3 times over accidental landlord here (everytime we’ve moved it’s been cheaper to buy a new place and rent the old out), pretty much whats already been said, bad tenants can wipe out years of profit, even good tenants can cost a fair bit (some seem amazingly clumsy/unlucky) Managed or not repairs become seriously expensive when either an agent arranges it or the tradesman finds out it’s a rental. It’s all but impossible to put rents up on good tenants as the risk they leave is too great. It’s also a fair bit of hassle even when it’s managed.

There are also a lot less in the way of tax breaks than there were, and I’m not expecting ot make any capital gains on any of them any more, whatever the market makes, it’s pretty likely the tax man is going to take pretty much all of it.

They are our pension which is just as well given the current return on pensions (40k pot currently get’s you 1k income p/a) but that’s going to have to come entirely from rent. It’s not easy money, and the capital at risk is much bigger than it first seems, and the return much less, but it’s still better than savings and pensions at the moment.

Thanks @robbo1234biking for organising the series I really enjoyed it, the discusison on here before and after really makes the series something special.

For me the race last night was a total disaster, I’ve been feeling my fitness and motivation ebbing away the last few weeks, and I’ve really noticed a loss of power on the hills, I lost a fair bit of time last week, but this week I was hoping I could dig deep and save the series for me, despite what my numbers where saying. Sadly it wasn’t to be, I struggled from the start, just managing to hang on to the front group but kept falling off the back and having to work to get back on, everytime I joined the group again, someone would put in an effort on the front and I’d be off again. I finally got dropped toward the end of the Titans grove section. Tried to keep the power reasonable, hoping I’d feel better later on and wouldn’t lose too much time, but my trying to hold 260w rapidly became 250 then 240, about a mile into the epic KOM I was struggling to hold 220w and was slowly getting passed by rider after rider, managed to save a little bit of dignity for the last mile by having a little dig, but even that was a depressingly weak effort. Think I’m going to do the Thursday TTT then take somem time off, come up with some kind of a training plan, do a ramp test and reset my numbers and go from there. I think I’ve been pushing my luck with a lack of base miles this year, and it’s caught up with me. Brilliant effort by so many riders and it’s been great to see so many people improve week on week, even if I haven’t been one of them :)

Once again thanks robbo, hopefuly be back in the next series (albeit with some considerably lower numbers)

I’m surprised anyone makes any gains on those Zwift training plans if you are at a reasonable level of fitness when you start them. I’ve tried a few different ones and never got much out of them except tiredness. I think there are a few problems with them, all of which are caused by the fact they are geared towards people training for the first time.

Firstly the hard workouts are too easy, so they don’t push your body hard enough to force it to repair itself on the rest days and get stronger, I presume this is becasue if you haven’t trained before you don’t know how hard you can push and the tendancy is to stop when it hurts.

Secondly, there aren’t enough rest days, so even if you do mange to push yourself, you don’t get enough rest to recover, also because three aren’t enough rest days they have to make the ‘hard’ days easier as you won’t have recovered enough to do them.

Thirdly, they have the same problem as the vast majority of zwift workouts, they are too complex and seem to be targetting too many areas at once, I asusme this is to make them interesting, but you are better off targetting one thing per workout.

I think it would really help if you were allowed to add your own rest days, life gets in the way far too often for most people to rigidly do 6 days a week, apparently zwift refuse to add that as feature though, which make them an exercise doomed to failure for me.

Well a total discord disaster for me, sorry about that, had it set up on my phone beside me and it connected ok, I thought it was a bit quiet in the pen, but wasn’t too bothered until close to the start time by which time it was too late. Realised a few seconds before start that something was wrong, but figured I’d just watch for the bumblebees to start rolling then join them. except I didn’t see anyone move, and by then it was clearly past the start time, rolled over the banner in the hope I’d spot you on the map and be able to catch, but still couldn’t see anyone, then I relaised my phone had connected to my bluetooth headphones upstairs, hence the silence. So changed my tag and waited for the STW group instead, few seconds to go I switched my fan on, and very quickly realised I couldn’t hear discord over my fan, so i had to ride pretty much without it, could just about hear if someone was talking just couldn’t hear what was being said, so I just had to do the best I could, not blow off the front and not fall off the back, That probably made my pace a bit up and down, which doesn’t help the others, and also meant I couldn’t contribute to the pace of the group as much as I should have. The race itself went ok, the hills certainly didn’t make it easy, but we mostly kept it together, and we had a strong finish. Hopefully next time I’ll get discord better set up, and a flatter course will help us work together better.

