Another +1 for the Adidas Terrex Trail Cross shoes. Son has them and they are standing up well to his abuse. Despite the name, they are designed for MTB (pedal side of each shoe is constructed differently to the outside to keep laces away from chain etc).

The problem cycling has is that drug taking was embedded into the culture of cycling all through its history, whether it is alcohol to dull the pain on the tour or amphetamines. Some of the glorious heroes of the by-gone ages were openly taking substances which today would be banned in competition.

So a sport with a long history of doping has a lot to do to get its culture entirely clean.

Froome is clean until a test proves otherwise, as are all other pro cyclists. If being the best at a sport immediately makes you guilty of doping there’s not much hope for the future is there…

I take the simplistic view that all sports participants are clean until they are proven otherwise. Makes life a whole lot simpler!

Cross country running races are often timed by hand with c. 300 runners crossing the finish line within about 5-10 minutes of each other. Hand timing and hand writing the results shouldn’t be too challenging for 30 or so riders, with a synchronised timer at the bottom and the top.

No-one mentioning good quality insurance? It might be a pain in the rear to have to replace bikes, but at least if they are insured well you don’t suffer all the pain.

I’d call your current home insurance provider and explain – and see what they’ll offer, and what security they insist on. I know my home policy was simple enough to extend to my own garage for the only bike we have which is >£1000 value, at very little cost and with very little requirement for specific security. But we live in a low crime postcode, not everyone has that luxury.

Every security tool known to man can be overcome by a criminal with the right tools, so I’d be making sure that in the worst case scenario you get your money back.

Bike specific policies will probably cover the bike away from the insured location (i.e. at a friend’s house) provided it is secured to an immovable object with an approved lock.

So I’d start with the insurance side first, and then address whatever physical security you need to comply with their requriements.

First priority is to check the insurance status of your bikes at this temporary location (either under your policy or under your friends).

29er is 110mm, 650b is 120mm. Looks like the 2016 frame is identical to the 2015 frame, just some minor tweaks in the components up the range.

Son bought himself a Nerve AL 6.0 (i.e. the 2015 model) just under 12 months ago.

Seems fairly bulletproof and keeps a smile on his face.

One of the pivot bolts has occasionally worked a little loose, but nothing a quick tightening can’t sort.

As some of the reviews have said, could do with a clutched rear mech. The wheels on the new one look like a small upgrade (CrossRide vs CrossOne) compared to the 2015 model.

No other issues of note (none that we know about anyway!).

Unless there is something we don’t know about, the frame is the same for the £1199 model as with the £2,599 model so its simply about components the higher up the range you go. The only addition made to my son’s has been a Reverb seatpost which he’s worked hard to fund and is really enjoying the use of.

In an ideal world, he should probably have tried to afford the Spectral for the longer travel, but it was out of the budget range. 120mm is working fine though.

Do you not let deaf people ride bikes in your world?

I distinguish between those who choose to prevent themselves from hearing ambient noises and those who can’t because of medical issues.

The former I consider to be actively doing something which is contributing to an increased risk of accident, the latter have no choice so make no changes to their risk levels.

Do you not consider being able to hear traffic to be a benefit for a rider trying to be aware of their surroundings? I’m sure those with hearing impairments would, in the grand scheme of things, prefer to be able to hear vehicles approaching if they could.

Surely this just panders to the roadies who cycle with noise cancelling earphones in – gives them a false sense of security that they can be warned of cars approaching which they’d know about if they took out the earphones.

And imagine using it on a commute – it’d be on permanently!

I can’t remember ever being really surprised by a car overtaking me as I can hear them coming.

What forks are on that Kona colp? And what size frame? I’ve got a 7 year old who is in line for a Christmas bike. It might be too big for him, though. I’m in Frodsham though, so handy!

One of the many problems with kids is that it seems to me that you can’t expect them to fit their bike properly for much longer than 2-3 years. I bought my 12 year old a Spesh Hardrock 15.5in bike, and now he’s on a Canyon Nerve in the largest size aged 15!

Unless you’re kids are going to be the next superstars of the MTB world, or unless they have some issue which means they are physically weaker than average (which one of mine is) then a bog standard Rockrider bike with “good enough” components on it will be more than good enough for them.

They are unlikely to complain about any of the things an adult might complain about in terms of their bike until they really “into” it.

We’ve got the Rockrider (well, couple of years ago model anyway). Yes, it is heavy. But that doesn’t appear to bother the average 9 year old (he’s had it since he was 7 I think). It’s robust, works fine, and is cheap enough over a couple of years to be considered entirely disposable.

Those second hand options do look great value for money, but I couldn’t resist the lure of being able to give a brand new bike for his birthday.

Having said that, for another of my boys for whom weight of bike will be an issue, we spent the money on a Frog 62 instead, and that is paying dividends with his cycling.

Son uses one of these – feels fairly strong, folds down nicely.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Steel-Folding-Foldable-Camping-Shovel/dp/B002JTLKKY

It’s a flawed policy when taken at face value.

The idea was to encourage cycling to work. It does no such thing for the vast majority; all it does is encourage existing cyclists to purchase a bike close to £1000 which they might not have bothered with if the scheme hadn’t been in place.

