Friends of mine have been very happy with Ride It.

Given how similar most tyres for any particular niche are I’d be surprised if most people could tell the difference given it’s likely to show at the margins. Spending time faffing about with pressures on the tyres you’ve got is probably much more useful than worrying about what tyres your mate or someone on here is using. Nothing like an afternoon of riding the same bit of trail making tiny adjustments to tyre pressure between runs to make you feel pro.

For some reason they don’t count the first short lap in the lap count.

Just get the official garmin one and put it on back to front?

The heat certainly didn’t help me. Took the first two laps to feel remotely good and then just slogged on for the next 5. I could maybe have squeezed in another but given the weather I am extremely glad I decided to stop for cake instead.

Weather forecast is looking interesting.

Solo for me me too. No idea how it’ll go as I had a chunk of time off the bike over the winter. If it goes badly then more excuse to stop and eat the excellent cake.

This ^^ +1

tribal cycling community

There is at least one bit of the article that everyone can agree on at least :)

I’ve got some Rapha stuff and it’s nice. It’s probably not 10 times nicer than the stuff from Aldi (I don’t own any stuff from there so I can’t say) but it’s all diminishing returns with these things. If someone is happy to spend the cash on it then that’s fine. Equally if you’re happy with kit from Aldi then that’s fine too. It does the job you need it to for the amount of money you’re willing to spend.

It’s only cycling kit after all.

The 810 does this. It’s not totally exact though and there’s been few times where the device will tell me a time for a segment and Strava will be a few seconds different when I upload. I only have a few segments on the device rather than anything fancier because having it tell me about loads of segments would just be annoying.

Wonder how much that top bike is and how a head to head would be against an XC 29er…

Poorly as jameso says. Unless it’s hardback or smooth and not too twisty singletrack there’s no comparison. There’s a strava segment near here that’s nicely graded trail or tarmac for the first mile and half and then singletrack for the last half mile and the strava compare things shows I can be about the same time on the cross bike going in to the singletrack and 40 seconds behind at the end. Plus you just get more tired trying to go fast which I think is as much about the position as the smaller tyres etc.

And yes anecdata etc but through most singletrack I’m quicker on 26″ hardtail let alone a 29er.

More to the point, it just looks wrong.

I quite like the course. And I think Mayhem attracts a reasonable number of people who aren’t regular cyclists so you have to take that into account. If you want super tech then there are other options available.

Plus, it’s about more than the course. It’s a weekend with people I don’t see that often with an enjoyable side of competition and a nice atmosphere somewhere with lots of people on bikes.

I can thoroughly recommend getting a good Physio, it is a very worthwhile investment. Suggest you don’t listen to, oh it could be this or it could be that. Just go get professional advice, and as said above, don’t go to your GP. Go direct and just accept you have to pay. My guy is on thirty pounds a session, and only every three to four weeks, so not a significant investment!

This. So much this. Ask around for recommendations and then go see someone who can actually look at your knee and asses what is wrong rather than tell you what was wrong with someone else’s knee.

The main road also suffers because it’s how people get to Crail raceway so can have a disproportionate number of people in comically lowered Fiestas pretending they are Lewis Hamilton.

Also, the coastal route heading West from Crail is great.

I have an Endura MTR emergency shell and it’s been good. Packs down to nothing and has coped with pretty awful weather.

I used to do 18 ish miles each way but only 3 days a week regularly. That was pretty pan flat though and mostly on cycle paths or forest tracks so nice and peaceful. The things I found that helped were to have a second breakfast when you go to work otherwise I’d be thinking about lunch by 11, and to not feel obliged to do it so you don’t think of it as a chore.

Looking back I did a lot less riding at weekends than I do now I work from home.

It might. I got round the Kielder 100 on a training schedule of 3 or four 20 miles each way commutes a week. I was riding quite a lot of them fairly flat out though so you might want to up the intensity.

Also, I did scrape into the last checkpoint 5 minutes before the cut off time and I’m not sure I really enjoyed the end of it but it’s was do-able for me.

Or try decathlon who seem to do fairly cheap and reasonable ones.

I mostly cycle on quite roads ’cause there’s not much traffic on the back roads of Fife, but for the occasional busy one I just pay attention and make sure I’m pretty aware of what’s going on. It’s just easier if you are prepared for the idiocy as then it’s not terrifying, just predictable. If you assume that people waiting at junctions haven’t seen you, cars coming up behind you will pass with minimal clearance and so on then there’s just less OMFG moments.

