They often run up to three convoys at along the same route at slightly different times two are decoys one isn’t.

they would seriously kick your bum for messing with them wouldnt they!

They are not “mr happy” if you mess with them, and yes all weapons ARE loaded and I would imagine their rules of engagement are somewhat looser.
Even the most rabid of protesters won’t tangle with them which says an awful lot.

That will be Buckets of instant sunshine on the way up to HMNB Faslane..

as in http://www.nukewatch.org.uk/spot.php

Loading up the subs to hunt russian bear then…

edit
D’oh heading south its could be an empty convoy or returning with warshot to be services at Aldermaston

I seem to have a speck of sentiment in my eyes that’s making them leak… 😉

Tell Nicolas that that’s a REALLY sweet ride

I’m 47 and my thoughts are more along the lines of what is my next bike, not my last bike.

+1 and ditto to the above and the 47yo bit too

RocketDog… you forgot the rules of THE GAME:

“He who dies with the most toys bikes wins”

I thought I was going for a sort of rakish Musketeer stylee Aramis / Athos look but I keep getting told it more sort of “jesusy”… humph! 🙄

Looks like he had an issue with thinking ahead on 3 counts

1)his riding
The longer video demonstrates to me that the knobber’s effectively ‘racing’ the bike in front, got past them then to demonstrate how brilliant he is and how big his willy is and that ‘slow in – fast out is for pussies’.

Basically he couldn’t see the corner for the redmist.

2)the legal implications

I’ll give him some due for putting his hands up and saying I was a dickhead, but if I was him I’d have only posted the accident if I really must post anything about it and not the incidences of white line fever well beforehand, or actually in reality just STFU about the whole incident, chalk it up to experience and learn a big lesson from it.

3)the financial implications

Wonder what his insurance company will say about this admittance.

Peter,

I found that but it looks like I boobed the link in my post thanks for picking up on that.

Yeah it does make you wonder when STW keyboard warriors go silent… 😕

We have seen stent wearers (for example) returning to run 50miles and beyond

When my second stent was inserted (over the top of my original*) it literally felt like (to draw an automotive analogy) somebody had unblocked a fuel filter to a carb and I could open the throttle full again, weird and surreal sensation but very welcome.

*and with this I got very, very lucky as the heart tissue in that area was already damaged by my previous MI so the 100% occlusion didn’t do that much more damage, in need to dig out my discharge letter but it was about 1% loss of heart function.

Er…. I’ve just had a twitter message to contact ITV News Desk, looks like someone in the media has picked up on this… ulp 😯 I’ll keep you posted.

Who was the rider in Swinley SixFootTwo? is there a name? So far I have Steve and Brian (Messiah).

Just spotted this too http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/rider-down-in-clwyds-n-wales

and this which may or may not be related but sounds like a collapse

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/rider-down-leeds

and this

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/a-work-colleague-died-last-night

and this

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/chest-pain-how-worried-should-i-be

and this

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/chest-pain-how-worried-should-i-be

and this

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/chest-pain-how-worried-should-i-be

and there is mention in here

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/i-dont-want-a-fag-i-dont-want-a-fag-i-dont-want-a-fag

Are we starting to see a trend emerging here?…. and that’s just from THIS forum only going back 6 months and using fairly restrictive search terms! Take into account that STWers are a tiny proportion of the active population … nobody mentioned the tri-athletes, joggers, footballers, rugby players, marathonists, hill walkers, swimmers, canoeists, rally drivers (know a few cardiacs there), etc etc etc… 😯

Folks we are dropping like flies out there… never mind bloody motorists killing us off on anecdotal evidence we are doing a fairly good job ourselves.

Glad this thread has had some effect.. 😛

As an electronics / electrical engineer I’d say I was the Asian chap, what tends to happen is that I spend the bulk of the time explaining the laws and fundamentals of primary school physics to the marketing and sales genii ….

