Elastica – Connection was a pretty blatent rip off of Three Girl Rhumba by Wire (although i prefer the Elastica song than the Wire one!)

I keep almost pulling the trigger and getting the vector s then changing my mind and thinking the power2Max Type S is better value. Then i have second thoughts and think surely Shimano will be releasing one soon. I wait a while for that, no new rumours or news, no pro’s testing it so think it is just some vaporware and start to consider the vector again and so it repeats!

The faff and cleaning. In the summer ill usually be able to find an hour or so most days to get out on my bike, with all the cleaning afterwards at this time of year then that hour hardly seems worthwhile so ill go on rollers or to the gym instead and save all the faff for longer rides.

great stuff, well done minipips!

The pedal stroke on a turbo is a bit different to what its like outside (or on rollers) so your souplesse might not be quite as bad as you think.

My race experience is mostly crits and track rather than xc (i think xc will be different because the group / drafting dynamics are much different)

Assuming everyone is fairly well matched in terms of training and fitness and the seeding / category is working as it should, then there are still going to be big variations in what ones strengths and weaknesses are.

There is going to be a proportion of the field where finishing in the main group is going to be an achievement. There is also another, smaller proportion who have a good sprint and can hope to podium if it comes down to a sprint. In the middle of this there are alot of riders that are fit enough to finish in the group but they cant sprint, yet many of the riders are content to sit in and wait for the sprint. A large part of this is the fear of making too big an effort, not being able to sustain it and then going out the back of the main group when they get caught.

Unless you are a rider head and shoulders above the competition, then most of us probably have one hand to play. For some this is a sprint finish, for others it should be trying to make a selection before that. It probably wont work, but its good training trying plus it is more fun being active in the race. Trying something and failing and finishing off the back of the main group as a result ultimately feels more satisfying than finishing the race in the main group in 30th place and feeling like you have something still in the tank!

Interesting – what did you have in your bottle/camelbak – I’m guessing just water.

Yeah just water. In some respects i find exercising makes the fasting easier as it takes my mind off feeling hungry!

I started on the 1st November lost 2 kg by Christmas but then slacked off and put 3kg on over the festive period (despite doing the festive 500 so getting alot of exercise in) so need to get back on it. Going to do the 5:2 as that was what was working before Christmas but also cut some of the crap out i eat on non fast days.

I havent found riding on a fast day a problem (under a couple of hours anyway) it is more of an issue the day after.

When i last weighed my portion size i was a bit shocked. Things like my morning bowl of muesli was about 4 times what it should have been!

I think i could live with not having the all carbon fork/steerer as it would mean di2 would be in budget with enough left over for a power meter.

Yeah should work

Sometimes i go out segment hunting and looking for KOMs but most of the time i use strava just to monitor how im doing over the course of a ride and see if losing a bit of weight is improving my times up certain climbs. So getting the occassional PB felt like an achievement. On the other hand i was out for 15 miles today and got 38 2015 KOM, solely because i was the only person to ride the segments so far. I even got one when i stopped to fix a puncture!

There was already a problem with overlapping segments but this had made things even more untidy.

Finished today as well. Probably my last ride of 2014, forecast for tomorrow looks awful but its been an enjoyable year on the bike – although a bit scary when i see that ive riden over 555 hours in total!

Distance 8,785.1 mi
Time 539h 39m
Elev Gain 314,419 ft
Rides 418

Hoping to get to 9000 before the year is out

100k for me, pleased with that. First half of it was into a headwind, the return journey much more pleasant!

Disagree that the low range stuff is astonishingly good and good value for money – most of the low range stuff is awful, far too heavy, over complicated (things like dual suspension), components that wont last, brakes that barely work, bolts that will round off if you try to adjust….they are so bad they put alot of people off cycling. It shouldnt be this way, a simple, well designed bike should be in reach of those whose budgets are under £200 whereas the reality is you need to spend about double that to have something fit for purpose and there isnt much choice in that price range. That might sound pretty cheap to most of us but it is alot of money for many folk, particularly those just starting out.

Terrible news, really busy junction with people crossing the road coming out of the train station – particularly at this time of year to go on the ferris wheel and ice skating etc. 🙁

Got a pair of Gore bike wear gloves hoping ot would mean dry, warm hands. They are fine for about an hour but after that awful – my fingers feel as if they are swimmng in water and when i take the gloves off if and turn them upside down the water runs out. Cost about £50 but much, much worse than cheap aldi gloves i got about 5 years ago.

Track bike and living 15 minutes away from an indoor velodrome, the racing is just so much fun particularly when its blowing a gale and pishing down outside!