It’s a bit sucky and I’m glad I mostly have nice quite roads so I can largely zone out from this sort of thing.

Tool rolls are also handy if you have more than one pack. Less likely to miss something when swapping between them.

They had a hill climb at the Durango worlds which was the first under the auspices of the UCI but I’m not sure they bothered after that.

Me too.

dazh: You don’t need to leave till Monday morning. Some of us have to drive back to Scotland :)

The always excellent 99 percent invisible podcast did an, admittedly US centric, episode on best before and use by dates: Best enjoyed by[/url]. Best before dates are usually derived by giving people progressively older samples of the food until they say it doesn’t taste as good or different. Nothing to do with safety. Use by might be a bit different.

Northwind: If it was the, er, highly visible yellow fat bike then yes, it is not hard to spot. I was mostly impressed that the rim tape was even vaguely colour matched to the frame.

I remember a few years back a bunch of us on our full sus enduro wagons debating how best to ride that set of rocky steps towards the end of the Glentress black when a chap on a Surly cross bike rode right past us, over the rocks and on down without even a pause.

Unexpected fact- the left hand line at the corner is way easier than the wider line

*Now* you tell us? ;)

There were people flying down that love tunnel bit and it just amazes me. I have phasers set to full mince because it just seems so sketchy.

Still, great event as ever.

One thing to bear in mind with Castelli is they size up small.

I’m always a bit puzzled about why people get so upset about people who choose to buy different nice things from them. If the OP thinks that a custom bike is worth four grand of their money then it is. It might not be worth four grand of your money but it’s not your money that’s being spent :)

That said, I just look at those Demon lugs and think about all the time I’d spend getting dirt out the cutouts with a toothbrush.

This is useful on bang for buck with TT equipment:

Biggest Bang For Your Buck In Time Trial Equipment

As cheers_drive says, tri bars and a helmet are a better investment than wheels.

That’s as big as the BIG ring on my road bike

Just think how fast you’ll be able to go backwards.

I’ve got a local strava segment that’s mostly either hardpack or tarmac with the last bit being singletrack that’s a bit rooty. My best time is on a 26″ hard tail but if you do a comparison with the best time on my, admittedly not remotely race spec, croix de fer it’s quicker until you hit the single track and then the hardtail gains rapidly.

It’ll go nicely with my 3D printed titanium jockey wheels:

http://www.ceramicspeed.com/sport/products/PulleyWheels/product/CSPW40603010/3D-Printed-Hollow-Ti-Shimano-11s-COATED

Domestique by Charlie Wegelius is good and a bit different from the usual “and then I won this and then I won that” cycling bio. Similarly A Dog in a Hat is good.

And there’s The Racer by Tim Krabbe if you fancy fiction.

Etape by Richard Moore is also good for train journeys as each chapter is distinct so you can dip in and out of it easily.

All you start fast people clearly work differently from me :) IME that strategy never seems to end as well as the catch the people who didn’t pace themselves in the second half of the race. But then I always seem to get on better with longer races.

Don’t get carried away at the start. It’s really easy to batter yourself trying not to lose places in the first bit and then spend the next 20 minutes paying for it and have all the people you went past return the favour while you try and get your lungs the right way out again. This is especially true if, like all normal people, you don’t do any sort of warm up other ride from where you parked to the start.

NB: you will probably still do this because it’s a race and people are getting away.

Do thrash yourself trying to catch that person just in front at the end though because no matter where you finish the “I could have made up that one place” after race analysis is a thing.

Even top XC guys have ninja skills. If you’ve ever been passed by them at a race on a line that wasn’t until they nipped passed you on it then it’s best to think hard before attempting it yourself later on. And as for thinking “I’ll close that gap on the downhill” when they go by you at the top of a hill…

There are these things:

http://www.sjscycles.co.uk/jtek-shiftmate-straight-model-8-prod38754/

I’ve never tried them so I’ve no idea if they work.

I like Lezyne ones. Also, if you have a short pump and wrap it in a neoprene chain stay protector thing it keeps off the worst of the crap. Does mean it doesn’t fit in the wee clamp things so I use the clamp thing from a fatter pump that lives in the camelbak.