Oh and I’m not as diplomatic…

The best meetings are the ones where the client bring along their expert, normally another engineer and we spend most of the meeting looking at each other with increadulous looks on our faces and talking slowly to the sales and marketing children to who think that Ohms law is merely a guideline…..

+1 to the possessive female thing over their partners hair, wtf is all that about?

Been thinking about this, I think we owe it to Steve and Brian to start some type of awareness campaign, their deaths and my post have bit a nerve here and I’m stunned by the response, but I haven’t got a clue how to go about this? I opened my metaphorical gob first so I’m happy to put the time in, help would be appreciated, anyone any experience of this and how you get the ball rolling or is it as simple as open some social media accounts (FB & twitter for starters) and start pestering the media?

Anyone mentioned “pure mountains” … Ex Innerleithen / Glentress guides now relocated to SN really nice folks who offer stunning accommodation…

But that’s cos running is for people who can’t ride a bike.

Or whose bike is broken… Stw is an all inclusive forum despite handicaps

That was Ingi Gudmundsdottir

That’s her, just found her name on my discharge letter, I thought at the time it was an Icelandic style patrinomic as in Ingi daughter of Gudmund.

Really nice lass and very, very competent and so was the rest of her team, I forget the name of her boss at the Freeman, I’m assuming she was a senior registrar in April last year.

As ever, I love how STW makes the world seem a little bit smaller.

I now have the weirdest sensation that an STWer could have been near me with sharp objects* Legolamb 😯 😯 😯 and what is more worrying is that I don’t know whether that statement is a good thing or a bad thing

*I could have been pricked ….fnnnaaaarrrrrrrrr 😛

Jock (or any other statin takers), can I ask if you’ve had problems with depression since starting the statins? Personal question I know but I am really in a dilemma over statins.

Tricky one that… yes I have suffered from two bouts of depression since starting on statins BUT

the First bout was after my this is apparently fairly common due to the “oh gawd I nearly died” syndrome and the psychological impact of having had a heart attack. For this I ended up in therapy and on anti-depressants.

The second bout gradually crept up on me after I had my second stent inserted 10 months ago (the stent not the depression) and I was persuaded to start back on BetaBlockers and ACE Inhibitors. Around early November I noticed I was struggling with motivation, feeling down, listless, struggling to ride any distance, getting really cold, etc. Due to a cockup with prescriptions I went without meds for 10 days mid december-ish and noticed I was feeling far better motivation wise (you can see this in my strava activity) and not suffering from feeling the cold in my feet when out. Back on full meds and the symptoms came back again fairly rapidly. The circulation issues pointed the finger (for me anyway) at the drugs that affect circulation i.e. the ace inhibitor and the betablocker so I knocked them on the head and the issues went away.

I’m on a very high dose of statin and I have NO ill effects bar the occasional fatigued feeling which as I’ve said is readily cured by going for a ride.

From my own experience and other anecdotal evidence I am firmly convinced that a lot of the reported side effects of statins is probably due to the fact that they are commonly prescribed alongside medication that has similar side effects or magnifies the side effects of the statin.

I suspect that if you are healthy (yeah I know), active and well motivated then I suspect that starting statins should have little or no effect on your physical or mental well being.

Can people please stop peddling this conspiracy theory guff about statins. It’s bad for my blood pressure.

Statins saved my life and continue to do so… side effects are negligible in low dose. I’m on a very high dose and have built up tolerances to them, the only one I notice is fatiguing occasionally which I cure by EXERCISE which without the statins I would be unable to do.

back on track

PeriPeri coated Grilled Chicken breast served on a bed of cous cous with peppers, tomatoes etc.

Or Jamacian Jerk Grilled Chicken served on a bed of rice & peas

+1 for porridge as a go get em fuel for the day

I also agree that we have a bit of a “one size fits all” attitude to treatment and rehab (although it’s based on good evidence) after a heart attack, although again I hope we’re getting better at individualising (is that a word?) things nowadays.

