I used to have an S Reg one in reddish blue with a large spoiler on the back and a few minor modifications, basic inside but a great car to drive and probably the best car I have driven on wet roads. I think I had it 2 or 3 years and no problems at all in that time. Unfortunately it was stolen by our house being broken into, then a few weeks later used in an armed robbery, that sort of put me off getting another one!

I had mine done about 15 years ago by Ultralase, no issues at all so far and no need for glasses.

I have just bought a five month old diesel car. My hands were a little bit tied as I get a car allowance from work and one of the conditions is that it has to be diesel. Given the car is pretty much as new and it was well discounted I am more than happy with the purchase. Most of the driving I do is typically 100 mile runs on the motorway so a diesel engines makes a lot of sense, from the research I did the equivalent petrol engine returned nowhere near the same mpg. It is a large hatchback, it if was something smaller maybe petrol would make more sense? As a company we run a lot of company cars, most do 20k+ miles a year, due to fuel costs every car is diesel, currently with petrol cars the sums just don’t add up for us.

This thread has inspired my to take a look at my PBs from a few years (also 2003) ago:

2K 6:32
5K 17:26
10K 37:02
HM 1:19.01
M 2:47:22

I just used it as something to stay fit on at the gym, although I did get a bit addicted for a while… I was always a few kg too heavy to be a lightweight. Just like on a bike I was much better at long distances.

I still occasionally go on a Concept2 when I am staying in hotels. 2K nowadays is probably about 7:20ish.

Agreed, and the traffic is terrible too. If you have a longer stay The Philippines is great, but for one night I would find a hotel as close to the airport as possible.

That gave me something to think about over lunch time. I just made it to 50, but I had to separate Male International Airport with the Male air taxi airport. I also might have missed a few random one in Europe that I have been to with work.

1. Heathrow
2. Gatwick
3. Stanstead
4. Luton
5. Manchester
6. Glasgow
7. Newcastle
8. Guernsey
9. Agadir
10. Casablanca
11. Marrakesh
12. Tangiers
13. Sharm El Sheik
14. Hurghada
15. Marsa Alam
16. Malta
17. Gozo (helicopter)
18. Larnaca
19. Corfu
20. Budapest
21. Vienna
22. Bologna
23. Basel
24. Palma
25. Ibiza
26. JFK
27. Washington Dulles
28. Bangkok
29. Phuket
30. Dubai
31. Manila
32. Colombo
33. Male – International
34. Male – Sea Taxi
35. Hong Kong
36. Tenerife
37. Gran Canaria
38. Fuerteventura
39. Larnaca
40. Paris CDG
41. Frankfurt
42. Madrid
43. Antalya
44. Tunis
45. Malaga
46. Amsterdam
47. Milan Bergamo
48. Stockholm
49. Kiruna
50. Munich

Originally my Bolt was paired to a 5s and I didn’t notice any delay in the response of the app. If anything it was surprisingly quick. I could change the fields on the app and the Bolt would have updated before I looked at it. I would agree that it did seem to drain the battery, although the battery on my 5s was slowly failing.

I wouldn’t be without one. It only gets used a few weeks a year, but when it is needed it is great. In our last house I fitted a fairly cheap B&Q one, in my current house I have a slightly more expensive Westingham one. The Westingham fan is really quiet, to the point that on setting 1 you can hardly hear it.

The same thing flew over Mountain Mayhem at about 1am this morning. Sounded really loud from inside the tent.

There in a team of ten. The team is made up of parents from my daughters school. A total mix of riding ability in the group, although we have found a good runner for the run. We are there for a bit of fun, no chance of getting near the podium. We will be the ones with hundreds of kids in our camping area.

Missed it last year, which was the first one I have missed for about ten years. Looks like it should be a great weekend.

I have the 170TDi engine in my A5, I had the emissions fix a few months ago. I can’t say I have noticed much change in performance. I think I have noticed more regens going on – I can only tell when parked up and the engine fans keep running – not sure how often it happens while I am driving.

Rubbish free gifts from Audi when I had mine done. Some sort of stick down boot organiser – which doesn’t work in my car as I have a boot liner, and one of the coat hangers that fits behind the drivers seat – no plans to fit that to the car. When they rang me to make sure I was happy with the service I did say it looked like they had just left some unwanted rubbish from the service department in my boot and would they like it back, they declined. I would have been happy with a key ring.

