I just bought some BBB heavy duty overshoes from CRC and, although I’ve only done a couple of commutes, they seem to be decent. Easier to get into than my previous Planet X ones and seem tougher. I went for a medium size to go over size 39 Shimano MTB SPD shoes (MT33s I think) and the overshoes are a smidge too big but the toes are staying on and I think a small would have been too small.

There’s a chap I follow on Facebook  who is looking to build something similar near Carlisle called GNAR bike park. I think he’s already quite far into the planning process – it might be worth looking him up, or offering your help?

I’ve done 6 separate 8 min tests since I signed up for Trainerroad a year ago, and I find I’m still learning how to pace them. It’s definitely something that improves with experience.

I would have thought that HR should rise steadily as you fatigue through the interval. If it stays steady, you’re not working hard enough. I can’t quite get to my max HR by the end of the second interval of the 8 min test, but I get close.

Yeah, I’m not sure I’d trust hospital indemnity as far as I could throw it. It’s one of the few professional costs that I’m happy to pay as, if I ever had to defend myself, I’d like my lawyers working in my best interests and not my employer’s.

I’d forgotten all the compulsory exam costs – MRCP + cardiology exam must have cost me about £2500 in total. Not as bad as my other half though – about £4k on various surgical exams before seeing the light and switching to GP. He’s just about to start giving the RCGP the rest of our savings for the privilege of sitting more exams…

General Medical Council: £390/year (mandatory)
Medical defence society/professional indemnity: £283/year (I personally wouldn’t work without it)
Royal College of Physicians: £126/year (mandatory if I want to use my postgrad qualification letters after my name)
British Cardiovascular Society: £100/year (optional)

I also paid ~£800 for the mandatory ePortfolio for the duration of my 5 years of training, and will have to pay £400 to be registered as a consultant at the end of that time.

Ha! This is a common mistake. Strava is the cannabis of cycling data, it’s merely an intro to the hard stuff.

This is so true! I signed up to Strava near the beginning and felt pretty good about myself when I had all the local QOMs. Then I listened to you lot going on about how Strava isn’t “real racing” and how the only way to prove you are truly quick is to enter proper races.

So I’ve raced 2 seasons of XC in the local league, and have found myself embroiled in a fitness “arms race” with one of the vet singlespeeders. This has resulted in the purchase of a turbo, subscription to Trainerroad and an unhealthy love of power graphs. It’s awesome 🙂

I still have most of the local QOMs 😉

We don’t have Sports but also get it – I thought it was part of the HD channel

Awesome. I was wondering if this had been completed as I’ve had my eye on the website for a while.

British Association of Aesthetic and Plastic Surgeons[/url]

So fitting…

Cyanide and Happiness FTW

That’s a bit weird – worth contacting the TR team and seeing if it’s sortable?

Urgh. Just did my first TrainerRoad session since May – dived straight in with an 8 minute test to see how racing XC and commuting over the summer has helped my fitness. Turns out, not a lot – FTP is down >10% from 215 to 192. I thought I was going to die during the second 8 min block. I guess I’ve been doing a bit too much pootling to work and back (plus a week in Italy eating pizza every day probably hasn’t helped).

Oh well, Sweet Spot Base 1 starts tomorrow, then Sweet Spot 2 then the MTB plan. That worked well for me last winter so I may as well repeat it this year. Only this time I’ll be combining turbo work with commuting by bike most days. Hopefully I can stay “on plan”, not eat too much to compensate (need to lose about 4kg) and not annoy my boyfriend too much with how long I’m spending on a bike…!

I agree with the 2-3 rating on your scale. A mix of the red and black routes is very enjoyable, and was bone dry on Sunday (there may be a few puddles now but only the off piste stuff gets proper mud). Route here: http://www.strava.com/activities/203610853

P20 – the only bit of the black that’s out of commission now is Star Wars, and the trail fairies have started work on its replacement already – just keep going straight on after the Root 666 downhill with the wall on your right and there’s a nice rooty descent to the bridge at the bottom of Nitrous

As a female doctor, I would concur with all the stereotypes above. I wouldn’t go near a car that’s been owned by me – excessive mileage, bumps in hospital car parks, “enthusiastically” driven, dashboard warning lights ignored, tyres bald, only just found out what a timing belt is (at 110k miles on the current car…) etc

I bought G form knee pads and, after measuring my thighs, needed to go for the large mens size ( 😳 ) despite wearing size 8/10 trousers. So it depends on her size – I would recommend that she measures the relevant bits and picks the pads on that basis.