Totally agree with this, and yes from my experiences far, far better at individualising care nowadays than ten years ago. I can’t fault my care, particularly when my second stent was inserted at Newcastle’s Freeman Hospital which (being honest) is a bit of an angioplasty production line when you look at it, you’re in one day, job done, you’re out the next. BUT BUT BUT The staff are brilliant you are made to feel like you are wrapped in cotton wool – real individual attention. When they discovered I was a cyclist I was moved into a ward next to a chap who had been a semi-pro road rider which was superb. The surgical team was excellent, they spent a lot of time with me before the op. The Scandinavian lass (think she was a senior registrar) who performed the Angioplasty was just great – as was the rest of the team, yes you can feel stuff going on inside you which is a bit weird, I didn’t realise she’d finished till she leant over and said “there you go, you will ride again soon” and I just burst into tears. She said it was nice to “fix someone who could really make the most of what they had done”

Legolamb

If there is a narrowing building up, you’d think that cyclists would get some warning symptoms, whereas a couch potato wouldn’t notice until the narrowing was so bad that the person got symptoms walking around the house or at rest. Does that make sense?

Yep it does, I did get the warning signs and interpreted them correctly the second time around and took action immediately – thus my second stent – and funnily enough if you work in the North East my notes may have passed through your hands!

BUT

The first time around I had a fair chunk of the symptoms (i.e. Angina) prior to the MI but they were masked by Musco-skeletal pain. I have severe wear C6 & C7 probably due to the forces that were exerted on my neck and spine as a stage rally driver and navigator – I regularly used to be black & blue the day after an event on my collar bones and pelvis from being thrown into the harness, and that was sat in a made-to-measure seat with 3″ wide Willans multipoint harness. This didn’t include the numerous times that I was in a car that left a stage at high speed and hit something solid (I’d far rather be in a roll-over, the bulk of the accident energy is taken up in overcoming a low centre of gravity of the car). It was only in later life that I started wearing a neck brace as pictured below which made a major difference (to the point I used to lecture everyone on wearing one!).

My left shoulder suffered multiple dislocations after we burst my door catch a mile into a 24 mile stage – I hung onto the sodding thing for the rest of the stage so every drop or bump pulled my shoulder out of joint, you are on such a MASSIVE adrenalin high so you don’t notice it.

What I’m saying is that all of the angina pain I was getting prior to my MI could be accounted for by previous injuries, the thing that foxed everyone was that my blood pressure was spot on even when I was having the bloody MI! And my pain was unrelated to heart rate or exercise too, the week before my MI I’d ridden the red at GT three times and navigated on a tarmac rally 5 days before with NO ill effect, yet sat in a sodding meeting and away it goes.

I did get checked out poked and prodded but in the years leading up to my MI due to my lifestyle, age and fitness level, medically I simply wasn’t considered a risk. The one thing that was never conducted was a simple cholesterol test which would have shown I had issues. I now know that for me if I get sharp almost electric shock type shooting pains into my jaw that’s THE warning sign for me.

Someone mentioned recovery, basically there is very little advice out there about what a “fit” healthy and active person does to come back from a heart attack, all the advice is don’t over exert your heart (thus the crack about take up bowls) I was advised gentle cycling only if I must. The advice is aimed at the statistical bulk of MI victims who tend to be older, more sedentary with poor-ish lifestyles.

IMHO It’s not the health professions fault as up until about 10-15 years ago blokes (you know what I mean) who were closer to retirement age than birth age didn’t throw themselves off mountains or run marathons or cycle 120 miles or if they did they had been doing it all their lives so they were all ready fit. I think we are still a statistical anomaly in general terms, but as more people take up active and very active sports in later life then we are seeing more an more of this form of problem.

