@thenorthwind

Kielder 101… that’s a blast from the past! I could be mis-remembering, but I think it was you I was chatting to on one of them at that point in the back half of a MTB marathon where you seem to have been riding forever and think it might never end.

Yep, that was me. Fueled by pork pies, that 3rd place is genuinely my greatest achievement! Feels like a lifetime ago now. Happy days.

Sausage rolls and mini pork pies got me round the Kielder 101 all those years ago (7 hours ish I think). Needed proper food after a while as jelly babies etc just wouldn’t sit right. I think you need some decent protein as well as carb for that sort of ride.

Thanks everyone. Looks like the blue it is.

Jamesmio – we will be there at the weekend so still time! I am day 2 post release from covid too and looking forward to a nice wee break (as we had to cancel our half term break last week due to the pesky virus). Fingers crossed I’ll have the energy be able to tow the 4 year old on the uphills!

Thank you :-)

Do you think green or blue would give us the best bang for our buck? I’m likely to only be allowed one of them as the husband will be holding the baby

Hopeful bump?

I towed my then-3 year old around the Glentress blue and green trails – the smiles and whoops of delight on the downhills were worth the price tag alone :D

Come northwards and we can pedal together slowly and talk shite in short sentences. I’m on mat leave from 12/6 and have just invested in some giant cycling shorts in the vain hope that I might actually go on my bike before sprog 2 arrives.

(Secret confession – I occasionally try to sing along to songs when on the turbo to gauge where I am exertion-wise as my HR zones are a bit wonky at the moment too. Singing might be marginally more socially acceptable than muttering under your breath as you cycle the Yorkshire lanes?)

I think it’s going to be really difficult to work out your true HR zones with the double effect of both long covid and beta blockers. The latter will really mess with both your resting HR and your max HR (probably in subtly different ways which I won’t even pretend to try to understand).

The fact that you weren’t dying at 181bpm would suggest that it’s not your max though. The only way to calculate it properly would be to do a proper test (e.g. ramp test or similar ridiculous challenge) that clearly isn’t a good idea at the moment as you recover.

Would keeping to a perceived exertion scale be a better idea? There’s a pretty high correlation between perceived exertion and HR zones and it’s probably “good enough” for your purposes of fitness and recovery. On the original Borg scale (6-20), you just multiply the scale by 10 and that should be your HR (roughly).

In my professional capacity, I often tell people that they should be aiming to work hard enough to only be able to speak in short sentences, but not so hard that they can’t speak at all (or just single words). I’ve actually got no idea if this has any scientific basis but it seems like a reasonable level of activity for most people. I’ve tried to adhere to it myself during pregnancy and that level of exertion does seem to correspond to a zone 3 workout on my HR zones.

OK, so I’m an actual cardiologist but usual caveats apply with regards to taking advice off someone on the internet etc. See your GP +/- a real life cardiologist is obviously my first piece of advice.

Benign ectopics usually occur at rest as per tpbiker’s experience. They should go away on exertion. You didn’t say whether you got palpitations during your ride when you nearly collapsed? That episode might be unrelated to your ectopics but clearly needs investigating a bit further.

My advice would be to gather as much evidence for the GP/cardiologist as possible. Write down or commit to memory exactly what the near collapse episode felt like – what you were doing beforehand, how the episode started and ended, and how you felt during it. Take along your HR monitor readings – especially as you say that your HR didn’t go as high as you would have expected during the episode.

You’ve probably bought yourself some ambulatory heart rate monitoring (the walkman device described above) and maybe an echo (ultrasound) scan of the heart as well. Investing in a device to monitor your heart rate and rhythm can be a double edged sword – it could be the only way of catching an episode and documenting your heart rhythm, but could also be a significant source of worry for you. Only you know which is more likely!

If another episode happens, have a feel of your pulse if you can and document its rate and whether it feels regular or irregular. That’s low-tech but surprisingly helpful for us. If it’s a prolonged episode, go somewhere that can record an ECG while you still have symptoms (GP, walk-in centre, A+E). If you feel unwell – 999.

