LOL, I’ve no idea what it goes up to, my only benchmark is the last 12 years of rides I’ve fed it.  I am definitely slow these days.  I checked though, mine went from 0 to 12 with 4 slow rides totalling about 60 miles!  I even looked at all the parameters on my account, if my weight was set to something silly maybe that would skew it, but everything is correct.  My training zones are set off my max heart rate and it’s not showing that I’m 100% in the top zone or anything like that, in fact it’s picking up the opposite.  Think it’s just random rubbish somehow.

More seriously, if you look at the graph, if you rode once a fortnight or something it might struggle to get your fitness  score up because each ride adds less than the two weeks off takes away, but obviously doing 25 rides a year would leave you fitter than if you did none.  So there is an underlying principle that you get fitter by riding your miles shorter but more often.

I’m not convinced the algorithm is good enough to be particularly useful, though I find it vaguely helpful if your riding is a mixed bag; you can’t easily compare rides to see how your training is going when some rides are dead flat, or dead hilly or off road etc as you need to combine time, distance and elevation to some extent.

The weekly effort chart I do quite like, it successfully predicted my burn-out last year and I’ve done a better job of getting fit this year by using it to not get carried away. It hates it if I ride lots of climbs and that’s what kills my legs, it’s hilly round here so it’s hard not to get carried away, especially when the weather is nice!  It’s currently squealing about last week though, because I rode Monday, Thursday, Sunday.  If I’d moved one of those rides back/forward a day it wouldn’t be bothered, so maybe a rolling analysis would be more useful to smooth that out.

If I was using it more extensively, there is a data API you can access, it seems reasonably straightforward to bounce the data into an SQL server and build out some more relevant metrics.

I’ve not seen the Garmin comparison before, but Strava’s fitness assessment is somewhat limited I think.

I used to ride a lot 10+ years ago and was in fairly decent shape, I’ve spent a couple of months gradually getting back into things and am hideously slow compared with back then.  Obviously.  On Friday I went up a climb and my GPS told me that my PB was 17 minutes, back in 2012, and it took me 23 minutes.  But Strava says my fitness is 47 somethings now, yet I can see that my fitness never went above 46 somethings in 2012 and was actually 38 somethings when I went up that climb 6 minutes faster. LOL

The reason for 1x is that we all went from 3x to 2x and that left us constantly changing gear at the front, which is generally annoying. 1x fixes that, but 3x gives you the best of both options.

Interesting, how have you fixed the hose to the down tube? How does the cable run around the bottom bracket?

Ta.

That tool is for unseizing a piston, it doesn’t look like there’s enough of a gap to get the piston actually out of the caliper?

My issue is the exact opposite of it being stuck, it’s too loose!
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That’s the one I was looking at, I needed to check it was long enough for my frame, which it is

Then I had concerns that it was a really old thing so popped back in to see what the consensus is.  There are user reviews for the DX from 2016, though I can’t see anything for the all black one earlier than 2018.
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Thanks, those KS Levs look good, but one of the ones on offer has the manufacturer’s blurb in the advert and it’s going on about how great it all is for…… 2014.

They seem expensive for stock they’ve not been able to shift for a decade, there’s no way any one was charging those RRPs back then either, that was like a month’s wages or something!

I’m not saying no, but surely things have progressed since then and I’d be better with something more modern?  I suppose it’s period correct for my Retro Ride at least.

Votes for the KS Lev vs a Brand-X one?
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They’re unbranded, I guess cheap functional rubbish, whatever Giant put on last year’s 20″ kids bike.

I replaced them because the arms were too short to clear decent tyres, so I guess the ones I put on won’t be what you want, but they were dirt cheap, something like £20 an end including the levers, so the ones I took off will probably be similar.

Gave them a spin last night, really pleased with them, the braking performance is much better than it was. I’m getting a bit of squeak if I give them a proper pull, but I’m sure that’s just the pads wearing in.

It’s not often you’re after some niche thing and it turns out you had something in the tool box already!

I have the Bolt (V1) and I think it’s perfectly good for navigation, so without looking at the Roam and only going off the name, I suspect that’ll do a perfect job for you too. So long as you plot the route out accurately it’ll keep you on the line and it’s possible to setup Turn by Turn with the right route creator. Turn by turn with the beep turned on so you get notified when you ned to turn is probably pretty neat.

The app works well I think, I use Strava to create the routes, any route I mark as a favourite is immediately available in the app to set as my route. The only draw-back is that you can’t set a route on the device, so you do need your phone at least when you get the bike out of the shed. But I suppose if you don’t know where you’re going you should take your phone anyway.

Probably another consideration is that the Wahoo setup is incredibly flexible, you can have the maps page, a mini-maps page that shows you the upcoming gradients as well, use the lights and/or the beep with the navigation and if you ever decide you want to know how unfit you are you can have whatever views you want with just the bits you want to know about where you want it.

Yep, a sure sign that your chain is about to snap and send your mech into the spokes.

If they were £6 you would have ordered two I expect, just to make sure.

I got some of the carbon aero bars for my make-do-until-it’s-new-bike-time gravel build, they almost ended up on my good bike they’re so nice, I probably should have ordered two as well.

I got some Alien Pro wrap stuff from Amazon and it’s super comfy and looks good, but it’s all much of a muchness really, apart from the stuff that’s fake leather, which is horrible!

Yeah, they’re 85mm. I figured that not knowing that, the easiest was to fit them and see as I am putting new bars on so the brakes were off anyway. I just tested them and they were a bit mediocre, but it sounds like new pads a fettle and we’re on to a winner.

What happens when the Ramblers get themselves included as a respondent in case is that their standing isn’t challenged. It’s a niche area of law, but I suspect that if the other side paid enough for their Barrister they would start by challenging the Rambler’s standing in the case, because they don’t have any.