I’ve signed up, no idea what I’m doing but I’ll try not to make too much of a mess of it. How do you find your team?

God I hate being reminded of how fit and light (relatively) I was, I’m also too stubborn to admit my current state, do an ftp test and use the pathetic new numbers in the handicap. I’m calling it motivation to be better, but it’s probably just a refusal to accept reality :)

Modern DM’s are terrible, a real shame, cheap overpriced crap and the uk made ones are barely better than the asian ones. Loads of better boots out there for the price, check Rose Anvil on you tube for decent reviews https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCId9g4zlQ9BOn6fLKIt1Y0A.

I’ve got some Red Back pull ons that I really like, but they are great standing at a workbench type boot, not so good for walking round in. Jim Greens are supposed to be good fo the money, but if your toe is genuinely big, maybe try some mock toe boots instead as they tend to have more room at the front.

I’ve got a pretty similar problem, I’m on my 3rd set of calipers originally 105 ‘s now ultegras, but they all have the same problem, when I was commuting on the bike every day, they were faultless, I never gave them any attention they would get covered in roadgrime and mud and still work great, However then I stoppped commuting and am sometimes only riding the bike once in a few weeks, they squeel and lose power, after a few days of riding them they would be good again. I could ‘fix’ the problem by sanding the disks and pads to clean them up but the problem would be back as soon as the bike is left for a couple of weeks. I’ve got loads of barely used pads where I’ve tried different brands but I think the basic problem is that the calipers leak small amounts of fluid onto the pads/discs over time. I’m seriously considering binning them entirely and either going for Hopes or Clarkes, they don’t have to have endless stopping power, just work consistently, like every other brake I’ve had in the past.

Not sure what it would have taken to stay away from Phil, but I do know I don’t have it 😭. The guy is a beast. Think I finished ahead of him in the end but it was a hell of a catch. Will be forced to be sneakier in future I think 😀

cheers just need to get out of bed in time now :)

Can I get an invite for this weekend please? zwift username is Mark Howlett (GNCC), Ta

haha, the old “copy the spreadsheet, we’ve done the hard part” is one of my favourites “no, no you haven’t” :)

@Aidy it’s not quite the same though, chasing frameworks for salary is both high risk and short term, as there are so many to choose from and their shelf life can be so short. You can easily end up stuck in a job where you are the goto guy for that framework, so they won’t let you take time to learn new skills, no one else want’s those skills cos the framework is old, and you are getting progressively left behind, at which point, you are ripe for redundancy especially if some new guy comes along promising to build something better in the framework du jour, for less than thye are paying you. In most other professions learning a niche skill will pay you more, but more importantly not expire so fast (thouguh I’m sure there are exceptions).

I’ve been doing it for 25 years now, I think I agree with pretty much all of the above (the pluses and the minuses), I love learning new stuff every few years, it’s almost always from scratch each time, but if you learn the basic concepts behind things instead of by rote, it get’s easier and quicker each time, and you soon realise that most of the time, it’s just a new term for something that already exists but maybe with a twist.

The main issue with the job is the attitude of other people in the business, the amount of times you get forced to build something that you know isn’t going to work by someone ‘higher’ up because they think they know better one way or another is ridiculous, that and being forced to cut corners that will cost later. It’s a basic lack of respect for the profession, I don’t work on the IT helpdesk (no disrespect to those guys, they live in a whole other world of pain), I don’t ‘just switch things on and off again all day’ and saying it to my face isn’t funny, it’s insulting. I’m not suggesting it’s a bad idea just to be awkward, I’ve been here a hundred times before. Far too many people think the IT crowd is real.