I think there does need to be some form of awareness campaign coupled with a study of how a “cardiac” athlete recovers from an MI, particularly the effects of BetaBlockers and ACE inhibitors on recovery in younger people – for me those two drugs were just plain wrong, they virtually crippled me and that was on a very low dose, in later life if I get a bit more sedentary then we’ll see but hopefully that won’t be for a long time. I’m happy to be a guinea pig and I’m sure others here are who are in similar boats, just as long as you don’t make me run on a cardiac stress test as my knees are booboo’d too 😛

The key point is never assume historical injuries are all that the pain you are feeling is, I did, the medical profession ten years ago did (I stress NOT their fault) and I (we) got caught out. Second time around the medics were more aware of these types issues but then I had history and was by then in the right age bracket.

Have you in the last 6 months say had crossbar/saddle to testicle contact at high speed?

It can take months for a swelling to appear if you have damaged your veg!

Happened to me, didn’t connect it shat myself when I found the lump, was in blind panic till I saw doc, ultrasounded cyst diagnosed, doc said has there been any blunt trauma in last 6 months, 3 months previous I’d had a crossbar/testicle interface issue but discounted it as I hadn’t had any swelling immediately.

All OK, try not to fret.

Exactly….

You cannot tell by looking at someone what their cholesterol is…. I have a superfit mate (actually nicknamed the Bombay Racing Snake) who is so skinny he makes a Biafran look chronically obese and his would be through the roof if he wasn’t on statins – he got his checked due to my MI.

We have a mutual mate who is your typical fat lad, been a tubby laddy all his life – weirdly he’s fit as a butchers and on a good day can outpace me. his cholesterol is through the floor, he gets the full MOT once a year due to another family condition and has done a cardiac stress test with not even a blip, he can regularly max out at 190bpm and not even blink, his resting is something like 45BPM.
He works a very physical job all day (forestry) and rides 100 miles a week. He likes his food though and a LOT of it but its all fairly healthy stuff. His weight is totally stable at about 19st, his BMI is off the chart but his GP say that for him, his body type it just must be what his genetic mix has made him. He’s tried loosing the bulk but can’t, he just gets really crabby if you don’t feed him.

Washing up properly…. seriously how can you clean dishes hygenically with a minging washing up bowl. Pre-wash (rinse all the crap off) too… so you don’t turn the dishwater into hospital canteen soup.

Doors….. dooors ….dooooooooooooooorrrrrsss yip the exploding door thing, yip the not pushing handle up to engage the draught seals properly and yip the slamming on the catch…

ours is currently totally f’ked and requires a complete overhaul according to the maintainence chappie on friday as its had years and years of abuse to the point the whole frame is loosening… Not all our bloody teenagers BTW thank gawd we’re in rented at the mo.

Mine was;

don’t teararse down very narrow singletrack (i.e. a tyre width rut) and attempt to look at the scenery at the same time, it hurts

😛

Saab has started production again…

http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/new-saab-9-3-production-starts-latest-pictures

I don’t know how Jock got on a bike three days after an angioplasty. For two weeks my balls were like this

That’s because they went in through my radial artery rather than the femoral!

It still blows my mind that this tiny little scar (the pale one about an inch above the freckle) is all that’s left of the access point to my heart – ha I suppose you could say that they found the route to my heart. Will say that my arm did ache for about a week after the radial artery does get a bit stretched when they insert the catheter.

One small point

unfortunately the NHS treats all heart attack patients as if they are pensioners (which to be fair most are)
That’s not true unless it’s a left you in a really bad way.

Drac please don’t get me wrong, my criticism is of one small part of the system NOT the standard of care.

I cannot fault the level of attention and care lavished on me by NHS staff at (for MI #1) Earlston Medical Practice, The Borders General Hospital, The Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, and for stent #2 Marine Medical Group in Blyth, Wansbeck General Hospital Ashington and The Freeman Hospital in Newcastle. The technical competency of the staff is above and beyond professional. Basically I would best describe it as like being wrapped in cotton wool.