I bought one of these last week. Wiggle had them in stock briefly. In the sunlight it is clearer than the Garmin 800 it replaced, the black and white screen gives better contrast. However I found the LEDs hard to see in sunlight, they work great for a turn indicator – except on a sunny day.

No issues with the LEDs being used with the HRM function, seemed to work fine.

And it has been used for Mountain biking as well. Seemed fine, and I was surprised how many local trails are shown on the map.

Yes I can be on Discord for the race. The current code for the BRT Discord channel is MERzGN

BRT have 12 riders in the race tonight – should be entertaining!!

I will be the one at the back, main goal is not to be lapped!

I could fit 4 on my BMW 1 series. On a Passat Estate with slightly wider than normal aero bars I managed to squeeze three bikes and a skinny roof box for a drive to the south of France – if it was just bikes I probably could have got 5-6 on there. Spinning the bars by 90 degrees makes fitting them close together much easier.

I did most of it in a day a couple of years ago, I didn’t do Skyline or the Rookie trail. Route was : Penhydd, Wall climb, Whites descent, Blade, Whites climb, Wall descent, Blue Scar. I only stopped when I passed my car in the Afan car park to grab some more bottles. that ride took me about 6.5 hours and 85km in total.

This seems to be common when the other party admits fault straight away. My car got reversed into by a friend of friend last year, he managed to wreck the drivers door and front wing on my car. He immediately admitted liability to his insurance company. They were great, they rang me up straight way, had someone out to assess the car, and sorted me out with a equivalent hire car (mine is an Audi A5) while mine was in for repair. Basically it lets them fully control the costs of the claim.

At the time of accident I had told my insurance company that I wold be making a claim, although I hadn’t progressed it. When I renewed the insurance on my wife’s car it got flagged up that I had an outstanding claim on the insurance database. I had to go back to the other parties insurance company to get them to update the database to say that I hadn’t been at fault, or made a claim. All sorted in the end, but would have been easier if I hadn’t informed my insurance company….

I have also benefited from free tools after a service. Checked under the bonnet when I got home and found a huge screwdriver left by the side of the engine cover. It is a decent screwdriver and is still in my tool box. I always empty anything of value out of the car before it goes in for a service, I also have a dashcam, so if I can be bothered I can check what has happened to the car while they have had it – to be fair every time I have checked the garages have always been very professional.

When I had a VW I was always impressed with the dealer as they would leave a full bottle of screen wash in the car if they hadn’t had to top up the screen wash when it went in for a fixed price service.

And never get a free valet when the car goes in for a service, a great way to ruin your paint work.

Thanks Nick, although if it isn’t life changing I am not sure I can be bothered with the hassle of reprograming my setup.

I guess I have the old battery as mine groupset is about two years old. I am not sure if I can see the benefit of it, but would be interested to hear the feedback from anyone who gives it a go.

My daughter has 24″ Crest rims on Hope hubs on her bike. I had an old set of Hope hubs sat spare, so the cheapest option was to build them up with Crest rims. With tubeless Rocket Rons, they make a very lightweight wheel set.

This thread has reminded me that I had one of my wife’s old frames in the loft.

I built it up as a spare race bike for her a few years ago, but it was rarely used. It is in good condition with just a few small marks in the frame.

15″ BeOne Karma frame (I can’t remember the weight, but I remember it being surprisingly light)
Reba SL forks – these haven’t been used for several years so would probably need a service.
USE Sumo seatpost. Used on several bike before.
Ritchey cranks 170mm (3 speed but I am sure could be single ring). These have also been used on a previous bike.
The other bits on it are probably obsolete as it is 3×9, and I am sure the Avid brakes are dead, as they were never good to start with.

£150 collected. I live near Frimley.

Let me know if you want any more details.

I have a pair of the Cosine wheels (hopefully) being delivered tomorrow. I wanted a cheap set of spare wheels to save me having to swap tyres when I want to take my road/cx bike on off road rides. For the money they were the best I could find. The wheels look to use Novatech hubs which my other wheels use, and I have been happy with. I just have to see how the rims stand up to light off road duties.

I have just got my Lefty back from TFT. It was starting to get a lot of oil on the stanchion, I sent it in for a service. I got a call to say the top of the stanchion was badly scored and would need to be replaced… Very happy to find out that the fork has a two year warranty, so it was all sorted out FOC. A small amount of oil doesn’t appear to be anything to worry about, but any more could be a problem.

Time for some new shoes:

http://www.fizik.com/r1disc/

Does anyone know if these fit on the normal Garmin quarter turn mounts?

