Cheers. Will start marshalling the troops 🙂

Any clues on the routes? I have a group of friends ready to enter with me, but there is a range of fitness and skill levels in the group and I’m not sure which ride will suit us best.

Failing that – if we enter, can we switch which ride we do once you release the routes?

Seroconversion … of cat AIDS…

Chopwell isn’t signposted though, so you’ll need a local to show you around. Hamsterley is signposted, but the official red doesn’t showcase the best stuff. It’s easy to follow a Strava/GPX route though

I commute either to the university (8 miles ish each way) or the hospital (12 miles ish each way). I have a messenger bag with pump, tube, multitool and clothes (top, trousers and socks usually). I ride the hybrid with my flat shoes to Uni and just wear the same shoes at work. I take the CX bike with SPDs to the hospital and keep my smart shoes in a drawer in my desk, so I never need to carry bulky shoes/boots to work.

I find hair is the most annoying thing about being a female cycle commuter. I’m happy to commute to the Uni in any weather as, although I share an office, there is rarely actually anyone else there to see me (bloody phd students!). The hospital is a different matter – I have to confess that I don’t commute there on wet days. I got caught out once and walked around looking like a drowned rat until one of the nurses took pity and found a rubbish hairdryer on the ward. It sucked.

However, I rarely lose commuting days to the rain. I reckon I only lose one day every fortnight or so to rain (I don’t mind riding home in the rain). If you are aiming to commute by bike 3 days a week, you can plan ahead by looking at the weather forecast (or just looking out the window when you get out of bed!).

As for food… Well, you already know I’m an exceptionally hungry person. Commuting by bike magnifies this 100x. I have to really watch my snacking, or I start to put on significant amounts of weight. I’ve put on 2 or 3 kg since starting this job last September (was previously driving 45 miles each way). Our mutual skinny radiologist friend is currently encouraging my afternoon Costa cake and coffee habit at Uni. Despite all this eating, I sometimes still run out of energy on the way home, which makes the last climb interesting. I try to have an emergency cereal bar in my bag for these circumstances, but sometimes eat it at work… 😳

I have 36/46 with an 11-28 rear cassette on my caadx. That’s got me up everything I’ve attempted so far, although I’ve occasionally wished for a 34T front ring on the occasional very steep hill. I found it a bit difficult to begin with but, as I’ve got fitter, I don’t think I’d change it now.

Scala Dei Turchi by Legolam[/url], on Flickr

Zingaro National Park by Legolam[/url], on Flickr

We went to Mauritius for 10 days a couple of years ago and it was fantastic. We splashed out a bit on a nice hotel, but hired a car and escaped all the honeymooning couples to go exploring every day. We found amazing deserted beaches, hidden waterfalls, ate street food in little villages, and went diving and paragliding. I don’t think the hotel staff had ever seen foreigners actually leave the confines of the hotel and were great at suggesting places to go and things to see. They even invited us into the hotel kitchen to show us how to make traditional Mauritian food and made us some local dishes instead of the “themed” dinner that everyone else was getting. It was ace.

This year is my second “season” of regional short course XC “racing” – last year I was usually found propping up the back of the field with the singlespeeders, acting as a mobile chicane for the leaders. So I’d spent the whole winter on the turbo, desperately trying to improve my fitness to possibly inch my way up to a mid-pack finish.

In the first lap of the first race a couple of weeks ago, I was feeling pretty awesome. I’d got myself solidly into the middle of the pack by the end of the first climb and was actually being held up by a slower descender on the first descent (I’m the world’s worst descender, so this was a surprise). I spotted a gap on a transition between two singletrack descents and decided to go for my first ever racing overtake.

“Rider on your left” – I shot past the slower rider on his inside, overshot the corner into the next bit of singletrack, washed out the front wheel on a dusty berm and catapulted myself OTB (and several feet into the undergrowth). In front of a huge group of spectators and the St John’s Ambulance guys. Who pissed themselves laughing.

GrahamS – Member
Hmmm.. just looking at the Strava Heatmap for Newcastle and, despite my apprehension, the shared-use Sustrans route along the river does actually show as one of the most heavily used routes, even amongst the Stravaratti.

Interesting!

http://labs.strava.com/heatmap/#13/-361.64955/54.96793/blue/bike

See, most of my strava feed (in Newcastle/NE England) is filled with people doing their daily commute into town. I certainly use Strava not just as a “willy-waving” (can women willy-wave…?) exercise but also as a data-tracker. I like to see how many miles I’ve done, on which bike, at what speed, with what heart rate etc etc. Therefore, I log everything on Strava – I reckon my personal Strava heatmap will include the main cycle routes in Newcastle. So maybe it could be useful data for planners…

Mud. Roots. Steep and twisty trails. Just go exploring – the official red route is a fireroad climb then short singletrack descent but doesn’t quite do the place justice.