Hey Ahsat. I’ll send you a 12.5h recording of my almost-4 year old chatting away without pause for breath for every single bloody second that he’s awake ;-)

Your knowledge of obscure dinosaurs would certainly increase, but you’d be longing for that silence after about 20 mins!

I don’t think my son will let me put the house without it! He loved being able to go further and faster

The Towwhee was a big success round Glentress! We did Blue Velvet, BBB and the full green route with no major dramas (except a big tank slapper through some mud whilst towing him 😳).

It works!

We’ve only been up and down our street but he got the hang of it straight away. And he’s so light that I didn’t really notice the extra effort (at least on short stretches).

Many thanks all. It would be exclusively used on uphills as he’s managing to hold about 8mph on the flat and upwards of 15mph on slight downhills, so that’s quite fast enough!!

I’ve bitten the bullet and bought one via MacRide. It’s been dispatched so I’ll report back ASAP with any hilarious tales of catapulting 3 year olds

Thanks. He’s actually really good at braking – he had one on his balance bike and mastered it on that before we moved up to the pedals. But I definitely don’t want to put him off cycling when it’s been going so well.

My understanding is that his bike is too small for a Trailgator?

Ours is a bit older than yours (3) but we had a really enjoyable week in East Lothian recently. We stayed in a cottage on Carfrae Farm – really well set up and the owner brought round the digger and the tractor for our toddler to marvel at one morning. It’s close to excellent beaches, the Flight Museum, Dalkeith Country Park and East Links Family Park.

We bought our midget son a Woom 1 balance bike. Hadn’t heard of them before but they had the lowest standover height of all I looked at, plus were light and have a back brake. My son has been zooming around on it for ages now. It’s so stable because it’s got a noticeably longer wheelbase than others I’ve seen. Not cheap and haven’t seen any second hand, but now we’re seriously thinking about getting the Woom 2 pedal bike 4 months after he started on the balance bike properly (if he’d just grow another couple of centimetres!!).

A colleague who works in the acute medicine department of a large hospital told me that she’d only seen one paracetamol overdose in the last 3 weeks, when usually there’s at least 2 or 3 a day. Put it down to the panic buying of paracetamol by everyone else.

Unfortunately, she’d seen some ODs on some weird and wonderful stuff that’s previously only been confined to textbooks (although not quite as nasty as a proper paracetamol OD).

Sit at 90 degrees to your child and put one leg across their arms/chest to pin them down. You then have 2 hands free to change the nappy.

Or, Super Simple Songs on iPhone. Our son was proficient in unlocking the phone, finding the app, and searching for a favourite video from an obscenely young age because he was a total nightmare at nappy changes and I couldn’t deal with the screaming when I pinned him down with the technique above.

Just spoke to the FC warden at Hamsterley. Snow and ice everywhere, roads passable and he wasn’t aware of any trees down blocking trails. Given the ice and how out of practice I am, think I’m gonna take hodgynd’s advice and have a book and armchair day instead! Thanks all for the advice

I bought a new bike in July and I’ve literally been out on it 7 times. I feel sad for the bike

It’s horizontal snowing here now… not sure I can be bothered with going out 😭 someone please tell me to (wo)man up and that it’s going to be lovely at Hamsterley?

Chopwell’s always wet… even at the height of summer!

PCSK9 inhibitors

Actual scientific evidence that they lower cholesterol and prevent bad things from happening to your heart.

Good work on getting it down to that level, but I’d probably still see someone about it if I were you. 9.9 is in the realms of a genetic condition called familial hypercholesterolaemia, which might have implications for your family members even if you don’t want to take statins…

Anyone got any recommendations for a small helmet to fit a 14 month old? We have a decathlon one but it’s far too big for him at the moment and I’m not keen to take him in the bike seat without a helmet (happy to take him in the trailer without one, but he seems to enjoy being in the bike seat more).