The whole thing needs reorganising as either “every tax payer can buy a bike from their pre-tax earnings because its good for the overall health of the nation” (i.e. no bureaucratic rules about ownership etc) or “we’ll let you buy a bike tax free if you actually use it to travel to work on for a decent proportion of your working week” (which will never happen because of the bureaucracy involved and the workplace disputes).

As it stands its just a mess; yes, of course, it can work very well for some people and organisations, but it has grown into something unnecessarily complex.

Decathlon?

OK, so Nevegals as a good option as similar to Rampages. Thanks for the steers so far!

Knowing nothing about the specific qualities of these things, I’m surprised that the usual suspect tyres haven’t been mentioned (e.g. those from the Schwalbe stable etc etc).

What “sort” of tyre was the Rampage (or is the Nevegal), what are they suited to etc etc?

I’ve put a set of those on my 9 year old’s bike and it’s OK, but pushing the lever forwards is a little tricky for small hands.

I much prefer the Shimano Acera style ones which came on my other son’s Frog 62.

Two of my boys have complained about their hands getting sore using twistshift grips, though I can’t remember whether these were Sram or Shimano ones.

Delamere?

Just to add, the whole thing was surprisingly straight forward to do, even cutting down the hydraulic cable (stanley knife, fresh blade, workbench and a few trial snips on some of the excess cable). OK, so I did push out the lever (and the associated fluid) when winding it back on, but even then refilling with oil was stratightforward with the syringe.

Balooning not an issue as it’s a stealth one. But that makes sense.

Didn’t need to use their clever cable clamps as the bike already had such items attached ready for the reverb.

Sorry, no haribo.

Would have been nice for Sram to put info in the box, but hey ho.

Thanks!!

So £196 instead. Not quite as cheap, but not bad.

idiot, scratch that. Just realised I bought the non-stealth version!!!

Just paid £173 for new from Alltricks incl delivery. 125mm / 30.9mm / 380mm. Bargain?

You need to know what the standard working hours for that full time role are, and whether they apportion things for term time only or not.

Some roles (e.g. teachers) are 1.0 FTE even though they “only” work during term time. Other roles (e.g. support staff, classroom assistants) are often shown as working c. 0.85FTE even though they work “full time” in term time.

Surely the best people to ask would be the HR department for the school / local authority?

a horse riding crop

Does that get much use ;-) ?

Sometimes if there is some poor GPS data on the segment, e.g elevation, Strava bods will delete it

Elevation data won’t be poor on a segment as Strava uses its own database of elevation profiles.

Stoner – yes, if they were travelling in a vacuum towards the earth, then they would travel at the same speed. But mass (inertia?) overcoming resistance in the form of all the friction forces etc that a rider will encounter descending a non-vertical surface is important. And the potential energy stored by an object at a given height is higher for a heavier object.

Roll a pingpong ball down a slope against a squash ball or similar. Which gets to the bottom first?

Interesting table on female cycling power outputs here:-
http://forums.teamestrogen.com/showthread.php?t=13750

In athletics, the rule of thumb is that female performance for an equally talented and fit athlete would be 11% slower than the equivalent male runner.

I suppose in pure “power” terms, a female runner is going both slower and has less mass, so her running “power”output would be even lower than 11% deficit (perhaps assume 20% – 11% slower and 10% lighter?)

At the top of a DH track, a woman clearly has less “potential energy” if her mass is less than that of a male rider, so even if she rolled it down with zero pedalling, she’d be slower (assuming identical lines taken etc). Add that to the fact that the power output should follow the model above, and I think you’ve got the answer.

Some of plusnet routers don’t allow you to set DNS via the web interface, you need to do it via a command line telnet session, which not everyone will be up for!

e.g. http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,125187.0.html/

Is there a list of the organisations that offer Enduro in the UK (for the remainder of this year plus next)?

I’ve found the minienduro.tv site, Ard rock and Welsh Gravity. Are there others?

Mine are inconsistent – same brand on same size chains, but one pair are a persistent bugger, and one pair are finger light to remove.

I was lambasted for this suggestion made on other forums, but I’ve got some links which pop easily with barely finger pressure, some which take a little persuading, and some which are absolute buggers to get off.

With the final category, after a 5 hour window of trying absolutely everything I knew of at the time (incl pliers, WD40 cleaning, pressing them together, mole grips) I tied a shoe lace across the rollers, formed a loop, put a spanner in the loop and twisted and twisted until the force of the lace pulling together popped the quick link.

Other methods might ultimately have worked better / faster (e.g. I’ve seen and subsequently used a technique of balancing the link on the large chain ring, and tapping the top / side of the link with a light hammer a few times – seems to work fairly reliably), but it was nice to have come up with a novelty way of doing it, and for me, in that circumstance, it worked so well that I’ve kept it in my memory banks as a potential technique for the future. And as at least one possible option roadside with few tools available, I thought it was an experience worth passing on!!

I definitely think that for kids bikes, having neater welds is perhaps the least important thing worth paying good money for!!

He holds his bars funny – my 6 year old holds them like that too.

How will I know when I like nadge? And is it something I should do with my wife?

I can’t believe it is right, but the Carrera Abyss in 24in is showing as 16kg!!

btw, I must point out that Chris is wearing his mum’s waterproof in the photo as we managed to forget to pack that for him! He’s not usually so effeminately dressed!