I think it would be a lot easier to do that if he admitted the obvious truth and stopped being such a dick about it. That’s kind of the sad thing, he obviously was/is an amazing athlete regardless – but I think most people would have a lot more respect for him if he showed a bit of honesty/humility now.

+1

The UCI are complicit in all of this and McQuaid should go.

As a very minimum, how can they possibly accept large donations from Armstrong without being compromised?

IMHO they tried to appear to be doing something about doping (getting riders to sign up to meaningless health charters etc) while protecting the sports biggest star.

It would indeed be a terrible shame.

It’s a credit to all involved that it’s gone on this far as I know everyone has jobs/families/lives and also the amount of effort and time that goes into running the events.

What’s the difference between aspiration and greed?

To the OP – do you ever get the pain off the bike?

If so it could be that the knee cap isn’t tracking properly due to over development of the thigh muscle V under development of the muscle on the inner side on the thigh just above the knee, a fairly common problem with cyclists and one that can be overcome with certain exercises.

So the proposal is – have a tramp move into the spare room or loose 14% in housing benifit.

No mansion tax though.

“We are all in this together” apparently.

And to robdixon re the links – it is exactly this sort of dross in the right wing press about a tiny number of extreme cases that gets people thinking of benifit scroungers.

he’s lost quite a bit of weight in the photo on that link

maybe he’s taken up biking, so he must be alright, just not very funny.

anything but Boden – it’s OK for women and kids but the blokes stuff is only suitable for Herberts

I think a return to the work house system would be a good idea. We could have mill owners in top hats and workers gald of a job with no rights living in poverty. The kids wouldn’t have shoes and half of them would die before they hit 5.

The Tory party is ace – they only work in the interests of ~0.5% of the population but manage to get ~40% of that same poulation voting for them.

I dont fancy trying to bend back the ones that came with the original pads.

I used the same split pins in my last magura brakes for 5 years. If they get bent, just straighten with pliars.

double post

My Mrs is getting a bit pissed off with me riding and fixing bikes. We have 2 young kids, so I try and plan my riding around them all as much as possible.

TBH, it’s getting to the point where I’m seriously thinking about knocking MTBing on the head and doing only road, purely down to not having time for the seemingly endless maintenance required on the former.

I used some silicon to keep the compression in the place I wanted.

Cheers, sounds like a good idea….it u just use a blob of slicone sealant under the edge of the compression dial?

Lex….Lauren Laverne??

if so…wow, she’s nice

I can imagine pitching the concept of ebay before it existed.

So people you don’t know sell stuff, you send them money and then trust them to send the goods

Right.

Works though (usually)

very good BenHouldsworth

Our costs for the winter race have increased by over 300% in 4 years.

…and yet the entry fee is still very reasonable for something really good.

While I appreciate the races run mainly on the goodwill of volunteers will always be cheaper, paying >£50 to enter a poor course mudfest at the other end of the country holds much less appeal.

+1 for Smart 0.5W

I have two of them and not had any probs so far. Very bright. Come with bracket but also have a clip – so u can stick it on a back pocket or camelbak.

Weather
Number of events
(In some cases, high) Entry fees
Extra costs of travelling to an event.

I think one reason people leave it late to enter events is they want to be sure they are able to attend. Personally, unless I think an event will sell out, I do tend to leave it later so I can be more sure I can make it and am not ill/injured/without bike.

call hmrc

do not give any details or money to firm cold calling you.

this is really playing on my mind

+1

Thoughts to the parents of the missing girl who must be be in a dreadful state. Hope they find and return her safe soon.

tick

Slight highjack here…

The sister inlaw has moved there with work for a couple of years and has invited us to visit next summer. While it sounds like an ace place to visit with loads to do, we have a 2 young children (2 and 5) and I’m inclined to think that for the cost of getting us all out there, it’s not going to be great for them with a long flight and lots of time sat in cars travelling between attractions.

Any thoughts on this?

I must agree. I thought it but didn’t say it incase Binnes papa lazarou’d me

what does this mean?

Xbox live membership + COD games

membership of one of those unlimited film club things that you can access through xbox.

large stash of herbal smoking material

[you’ll be hoping not to recover too quickly…but joking aside, get better soon]

Having been once insured with and had to make a claim through Norwich Union (Aviva) I would highly recommend not using them unless you are very bored and would like to have your time filled by being messed around endlessly.

While I recognise it doesn’t suit everyone all of the time, many people don’t need to actaully go into work…they can do it fine from home. I envisage there is a reasonable % of drivers on the road every day who are travelling to an office just to use a PC/phone, which seems rather wasteful to me.

So IMHO, the first angle of attack in addressing transport problems is to reduce the number of journeys made by encouraging home working.

++ Kudos

IME: HTN is the only way to keep the xmas Quality Street consumption under 2kg.

I work in an ofice environment where you would assume the average IQ is fairly high and people are certainly not poor. There are plenty of fat people, some of whom have crisps out of the vending machine for breakfast.

I’m lactic threshold training at the moment before I lapse into Z2 distance training October to Feb, back on the LTR March…

I have no idea what this means and prob as a consequence never get any faster at the races I do.

Are the average speeds talked about above on flat or hilly rides? On my own I can ave ~18mph on a 45mile ride with ~2.75k feet climb and get in top 10% strava for some of the long hills. But seeing the speeds of some of the guys at the local races I’d need a MX bike to keep up. Very humbling.

It’s great you should try it. Bit more technical/less mud than your average XC race I would say.

Course distance is difficult to say as it changes every time, but typically 5-7 laps in 1hr 45 mins-ish, depending on how fast you are.

Good vibe and prizes.

Cheap to enter.

?

Some people we know live in a fairly remote farm house on Anglesey and after hearing some of the stories, I have no idea how one of them manages to live there alone mid week.

– banging on door in middle of night, dogs who normally go mad looking scared.

– banging on bedroom door in middle of night, dogs frozen with fear.

– Head held down on pillow, heard “gottcha” whispered in ear.

– Seen ghostly male figure standing in corner of the room.

RRP: £49.99 ❗

I smashed my radial head at scouts playing British Bulldog when I was about 12. The doc removed the whole thing. Took ages to recover but now very good for scratching hard to reach areas of my back and spinning round at parties. Just joking…it’s suprisingly normal, gets a little stiff sometimes but other than that, fine for nearly 30 years.

johndoh – you can’t control your sister in law so just leave her to it.

Another thing when I’m rambling on – when buying stuff, think about how long you had to work in order to obtain said item. There are a few range rovers etc sat in the office car park representing a few years of the owners life.

work less, buy less stuff, don’t concern yourself with what other people own.

Those “mates” were hired from the same agency that Hugh FW and Jamie Oliver get their TV chums from.