It is a bit of a bugger, especially as once again I bust a gut in the sprint at the end to ‘beat’ someone (Crazy Harry) for the line only to have him finish 4 seconds ahead, to be fair he’d bridged a 15 second gap on the last lap to catch me by putting out serious watts on the hills time after time that I couldn’t match, then have me sit on for the last mile :). So he definitely deserved it, but it’s frstrating as hell anyway :)

oooh, count me in again too please.

Thanks for organising Robbo

I’ve rarely seen the single effort break work in a race, just like real life, the effort pretty much needs to be superhuman and the rider significantly stronger/more motivated than anyone else on the road. you need to make a massive effort to get a gap big enough that your aren’t just a tasty carrot to chase for the rest of the riders and then you need to hold a constant power higher than the person on the front of the group (who is basically just doing intervals as they rotate through).
The more reliable way is a series of efforts that tires the people prepared/capable of making the gaps back one by one until they start looking at each other, this is much easier if you’ve got a good mix of abilities in the group as you’ve often got a good proportion just hanging on, so if they few capable start looking at those just hanging on to do a turn, then they are doomed, as that’s more time for the gap to open.

Most of the time, the break doesn’t work as you expect, you don’t get a solo break you get a few people who come with you, but there’s split further back in the group due to inattention or the group being strung out enough that there’s a little gap that a weaker rider can’t bridge. So you then have to start again, but with a smaller group.

It’s a really bad idea to just hang in the group doing your ‘fair’ share of the work especially if you don’t have a great sprint, you just end up finishing in a big group and taking your chances in the sprint. You have to work, put the rest of the group under pressure and make sure everyone has to work to stay on and gets tired, that way if someone goes off the front, there’s a good chance the group will split. Groups where everyone does their ‘fair’ share are the death of a good time, stand a good chance of being caught by groups behind, and end in the lottery of a mass sprint, which means most people end up with a worse place than they could have got otherwise. Of course if you are hanging on for grim death then you can only hang on, the good news if you can hang on till the end is that you end up with a better place than you should have expected, but it’s stupid for people who are capable of more to not work harder, Hanging on for the sprint is a tactic for the desperate or those lucky few who really do have a good sprint (there are less of those than you think)

As a man of average height for an undernourished person from 1500, I have on occasion bought 3/4 length leggings and found them long enough :) so maybe try that?

Resting HR of low 40’s and a max of 197 ish, I’m 46, The only correlation I know of is that fitter peoples max hr decreases with age more slowly than less fit people and low resting hr tends to indicate that you are fitter.

@tpbiker I thought I’d beaten you to the line as well, thought it was the first time I’d ever timed a sprint right and won it :), so I don’ think the blue banner appears in different places for different people, god knows what’s going on with that, I had similar happen last week as well. It’s a handicap race so it doesn’t really matter I guess, just a shame cos I like to have a go at the sprint, even if I’m rubbish at it.

@dangeourbrain I had a total dropout at that point for a second or 2, luckily I was pushing about 450w at the time so when it came back I was still in the bunch. I guess you weren’t so lucky.

phew, Managed to hang on to the front group all the way, held an aero helmet for the finale so was sat mid group waiting for the sprint, which never happened. The finish came earlier than I expected and I think I must have had a bit of a dodgy connection right at the end, as from my perspective I finished in the front group with the top 10 or so riders, but the timings seems to show those top 10 riders were spread out over 6 seconds or so and typically I was at the back :(, annoying, but it was a good race, tough to hang on. And I definitely felt better this week than last, set a new threshold HR of 173, though I’m not sure that’s a good thing :) Cheers again Robbo.

Waves, 19:06, It was a day 2 years ago where I felt so good, I actually remember it though :) I’ll be nowhere near that now

I enjoyed it last night too, thanks for organising it Robbo. I wouldn’t worry about the handicaps favouring the weaker riders just yet anyway, I suspect a lot of those used to riding on Zwift (me included until later in the race) hadn’t realised that the normal tactic of hiding in the best bunch you can, saving some energy for the sprint to get the best place, doesn’t help if the rest of the bunch gets less handicap applied. You need to get the fastest average speed for the whole race you can manage, whether that means constantly pushing your bunch to go faster or launching a solo attack from long range. Placing is irrelevant only average speed matters :)

Sounds good to me, I’ll give it a bash. 69.5 Kg 279 w/Kg, Think I’m Mark Howlett (GNCC) on Zwift.