LB rims on mine. I got them to build the wheels on Novatec hubs with a solid rim bed, so go up very easily tubeless. 2 years later and still going well. Mainly used on the road, but occasionally sees some off road action.

It depends on the brick. B&Q and Wickes stock some common ones. Post a picture of the bricks and I can probably give you an idea of how easy it will be to match.

18 laps of the volcano for me this morning in the 7:15am KISS ride. I should have carried on for the 25 lap achievement, but have other things to do this morning. Hopefully going for an outdoor ride later.

I will be giving the KISS C race a go tonight, although trying to take it easy as I have been suffering with the lurgy for the past week or so and don’t want to over do it….

I have a free account for my son. Easy to setup, just create him an account and then send a message to Zwift and they will send you a code to make it free once the trail expires. My lad only goes on if it too wet to ride outside, although occasionally takes part in a slow group ride on a Wednesday evening.

Anyone on EVR Europe tonight?

I was there, but I was just taking it easy as my legs still felt a bit tired after a race on the Mountain 8 course yesterday. I would have done a group ride, but none at a suitable time, and I always find Richmond a bit boring to ride around without a target. Cruised around for most of the race, and went flat out on the last bit.

Just to agree with the comments above about fluid trainers. I used to use a Cycleops Fluid 2 trainer, and compared to the powertap rear hub I was using on it the resistance varied as the fluid warmed up. It was very noticeable after a hard interval. I don’t think they will ever be consistently accurate on zpower.

I might do the ZTR race tomorrow, I don’t think I have done the Mountain 8 route before, although I have done the Pretzel a few times before. On the climb just remember to save a bit of energy for the final climb to the radio mast!

Rotor make ramped oval rings. My wife had some to try out for a while (on a 2×10 drive train), the main issue she found with them was that the shifting was slow. I spent ages trying to get them work smoothly on her bike, but the interaction of the chainrings and the front mech meant they would only shift in one position in the cranks rotation, and wouldn’t always shift on the first attempt. On the road a few people seem to use them without problems, but they didn’t seem great on a mtb.

Well done on the first race, it doesn’t get any easier.

A few things affect the descent. If you are in a group, or even sat on someone’s wheel you will descend quicker, so it is worth making the effort to get in a group before a long descent. This might mean a big effort to bridge a gap, or even easing off slightly to let a group catch you. In your case the lady behind was probably just slipstreaming you down the hill. The frame and wheels will have an impact on overall drag, so impact descending speed. And the tuck position seems to descend quicker, I think it is over 60kmph and 0w to trigger it.

On the London course always try to get in a group on the flats, and then 100% effort on the climbs.

That was my goal this evening dc2.0. I managed 08.21- just pipping me old Zwift racing nemesis Jason

Good effort. I have managed to do 8:22 twice now, I might have to put a bit of effort in next time I ride up there.

Zwift have recently had $25 million of investment, hopefully some of that money is going towards better infrastructure. By the looks of it zwiftpower would benefit from some of that money too.

In the past the team at Zwift have tried to stay away from the racing side of things. I think they feel that it could potentially cause conflict between them and and their user base. For example I could imagine people asking for a refund of their subscription as they were beaten in a race by some one with a dodgy power reading. I would say that the group rides are still more popular than the races.

It is funny that Russ Downing has a DQ from the As for not wearing a HRM.

I am not sure how many of the results are correct. I just looked at the Strava Flyb-by of my ride compared to a team mate and it looks like we started a couple of minutes apart, but we actually rode the first 10 minutes or so together.

I logged in early and it was all going well for me. Although I guessed there would be problems when people started not being able to log in. I got a good start in the Cs, went over the reverse KOM in the lead group, we managed to increase the gap on the group behind on the middle flat sections, a few riders started disappearing as we made the left turn to the forward KOM, everyone then disappeared for me as I went over the bridge for the climb. I just rode solo to the finish. The riding solo to the finish was a bit like KISS races in the old days, when numbers were small and it often ended up as a TT effort.

My ride didn’t upload to Strava either, and wasn’t in my Zwift account. It was stored on my PC, so uploaded from there.

Hopefully Zwift can sort this out. I think this is the third time it has happened on big rides they have promoted.

I am also doing the KISS race tonight. I will be in the C Race as ‘J.Robinson BRT’ It should be fun, the figure of 8 course also leads to some good racing. As the race is split into 4 seperate events I am sure Zwift will work fine.