PS. I have never rolled a bike trailer or a car and the baby doesn’t wear a helmet in either. Do I win?

Carcassone

jaipur

ticket to ride

quirkle

I think I’m gonna go with the Decathlon bike as it seems to give the best bang for my buck. So the question is – brake or no brake?

Thanks all. Plenty of bikes for me to google whilst feeding my nocturnal baby all night!

Just back from the Ardeche and had lots of St Felicien – top tip, let it ripen till it’s oozing out of the fridge, then spoon it onto fresh baguette…

Nom nom nom

Usual caveats about not giving advice on the internet to randoms, see your own doctor if worried, yadda yadda…

Im 46 and fit as a lop

I’d be happy if those were my results (and I’m more than 10 years younger than you). Essentially means your arteries are free of appreciable atheroma/furring up. You need 70% stenosis of a blood vessel to cause obstruction to the blood flow. I wouldn’t entertain doing invasive (or non-invasive with a CT) coronary angiography with a calcium score that low – no matter how much I enjoy doing it!

:lol:

Although it’d be a great hobby – they’re a lot of fun to do , very satisfying :D

Never had one personally, but I’ve done a few hundred. If you’re having just a diagnostic angiogram (ie not stents, just a look and see what’s going on), it should be a quick and painless procedure.

The actual procedure should take about 10 mins, although there will be more than that faffing at the beginning to clean your wrist or groin and get the drapes perfect. Local anaesthetic in the wrist or groin will sting but should be no worse than this. Occasionally you can get a little discomfort as the catheter gets past the elbow (due to small wiggly arteries), and some people feel as though they have wet themselves if we use a lot of the dye/contrast when taking the pictures. Anything worse than this, you should say something to the cardiologist as they’ll be able to change technique/kit or give you drugs if you’re uncomfortable. Very few of my patients need sedation for just a diagnostic angiogram – it’s usually over before they’ve kicked in.

Edited to say that I’m a cardiology registrar specialising in angiography, it’s not just a weird hobby I have…

My flight from Leeds to Montpellier on Thursday was cancelled with 7 hours notice – just as I was about to drive from Newcastle to Leeds with my 5 month old son. Cue a very stressful afternoon trying to make alternative arrangements to get to France to see my parents – eventually got Ryanair to book me on the Edinburgh-Marseille flight on Friday. Not exactly the relaxing start to my well earned break that I’d been looking forward to!

I’m just glad I checked my email before I left. They didn’t give much notice and I’d have quite easily missed it with all the packing/screaming baby etc. Will be billing them for a drive to Edinburgh and back, and looking forward to my €500 compensation.

+1 on the rash vest. I’ve been spectacularly burnt when snorkelling (more than once :oops: )

So just use Osmo/Treatex or similar?

I’m trying to vaguely match a handmade cabinet that we have in the bathroom that has been finished with tung oil so has a slightly yellow/reddish colouring to it. I’m not sure if any of the Osmo oils have this tint, but will investigate.

Thanks chaps. Presuming the door is ok to oil (the place I’ve bought them from suggested it would be fine, but I will check), should I therefore oil then varnish to protect from moisture?

Apologies for hijacking the OP’s thread but, since there are some door experts around, I had a quick question too.

We’ve just bought an internal oak veneer door to be used as a pocket sliding door to our en suite bathroom. We’ve bought it unfinished, in the hope that we can oil it with tung oil (or similar) to match a cabinet that we’ve got in the bathroom. Anyone know if this will work, and do you have any hints or tips as to how to go about it?

Thanks!

We have Food of Life by Najmieh Batmanglij, which is a lovely Persian cookbook with some history stuff thrown in. I think she’s done more practical cookbooks too. We can get most of the ingredients in the ethnic shops on Westgate road in Newcastle.

Hamsterley is a shorter drive than Kielder, and will be less exposed on a day like today. Chopwell is easy enough to navigate without a guide, but was knee-deep in slop the last time I was there.