@dyna-ti the Katz-moses video in the op also demonstrates pushing the sausage at the blade as fast as you can, works pretty well, though you would get a slightly deeper cut.

I read somewhere (may have been freakonomics) that the time between deciding to commit suicide and deciding that it’s a bad idea is generally very short (less than 10 minutes if I remember), successful suicide rates are much higher in countries that allow you to keep guns, because you have a means that you can use before you get to change your mind…

Only commenting because there have been so many positive comments, but the Oakley prescription (not cycling) glasses I had were the worst glasses I’ve ever owned for longevity, colour chipped off the frames really easily and the socks perished in the first few months, then had to wear them looking like a tramp for 2 years because they cost me 350 quid and I was too tight to replace them, Gucci’s weren’t much better either. This coming from a guy who has my first pair that are now 25 years old and still look pretty decent in a drawer, only replaced because they are massive :). I just buy the ones that suit me and feel comfortable these days. I only look at the price after I’ve decided which ones I want. I’ll have to wear them non-stop for 2 or 3 years so it’s not worth fretting about the cost.

@nostrils I think they are all the same size from no.3 all the way up to no.7, they’re certainly the same on all my bailey pattern planes and the bigger ones my dad has a couple of, seem the same too. The knobs have changed shape a bit over the years, but the totes hardly vary at all.

oooh that Ibis is nice, maybe I need to adjust my expectations of what a short travel bike is for 2020 though, must be getting old :). Could even buy the frame and swap most of the bits off the five onto it.

As far as I can see Scott spark is 27.5″ in alloy versions only now, trance is 150mm of travel, Fuel is 140mm. I was thinking more 100-120mm of travel. Happy to compromise on the rough techy stuff if it’s easier to pedal it up all the hills, here in the highlands.

@trumpton some hardtails do, but I can’t find any full sus bikes that do, hence my question :)

Unlike those blue and yellow ones :) one plus compatibility has been consistent for years, you can just buy a one plus li-on battery (and presumably charger) and it will work with your old drill, I’ve got a load of ryobi stuff and although everyone sneers, it’s at least as good as the low end makita and dewalt stuff and there a lot more tools to choose from as well.

My Sonos recognises my NAS no problem, that could be the problem, is your external drive just connected to your mac mini via usb? If the drive is just a usb external drive you will need to be plugged into something that can then make it available over wifi, some home routers can do that, and it may be possible to get your Mac Mini to make it available as a shared drive.But if it’s just plugged into you mac mini via usb and not set up as a shared drive. The Sonos won’t be able to see it.

@matt_outandabout
Don’t suppose you’ve got a route for that Callendar to Comrie and back ride have you? I’ve been looking to so do something similar , but wasn’t sure if all the track actually joined up.

Your mate has roughly the same numbers as me, and I’ve done a fair bit of zwift racing, if that guy genuinely has an ftp of 200w. There’s no way he should still have been in the bunch at the end of the race, regardless of what he put as his weight, your mate and the rest of the bunch weren’t pushing hard enough for the rest of the race. Been in a few races like that, I hate them, as like your mate I’m never going to win in a sprint against heavier riders either in real life or in Zwift, it’s up to you to play to your strengths and ensure either you finish in a select group in which you can win, or that everyone has had the sprint knocked out of them in the previous hour :)

I made a small oak side table, those legs are fiddly but satisfying when they are done…

I have a mk1 pompino and it does ride amazingly I must have ridden a hundred thousand miles on it, my wife has one of the last of the previous batch and it is terrible, I assume it was changes to meet the new safety standards, but it’s dead and heavy, literally the most joyless bike I have ever ridden. A real shame.

easily done 50,000 miles on my mark 1 on-one pompino, sadly it’s in the loft at the moment as it’s too hilly for fixed/my knees round here. That bike is just so right, my wife has a later one (post EN tests?) that is terrible in comparison. If I ever meet Brant I owe him a pint or 2 :)

I’ve a friend Teri who makes beautiful marquetry boxes, could be what you are after, assuming you don’t want something 6ft long :)

When I have something worthy of putting in one, I’m going to get one.

http://ttdesigns.uk/