Well, I’ve definitely seen the benefits of a first winter on the turbo with Trainerroad.

Last summer, I took up XC racing for the first time, in the NE MTB series[/url]. I improved through the season, although was still propping up the back of the field with the grand-vets and singlespeeders. So I signed up to TR in November and have completed both Sweet Spot base plans and most of the low volume MTB plan.

The series restarted this Saturday, and we did a 90 min (ish) race round Hamsterley. My average speed last season was 6mph over a 60 minute course very similar to Saturday’s ( 😳 ) – it was 9mph over 90 mins on Saturday. Plus, this year, there were other girls to beat as well as the singlespeeders (which I did, yay!).

I’m never going to be a contender for the Olympics, but I definitely feel a lot fitter!

What about some natural riding? Hexhamshire common? Or Blanchland and Edmundbyers? I haven’t been out there since the early autumn, but it might be dry enough for a blast. Nice cafe at Blanchland too.

Hamsterley is great if, as above, you combine the red and black best bits with a bit of off-piste. You kind of need to know where you’re going though. I really like Whinlatter, although I’m not as familiar with it. Mabie is also within striking distance, as is Kielder (it’s probably closest to Hexham in terms of driving time).

There is an XC race at Hamsterley on Saturday afternoon, using the best bits of the red trail, so be careful with your timings (unless you want to join in 🙂 )

Do the instructions really say that you shouldn’t take it if over 40? BNF.org (medical website with all licensed drugs in the UK) just says “caution” in the “elderly” is advised. Maybe have a chat to your GP about it? These patient information leaflets can have a lot of worrying but unimportant information in them.

I did say “almost”…

I was there yesterday. The only bits of official trail that are shut are Root 666 and Star Wars. The diversion around them is signposted.

You could almost describe Hamsterley as dry and dusty at the moment – yesterday’s ride was ace!

Does this help?
http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/advice-and-guidance/guidance-for-workers/pay-and-benefits/decisions-about-pay-and-benefits-for-women-and-men-equal-pay/pay-benefits-and-bonuses-during-maternity-leave/

Specifically:

Your employer must also pay you any contractual bonus payment awarded to you during your maternity leave period, or that would have been awarded had you not been on maternity leave. However, when your employer works out your bonus, the actual time during which you are on maternity leave will not generally be included, except for the two or four weeks of compulsory maternity leave.

For example:

A woman goes on maternity leave three months before the end of her company’s accounting year. At the end of the accounting year, while she is on maternity leave, bonuses for the whole year are awarded to staff. The woman’s bonus is calculated based on the nine months of the accounting year when she was not on maternity leave plus the two week compulsory maternity leave period that applies to her because she is not a factory worker (it would be four weeks if she worked in a factory).

Your employer must pay any pay rise or bonus when they would usually be due, and not wait until you get back from your leave.

A couple of top shelf mags and a box of Kleenex would be more fun – obviously he’s got to be wearing the watch.

Cheaper too. And easier to buy on the commute home this evening!

Did he suggest this on April 1st?

Lol. No, this really is the kind of thing he buys.

Actually, I don’t even know if he has a mechanical or an automatic watch. Why can’t he just like bikes? It would be much easier 😀

122/80 is spot on, don’t worry about it.

After giving out advice on this thread, I thought I should probably take some of it myself. So last week I went to get a breast lump checked out that I’d been ignoring for 4 months 😳

Got the results of the biopsy today – totally benign 🙂 . More than a little relieved now (after feeling a bit of a wally for waiting so long).

That’s the beauty of NHS IT. One previous trust I worked for demanded a password change every three months – so everyone’s password was “spring14” (or the next relevant season)…

18C on my Garmin whilst riding round Chopwell woods near Newcastle this morning – had to stop after the first climb and de-layer all my base layers!

You can look on raceshape.com and filter by the day the segment was ridden…

This is one of my favourite scientific websites:

How does homeopathy work?[/url]

Don’t worry, I’m not pricking (or probing) anyone these days – I’ve taken time out to do research.

Plumslikerocks (good name!):
Impacts don’t have anything to do with the likelihood of plaque rupture. There’s some circumstantial evidence that, if you’re going to have a heart attack, then you’re marginally more likely to have it at times of physical or emotional stress eg during a marathon, whilst having sex, or on a Monday. I’m not sure it’s enough to make me avoid marathons, sex or Mondays for the rest of my life though. Well, maybe marathons. But that’s cos running is for people who can’t ride a bike.

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”

That was Ingi Gudmundsdottir – she’s Icelandic and one of the best doctors I’ve worked with (she was my registrar back when I was a really baby doctor and I really looked up to her). She’s a consultant back in Iceland now, and we miss her. She’ll be glad to know she’s remembered fondly by her patients!

They should be more private clinics/hospital/GP around for those who are willing to pay.