HTH,
Hannah

thisisnotaspoon – Member
I was about to mention the Gorrick, but I think it maybe ilustrates a different point. In the NE there was very little XC racing, whereas in the SE there’s loads. Conversely there was DH racing in the NE.
I think that’s down to poulation density as much as topography, I don’t think people will travel to race XC beacuse if there’s no race then they can just go ride with mates to see who’s quickest. With DH you need the race infrastructure to see who’s quickest as it’s not always obvious.
People will therefore travel from a larger area to race DH at Hamsterley, but I don’t think they’d show upto an XC race there. Whereas in the SE there’s still Aston Hill etc, but XC racing is far more popular than DH because there’s local events so you can turn up to a locla one and race.

The final race of the NE XC MTB series is tomorrow at Hamsterley – I think over 200 riders have attended the series again this year, and it’s certainly not riding round a field – the course tomorrow will be laps of the “Hamsterley TT” route (organized by Northern Downhill earlier in the year). So I don’t think the lack of top competitors at XC is all down to lack of grassroots support or infrastructure.

I think that the best XC riders come through the BC system and are snaffled by the lure of road racing – it’s where the money is if you want to make a career of riding your bike.

We get a small but steady stream of “gym-bunnies” through the cardiac cath lab having had a big heart attack and needing their arteries unblocked as an emergency. Steroid users seem to get accelerated heart disease (made worse by also using amphetamines and cocaine for fat-burning/recreation) such that they are presenting in their 30s and 40s instead of their 60s and 70s. The youngest I’ve seen was 27 – he had a massive heart attack and was left with 10% of his heart function 😯

I’m sure anabolic steroids aren’t as dangerous as smoking, alcohol or some other recreational drugs, but I personally wouldn’t take them, or advise anyone else that they were a good idea.

The majority of the cyclist deaths near me (NE England) seem to be on major dual carriageways eg A19, A69, A1058 (Coast Road), A1231 (Sunderland), A167 (central motorway), A189 (spine road). Makes you think twice about riding on a DC…

It’s small enough that it’s pretty much impossible to get lost – just pick a track and follow it.

There’s a map of the walking trails here – they’re pretty much all fair game for cyclists, just be aware that there will be walkers and dogs and kids and horses on them too. I’ve never had a problem with any aggro from other trail users in Chopwell but it pays to be courteous. The land slopes from north to south, so use the fireroads to go uphill and the walkers trails to go down.

This is my usual loop around Chopwell when it’s dryish, but by no means exhausts all the trails: http://app.strava.com/activities/66942921/overview

I agree, it was fantastic.

Big thanks to the organisers and to the perpetually cheery marshalls dotted all over the moors – it can’t have been fun to be out there in that weather all day.

The cakes and sausage rolls were excellent, as was the beer (have already decided to book a B+B next year so we can stay for the beer properly).

Hope the guy who lost a QR nut on his back wheel and had a 4 hour walk ahead of him made it back OK.

The values are within the “normal range” for each parameter. However, you can’t look at cholesterol in isolation when it comes to your risk of heart disease and stroke.

You can enter your results here (QRisk Calculator[/url]) and calculate your 10-year risk of developing cardiovascular disease.

Sorry for the delay in replying, Kryton – I saw this topic earlier but figured it was a turbo set up question rather than a heart physiology one. I reckon the cooling effect is the main contributor here. I noticed a massive difference in HR on the turbo between the depths of winter and summer training sessions. I guess it’s also why my HR is lower on the real bike than the turbo when RPE is the same (although I can only achieve my max HR outside on the real bike – can only get to within 5bpm of it on the turbo. Not sure why this is.).

I don’t want to overstate my qualifications here – I’m not a sports physiologist by any stretch. But my gut feeling is that it would be unusual to have a physiology change great enough to give you a 20bpm difference in HR for the same RPE in training sessions that were so close together. I think a change in turbo set up (plus small physiological differences) probably explains this.

As the posters above have said, your maximum heart rate (ie the highest HR you’ve seen on your monitor during hard exercise) is individual and can’t be compared between people. For example, my max HR is 193bpm – my friend, who is the same gender, age, weight, height and fitness as me, has a max HR of 155bpm.

Howevever, some things about HR do change with age and fitness. Max HR decreases as you age (from whatever level it started at). Heart rate recovery (how quickly your heart rate goes back to its resting rate after exercise) improves with fitness. Resting heart rate tends to be lower with fitness, but this isn’t as reliable as the other two measures, and a very low (or high) resting heart rate could signal a problem with the heart (sometimes).