The point I was making (badly) is that the NHS aftercare and drugs regime is (of course) based on years and years of study and experience with previous MI patients. These patients are predominantly male, aged 60+, tend to lead fairly sedentary lives with little exercise. So when a 37yo Adrenaline freak bounds through the door then the system just goes “does not compute”

Early onset MI amongst adrenaline sports participants is a relatively new phenomenon but it is on a steady rise in these last ten to fifteen years. BUT the advice is geared for pensioners or the chronically obese – they are statistically the bulk of the patients. After my second stent last year I was offered fitness coaching sessions at the local health centre by the regional cardiac rehab team, working on the principle that I always have something to learn and that these guys will tailor the exercise to me.

Walked into the first session and it is only a mild exaggeration to say that I was either half the age or half the weight of the other participants. The staff taking the session were slightly incredulous when I went to sign in “are you sure you should be here?” (I was stood there in summer lycra roadie kit having cycles down) “yup” says I “cardiac rehab” … I lasted 20 seconds into the first exercise “walking very slowly round a gym hall” before I said nope not for me, the staff completely understood. I explained that I had been expressly assured that these sessions were ideal for me I got the response that “fit and active to a 65yo in SE Northumberland means being able to walk from the pub to the betting shop and back via the chippy!”.

Anyway they were brilliant and they sorted out subsidised gym sessions complete with a trainer for 6 months which was brilliant, they said the funding was already there for rehab for me.

As I was saying the system is geared to the bulk of the patients they are seeing. The drug regime is predominatly prophylactic designed for the appropriate standard of fitness and medical condition of their “joe average” patient. Despite my blood pressure averaging 120/60 and my resting heart rate averaging 50 bpm since my MI ten years ago I was still prescribed medication to lower my blood pressure and heart rate.. because that’s the STANDARD regime, its not the NHS systems fault I’m a statistical anomaly to the system…

What I’m reading from you guys is that the standard approach of the Medical Profession is to prescribe pills, the system (i.e. standard practice) does not take into account the fact that a patient is young enough to make them selves better (particularly with regard to blood pressure, heart rate) and the very medication they give to make you better actually almost totally inhibits your ability to exercise – basically because it’s geared to a 65yo average bloke who’s doesn’t exercise really, who isn’t that sexually active (yeah these drugs really affect that).

I have had to battle my GP and my cardiologists to get these drugs (Beta Blocker and ACE Inhibitor) removed from my standard prescription list, they kept arguing that the results spoke for themselves in showing significant long term benefits for patients … my argument was that these bulk of the patients didn’t notice the side effects due to their age but to me they were ruining my quality of life. I proved then right after 6 weeks off them that my heart rate had actually lowered and my blood pressure had stabilised at 120/60 by the simple fact that I could exercise properly and efficiently.

Any hoo …. long and short I cant praise the NHS staff involved in my care enough but the system is a tad inflexible.

To lots of people having a heart attack is a death sentence (metaphorically and in reality) to me it was a life sentence… which is a double edged sword

life sentence in that I’m committed to taking medication for the rest of my life and the inherent side effects, when I exercise I wear a heart rate monitor so I don’t max above 170BPM. and.. and this may be slightly morbid – I know what is probably going to kill me in the end.

but

life sentence in that I have been given a second chance so I’m just going for it. My prognosis is good-ish long term, I know that my life has probably been foreshortened by a significant amount, my heart is damaged, one area of heart muscle is damaged beyond repair (gene / stem cell therapy may fix this but its still experimental). But if I stay fit, take the medication then there is no reason why I cant continue doing everything I want to.

After my MI I went through a significant period of depression and paranoia, I underwent psychotherapy and was prescribed anti-depressants.. those were just props. The paranoia is insidious though every time your heart skips a beat or beats hard you panic, every time you have a twinge in your chest you think … is this it.. but you get through it, you realise that this is just normal, your heart is just a muscle it’s not an atomic clock, it does all sorts of weird stuff. The breakthrough for me was kicking the anti-depressants into touch seven years ago, since then I’ve never looked back.

