. but as you don’t know what type of fishing that’s a dead end.

I would suggest either a decent warm hat although that can be tricky because I would never replace my ‘lucky fishing hat’ or maybe a thermos flask?

Suede – although they did have quite a long run and have just reformed according to wiki. They do gain bonus points for all of their former members going on to form other bands which were the darlings of the music industry before disappearing shortly afterwards into thin air.

In the time honoured recommend what you own fashion: Promise Smartstor for me.

I bought the external hard drive, never got round to it, and now have potentially lost all my photos of my kids from birth to now (5 years) as the laptop hard drive died unexpectedly.

Try hooking the dead drive up to a Linux box – boot the laptop into Linux if necessary. I got most of the info from a dead drive that way when Windows wouldn’t even see it.

I went through similar mid-life crisis marathon a while ago. I wasn’t as bike fit as the OP but was riding regular social rides and jogging a couple of times a week. I decided at Easter to run an autumn marathon, and my target was 3:15. I was running 3 or 4 times a week on a similar schedule to the FIRST plan mentioned earlier. The biggest hurdle was injury management – I had plantar, achilles tendonitis and problems from a pelvic break that hadn’t bothered me before, so beware running puts a load on your body that cycling doesn’t.

Due to a number of factors (illness, and weather mainly) I missed my target with a 3:27, but planned to run another in spring and try to get closer to 3:00, that didn’t happen due to biking off resulting in broken ribs and wrist a few weeks before the race. After that I decided to run Eindhoven again and trained hard. I put riding (and life to some extent) to one side, ran with a club 3x a week and put plenty of long runs (30km+) in on a weekend, I was basically running 30miles every weekend but split over Saturday and Sunday. I ended up with a 2:59 but it was hard work. I’ve only being sub 1:30 once and that was the first half of the marathon, I’ve been <65 for 10 miles a few times though which is comparable I guess.

Most competitive club road runners I know tend to use their 10K times as a yardstick to judge themselves and others by.

That’s because competitive club runners I know only run marathons after they get too slow to be competitive at 5k and ‘retire’. I agree that 10k is harder in lots of ways than a marathon; (unless you’re Elite) a marathon is a 22 mile club run followed by 4 miles of hanging on, a 10k is a suffer fest from gun to tape, although maybe not quite as bad as a 10mile TT.

I didn’t know they existed before looking but now I need an oak fishing rod stand!

I think the mens race will be fairly tactical, having a team mate up the road helped Ferrand-Prevot, so given the depth of the Belgians I’m going for Van Aert. It would be great to see Nys up there for one last hurrah though.

I found the “classroom in a book” series very good. Most of the commands are similar from version to version so you don’t need the latest issue.

I was out at the weekend and it was a bit nippy but there was some a woman walking 2 huskies which had puffa jackets on – they must have been cooking.

My wife and daughter have tried a few times to buy ‘outfits’ for our dog but I’m really against it. Firstly, she’d rip it to shreds and more importantly she’d probaby strangle herself running through brambles wearing anything.

I’m caught in two minds on this one;

Firstly there’s a young lad in my club who’s 13 and ran a 1:40 half marathon a few weeks ago. He’s a very good prospect, regional champ at 1500 and he’s kept in check by his dad who’s a very, very good runner. So I wouldn’t say 10k is too far on occasion if it’s steady.

The flip side is why does she want to run 10k? I’m not sure of the distances of the races she runs, but 12 year olds here would typically run 1500-2000m for a cross race so 5km for a long steady run seems more than enough to me, and quick intervals like 200 to 400 repeats would seem to be a better fit in terms of improvement.

Edit: I guess the crux is what went wrong in her trial? Did she keep in the lead group and die in the final ¼ or did she lack the basic speed to go with the leaders or was it a tactical mistake?

Thanks for the PSA OP. I checked the Dutch Belkin site first to see if I could save some postage costs but the cheaky so and so’s want €35 for the shorts (apparently reduced from €70) vs the UK site which was £20 reduced from £85. So ordered from the UK site and shipped to my mums.

I suspect an electrical contact would probably have carried on working for much much longer

But lets not let facts and anecdotes get in the way of suposittion and ignorance on the internet, ehh?

:wink:

Not bikes, but by far the most common failure in industires I have worked in are electrical. FWIW I like DI2 but don’t see any need for wireless. If you need to connect component A to component B the most reliable option is always a fixed hard wire if it is possible.

3yr old Beagle/Cocker cross here. On the bike I limit ours to 20km which will be at as fast a pace as I can manage – she can do more though and if it’s slow going or we’re on a family ride then we might go further. Running she’ll happily run as far as I can (she’s only trotting at my pace), so comes along on Sunday morning runs which are up to 35km and she’ll still want a walk after dinner.

What amazes me the most is that she knows the way,even on trails we rarely ride.

A squirt of WD40 or paraffin will help. Do you have a drill press rather than a tap wrench? It will take ages manually (failing that I’d chuck it in a battery drill).