Sunshine was bollocks, the last quarter was like an entirely different film to what had gone before and ruined what was up to then a pretty good film

just tried to look at that google chromecast at currys and it says I have to wait over an hour to access the site, wtf!

worth trying the pcworld website, same company and prices and seems to work ok

Im in, it has quickly become part of christmas tradition for me alongside watching It’s a Wonderful Life and devouring my own body weight in lindt chocolate reindeer!

its on amazon, although its not one of their black friday deals. if you do a search for ps4 it will come up

is a PS4 plus Little Big Planet 3 and The Last of Us a good deal at £300?

Under Thatcher Britain was a dark, nasty place if you happened to be part of an ethnic or sexual minority, or worked in a certain industry (or lived in particular community that was dominated by one) or were poor. Some people thrived – some of them working class too – but there were huge amounts of people left behind and then treated like shit. Under Blair the country became a nicer, more open, more compassionate place for people in general not just a small subsection of society. Things werent perfect by any means but they were better for those that were alienated and marginalised under Thatcher. In addition to this the infrastructure of the state whether it be schools or hospitals that had been crumbling through lack of investment in the 1980s had significant improvements under Blair – i dont agree with how it was financed by PFI – but the improvements were undeniable. Schools getting new buildings or extensions, new sports facilities and refurbished. They became places fit for purpose.

As for Iraq – i realise now i was wrong but i supported the decision to go to war at the time, perhaps it would ease my conscious if i could just put all the blame onto Blair for my opinion back then rather than accept i was wrong which is what i expect alot of people do now!

Schwalbe Durano Plus for me. Decent puncture protection – not quite Marathon Plus levels but much better feel.

Conti GP4 Seasons are really good in terms of wet weather grip but they dont have as good puncture protection as the Durano Plus.

David Millar tried a single chain ring on his TT bike in the Tour de France a few years ago – chain came off on the finishing straight when his time up to then would have had him win the stage. Strangely i dont think this resulted in the famous bike throwing incident 😀

Should work

Is it just the strap or the unit bit that clips onto the strap that isnt working? I went through a few garmin straps eventually they were out of the warranty period and werent replacing for free anymore so ended up getting a polar wearlink strap instead and attaching the garmin ant+ unit to that and it works fine.

Most (in)famous would be Lance Armstrong on a couple of his twitter rides 😳

Cateye CS 1000 is popular amongst track sprinters, if it can stand up to Pervis and Hoy then should do the job for everyone else.

Thanks for the headsup it had gone to my spam folder and would have missed it otherwise.

Its expensive (particularly if you need accomodation on top of the entry fee) and some of the riding isnt great but its still one of the most enjoyable weekends i have every year so its more than worth it.

Did people know that the brain actually does/can/did stay concious after the head being cut off?

http://www.aintnowaytogo.com/beheading

It’s near the bottom, the account by Dr. Beaurieux.

From the same link… 😀

Dr Livingstone wrote that Africans he encountered were aware that consciousness is not lost immediately. He recounts how they bent a springy sapling and tied cords from it under the ears of a man to be decapitated so that his last few moments of awareness would be of flying through the air.

well done, enjoyed watching it

Something agricultural related (irrigation or the plow or even just agriculture itself) as it allowed humans to move past the hunter gatherer stage of development

All that distance and he lands and faceplants. Great achievement but that has to rankle a bit!

I enjoyed it.

Is that the Mongoose that is about $200 or something daft like that in the US?

If anything it was probably more unacceptable in the mid 90s than it is now!

65 going down the Tourmalet – good surface and good visibility but even more importantly a really good descender in front who i could follow down.

Fastest ive been in the UK is the String Road in Arran – the top section going towards Brodick its relatively easy to get mid 50s. Just after the fast section there is a little rise so you can scrub off a lot of that speed before the corner.

British citizens using Russia Today to spread propaganda…bring back McCarthy

its screen caps taken from their webcam that is streaming on youtube. Its live, no commentary or editorialising.

Plenty of other footage out there on social media – racist and sectarian chanting, nazi salutes, homophobic abuse, assaults and so on – none of which appears on thr Russia Today feed.

The Russian state owned media was just a youtube webcam feed of George Square there isnt any commentary or editorial on it and the photo that was posted is a screengrab from that. For some of us we live here and have experienced what the mood in the city has been the last week and what its like now – its not some distant news event that we are only seeing threw the prism of the media.

Much was made of the grafitti outside the polling station – Absolutely no excuses for that, it just shouldnt be happening. However throughout the day and particularly into the evening outside another polling station (just off Paisley Road West – less than half a mile away from BBC Scotland headquarters) there were dozens of “better together” supporters outside the orange hall that is next to the polling station entrance and police were needed to keep them in check from threatening voters. That is much more serious case of intimidation than a bit of grafitti that virtually no-one would have seen because it was painted over as soon as it was discovered. No coverage at all of this on the news though. Not even on Russia Today!