BUT what I have developed is healthy paronoia and I get regularly checked out… the biggest lesson I learned was not to ignore the aches and pains from the sports injuries,,, my left shoulder is mince due to a motorsport incident (I effectively “carried” a rally car door for 24 miles popping my shoulder out of joint every time we hit a bump) my neck too is fubar’d due to rallying accidents so there is constant low level pain exactly like angina. I undergo a cardiac stress test every year where they drop me on a running machine, wire me up and try and induce an MI by making me run! last year they picked up an abnormality and they discovered that the original stent I’d had inserted (a stent is a metal spring type device that opens a blocked artery up) was furring up. They whipped me in and inserted another stent in the same place, I was back up and on a bike 3 days later.

Anyhoo I’m forgetting where I’m going with this.. .point is even if you are diagnosed with a problem its not the end of everything for me it was the beginning.

Simple solution to that…

Yeah take beta blockers and ACE inhibitors…. that un-mans you really quickly

Sorry coranary artery disease sufferers joke there

A song of Fire and Ice series by George RR Martin

aka Game of Thrones

rattled through A game of thrones in 36 hrs never seen the Tv shows so I’ll wait until I’ve read the lot then dive in.

If you are into fantasy then I can also reccomend the Belgeriad and the Mallorean by David Eddings or the Pliocene Earth series by Julian May

So, what is the main cause of high cholesterol?

Diet/Lifestyle is the main

Being a bloke ramps it right up

or like me you have an underlying genetic predisposition to it check your family history, if all your blood relatives shuffled off this mortal coil because of cardiac issues and / or strokes then you can take a fairly good bet that you are a ticking time bomb

Yeah I forgot high cholesterol is also bad for strokes too, same underlying reason that arteries get furred up and then a clot or a chunk of glop from your artery breaks off and blocks an artery in a vital place. i.e. heart attack or stroke

Yep you can get square taper push fit BBs specifically for this issue but finding them is an issue, I’ll have a dig about, it’s a german firm that does them

whilst drunk

And there gentle peeps lies the heart of the issue

oh and

Have just got back from a century so walking is difficult let alone bedroom gymnastics

lie there and let her do the work!

Not just men either.

True Bunny but having dangly bits between your legs increases your risk factor of cardiac problems by an instant 50%

This is tragic, tragic news.

If its the latter then you need to be looking at something like this as a bare minimum.

http://www.screwfix.com/p/dewalt-xr-dcd785c2sf-gb-18v-1-5ah-li-ion-cordless-combi-drill/22732

If it’s the former then either will do.

What are you using it for? The odd shelf erection and minor DIY or will it get day in day out hammering as part of your job?

Wow 😯

Inspirational

Coffee, a couple of ‘nanas and an apple today. Porridge & yoghurt most days. Fry up at least once a month.

Tend to skip lunch if I’ve had porridge as it really does keep me fuelled till late afternoon. trying to stick to around 1600 calories a day at the mo*

*failing

I normally use a facial wash first rather than shampoo, its got more antiseptics/anti bacterial gubbins in it. Then conditioner after rather than shampoo. But then my beard is fairly short (1-1.5″) and staying that way.

The critical bit I have found is washing the soup strainer at least three times a day (normally after meals) otherwise I get horrendous infected spots in the fuzz.

Small Firm… 5 employees – there is your strength. Basically imagine what would happen if you all said “f..k you” and you all walk out together… how long would the company last?

Point this out and if they don’t budge, start firing round your CV’s and/or seriously look at going it on your own with the rest of your workmates. If you have been working leaderless for 2 years then basically the company is you five, the knowledge and experience is there.

The biggest issue you have is solidarity, had a mate who was in a similar position years ago but ended up being singled out as the ringleader when the rest lost their balls.