In conclusion, HR is a very blunt tool, but trends within one individual might be worth tracking. As another personal anecdote, my max HR has decreased by 3bpm in the last 3 years, my resting heart rate has dropped by 15bpm since I took up cycling, and my heart rate recovery has significantly improved as I got fitter.

Hope that helps!

Hannah
(a cardiologist and heart rate geek)

Inner tube
Patches
Tyre levers x2
Multitool
Pump
Lock
Clip on rear light

Shirt
Trousers
Underwear
Hair brush
Wet wipes
Anti-perspirant

ID badge
3 pens
Purse
House keys

The boyfriend managed to put a huge scratch across 2 side panels of our hire car in France last summer. Some t cut and elbow grease just about rendered it invisible. We then stopped for lunch on the way back to the airport and, when we finished eating, came out to find some idiot had driven into the car and made a sizeable dent in the rear bumper. When we returned the car, I leaned against the offending bumper, smiled alluringly at the guy checking over the car, and we got away with it…

Pies and beer sounds awesome. Maybe some cake for seconds. Coffee might be nice too. None of this gels and electrolyte tablets – it’ll only attract the wrong sort 😉

Gutted. Iran deserved at least a point

Noooooooooooooooooooooooo

No nails left here

Come on Iran!

(the boyfriend is Iranian and he’s going nuts)

It’s worth mentioning that that study only included people who were already known to have coronary artery disease ie already had angina or had had a heart attack. I’m not sure that it’s applicable to those without heart disease.

To my knowledge, there’s a small amount of evidence showing an increased risk of developing AF in older elite endurance athletes (eg elite ultra marathon runners in their 50s), but not for the rest of us mere mortals.

Have a frank and sensible discussion with your cardiologist – it’s the only way to get answers that are meaningful to your situation. As you can see above, AF covers a multitude of different symptoms and prognoses.

The best thing that you can do is write down all the things that you want to know about your condition before you see the specialist, no matter how stupid. Don’t leave the clinic room unless you understand the answers and are happy with them.

There was a lot of hoo-ha in the news this week about new NICE guidelines for blood thinning in AF – basically, they say that aspirin is no longer useful for prevention of strokes and that we should be prescribing warfarin or one of the “novel anticoagulants (NOACs)” to people at risk of a stroke. If you are one of these people who need blood thinning because of your risk of stroke, it’s worth reading up about the pros and cons of warfarin vs. NOACs and asking your cardiologist about this.

Please ask about how your condition could affect your cycling. Sometimes we don’t realise that some of our patients are actually very active and want to continue to be like that.

Hope it all gets sorted,
Hannah (a trainee cardiologist)

Any girls signed up yet? My and at least one female friend are definites (probably for the middle distance) – we just need to book.

Go and see a doctor if you’re worried.

More to the point, go and see a doctor about your unexplained collapse – it’s not normal to blackout like that!

Can’t believe I’ve just googled this…

Veins do tend to follow a pattern, although they are more likely to be asymmetrical the further out you go from the body: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8363046

Arteries are actually very variable too – it’s just not as obvious as they’re deeper. But if you inject some dye up the arm into an artery and take x-ray pictures, there’s a huge variation in the pattern of arteries both in one person and between people.

If you look closely enough, nothing in the body is symmetrical. It just appears that way at first glance.

My parents live in the Ardeche so, whilst I’ve never been camping around there, I’ve certainly driven/cycled around it a fair bit. The campsites on the Ardeche river itself look absolutely rammed from June-September and you could probably walk across the river on canoes without touching the water.

I’m biased (cos my parents live there), but I’d look along the Chassezac river for places to stay – it’s much quieter (although not “quiet”!) and a bit less touristy, whilst still being on the beaten track and only 20 mins to the Ardeche gorge. The Chassezac has all the same cliffs, canoeing and walking that the Ardeche has. Plus it’s right on the edge of the Cevennes national park. Les Vans is a good size of town to base yourself near, and has a massive traditional market on Saturdays.

We stayed at the Links Hotel (also on Bruntsfield Links, http://www.links-hotel-edinburgh.co.uk/) the other week when we were up – it’s been nicely refurbished recently.

I’m not in control of my anxiety at all and I don’t feel like it’s getting better any time soon

You should see your GP – get the CBT rearranged and see if there is anything else that they can offer to help you regain control.