The NHS consultants’ contract makes it very difficult for doctors to do private practice. Basically, any “free time” a consultant has (and it has to be consultants, junior docs like me aren’t allowed to set up private practices) has to be offered to the NHS first. For example, if a consultant works 10 half days for the NHS and fancies doing 4 hours private work in an evening once a week, he has to offer to work that in his own hospital first before he is allowed to set up privately. Of course, many consultants are already contracted to work many more hours than that for the NHS (my bosses are contracted to work in the region of 12-14 half day equivalents), so it doesn’t leave much time to do private work in their “spare time”.

Plus, doing private work massively increases our insurance premiums, to the point that some doctors end up spending more to do private work than they earn whilst doing it. There’s not a lot of demand for private healthcare in the north east, so many consultants feel it’s not worth the effort.

http://www.thincs.org/

Why are sceptics only ever sceptical about the things they don’t believe in, not sceptical about everything?

http://www.nuffieldhealth.com/hospitals/newcastle/pricing

£385 for haemorrhoid treatment at the Nuffield in Newcastle

There’s no denying that it’s a really tricky business trying to diagnose anything (not just heart trouble), and it’s not helped by the fact that everyone is wired up slightly differently and no two heart attacks feel the same!

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.

Don’t have youtube at work 🙁

But I’m sure your link has been peer-reviewed in the highest quality journal 😉

Interesting that the author of the above “Cambridge Med Science” document has also never published any peer reviewed articles on cholesterol…

Anyhoo, I have to go and finish my salt and vinegar crisps and full fat coke before heading back to theatre to unblock someone’s arteries… 😉 😉

Macavity – Member
http://www.cambridgemedscience.org/reports/CholMythCamb.pdf

Odd that the author of that sells a book called “The 24 hour diet”…

Also interesting how many long-term studies there have been on cholestrol and how little few conclusions any of the statin pushers can extract from them.

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

We had a debate here: http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/statins-450-million-a-year-set-to-increase/page/2

Please look at the links and graph I posted on that page of the statin discussion. It’s one of the best researched and most understood bits of cardiovascular medicine. No-one gets rich off statins any more. We all still “push” them. They’ll put me out of a job one day (cardiologist).

I hazard a guess that you are “in the trade” as it were?

Yup, I’m a cardiology registrar in the North East of England, currently doing research, so I have a bit of an interest in all of this!

I genuinely don’t know the stats for what proportion of those who have heart attacks have symptoms beforehand that they’ve ignored, although anecdotally it is something I see a fair bit.

I’m not sure I’d agree that fit people/athletes are at higher risk of missing symptoms though – heart attacks are caused by a narrowed (or blocked) blood vessel supplying the heart muscle with blood, but this often doesn’t happen out of the blue (although it can). The blood vessel often narrows over the course of weeks, months and years. As cyclists, we are effectively performing our own “stress test” every time we get on a bike – increasing our heart rate and asking the blood vessels to supply more blood to the heart muscle. 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?

I guess the message is to heed any warning symptoms (mainly chest pain or shortness of breath on exertion) and to minimise your risk factors as far as possible.

I think this article (http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/107/1/e2.full.pdf+html) is free to view and is an excellent summary of the cardiovascular effects of exercise. It was published in Circulation (virtually the most highly respected journal in cardiology) about a decade ago but the main points still hold true. If you can’t access it and would like a copy, I can email it to you.

These are the main risk factors for heart attacks (in no particular order):
Smoking
Family history of heart attack/angina in a first degree relative under 65 years old
High cholesterol or triglycerides (can be genetic or lifestyle related)
Diabetes (type 1 or 2)
High blood pressure
Age (being older)
Gender (being male, although women catch up after the menopause)

Some of those you can do something about, some you can’t. And some people will be more or less affected by specific risk factors. It’s not an exact science.

If you want to calculate your personal risk of a heart attack, try the new risk score released this month at http://www.jbs3risk.com/ . As you can see, it’s important to know your cholesterol, blood pressure and whether you have diabetes. So, if you think you may be at risk, it’s worth getting those checked at your GP at some point.

This whole thread has reminded me of the time I told a hypothetical young chap in A+E that I’d have to examine his back passage, turned my back, and when I turned around he was butt naked and stood bent over the A+E trolley with his backside in the air. Not quite sure what kind of “informative videos” he’d been watching, but it definitely wasn’t the method of examination taught to me in medical school…

As for A&E why on earth was I sent there by the GP nurse in the first instant if A&E is not meant to deal with lesser problem of “grapes/peanuts”.

Fair point. If I was the A+E SHO, I’d be a little miffed with the GP nurse. Not your fault if that’s what you were told to do.

Just to burst your collective bubble, I can tell you that the young female doctors don’t enjoy the experience as much as you all seem to…

PS. A and E for a haemorrhoid?! There’s a reason you had to wait – everyone else was there for an accident or an emergency!

I’m not, but these guys are:
http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/hamsterley-enduro