South Wales I was threatened by a farmer for pushing my bike on a footpath, he actually released his cows from his shed to try and scare us off!

We were only there because I’d had a smash and was walking back to the car with a bust-up knee. Going back to the original post, under those circumstances the bike was very much a natural accompaniment!

Thanks! Are those V-brakes any different to the ones that come on my kids bikes? I have a set in a box outside because they didn’t clear the 2.3″ tyres I fitted, so if they’re the same that could be a winner.

Cheap is important as ultimately this bike will be replaced with something nice in a the next year or so.

The question of whether things need to change is very location specific I think. I grew up riding bikes in the Lakes and rode wherever I wanted without any regard for classification – it was irrelevant, I caused no bother, no one was bothered.

Now I live in Durham where the Grouse lot have run-amok over decades, there are Land Rover tracks that were horse and even train tracks going back centuries, they’re footpaths now and policed by people with quad bikes and shotguns. It’s a huge huge area of land that is in industrial use, has the potential to provide huge benefit to walkers and bikers, but is the preserve of a small number of gun people. The grouse aren’t even bothered by bikes anyway, it’s the walkers with their dogs that are the problem.

Change is needed round here as you can’t just ride it regardless.

Thanks, that’s perfect, I’ll see how I go and jump on those TRP thing if I need them.

Going back up a few posts, the reason the Ramblers haven’t taken a case is that they have no legal standing, only the landowner could bring a case on this issue. Landowners generally have sufficient means to deal with issues – most aren’t overly bothered I expect, the rest seem fairly happy to intimidate one way or another and keep most people away.

Change to access Law is interesting, the problem is that it’s not really compelling and reliant on a consultation process that the Ramblers etc would organise around and make sure they got the result they wanted rather than the result that suits everyone else.

I think to be successful there are two routes, one is to organise local people to sit down with the map and identify all the bits of footpath that are wrong, but also show how those changes open up the countryside for people. Identify 5, 10 and 15 mile loops that become available to people living in x, y and z and how these routes can impact on health and fitness.

The second is complete reform, as part of the post-Brexit farm funding regime – Identify the bits of trail that can make the biggest difference in the same way and fund their creation and make upgrading footpaths to bridleways a part of that.

So a mix of new trails and upgraded access that’s targeted locally at the most useful bits, rather than a blanket national approach that does have genuine issues in some locations. With funding to support.

You would also want to consider ongoing obligations on the land-owners and how those can be minimised and establishing a process that allows local people to say, “This trail is great, and that trail is great, but wouldn’t it be even greater if we could link them together?”

It’s the Durham Dales AONB, specifically the Muggleswick Estate, the sign is at the Parkhead Cafe.

I was on the highest railway in England, the bit that was signed No Bikes I think would likely have been incorporated into the C2C route decades ago if it wasn’t a footpath.

I was thinking about this at the weekend when I was confronted by a load of “No bikes” signs and a load of footpath signs that had been ripped out of the side of the path to discourage even that use. The path used to be a railway line FFS.

Then I was stopped at a gate to open it later on and it had a sign on it listing all the funders of the AONB. I looked up and all I could see was the mess that is grouse moorland. It’s a great place to ride your bike, beautiful if you ignore the industrialised nature of the land use, but it’s not even remotely natural.

The two thoughts are heavily intertwined, there’s huge hostility from the local land owners towards anyone using the paths, let alone bikes and you can see the history of this, just by looking at the maps and comparing it to where horses used to pull trucks.

They’re not on the Strava Heatmap unfortunately, maybe you need to pop back and reinstate them!

Yes, you can keep bikes in the chalets no bother.

Don’t do what I did last year and set off riding from Center Parks aiming for the trails in the forest nearby that you remembered from 25 years earlier. That was Sherwood Forest thicky!

Take a road bike and the Top of Great Dun Fell is within range btw.

Yeah, that’s what the stiffness is about really, distributing the load over the wider cleat area.

Does anyone do a sole that lets you replace the grippy bits? If you do a lot of walking in the shoes they end up absolutely
perfect for pedaling, but with no grip left.

The one I wore yesterday must be nearly 15 years old. I kept it as it was kitted out for night riding, but now I’m doing gravel riding it’s back in fashion – my road helmet is too roady, my MTB helmet is too bright for gravel. Mind you my other helmets aren’t much younger.

None of them have ever been crashed in, but I’ll probably replace two of them this year because the straps are going a bit manky, I think from sun tan cream of all things.

That’s cool, I should really buy one to build up for my kiddo’s next bike, but he won’t need it for a few years.

Those shorts are great, but they’re not even close to the bargains that some of the jackets are. There’s some great waterproof stuff on there, just in time for the English summer!

I think the local legend thing and the personal heatmap are in the right ballpark, but perhaps not quite executed right, they should work together.

Say you came to my village and wanted to ride your bike on the road, there’s no one with a better heat map than mine for you.  There should be an option to pick a location, tick some boxes to say you want quiet roads that are hilly and for it to recommend a load of rides to you, then let you say, “That guy is really cool, show me where else he rides!”  Then if you say you want 20 hilly miles if auto-creates some options from my heat map.

Strava know all the stuff it needs to know to serve up great rides for you wherever you go, but it’s just not really there.
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I have a handful of people that I get Kudos from no matter what I do, I was sort of thinking they must be taking the piss, but I’m not sure now. There’s two who live locally that I’ve never interacted with at all, no idea who they are or why they are giving me Kudos for my occasionbal pathetic efforts.

I pay for it still, it’s buttons compared with the rest of the cost of owning bikes and I find the route planner, in conjunction with Heat Maps really useful for working out new routes. I like that if I favourite a route it automatically puts it on my Wahoo Elemnt for me and I like that if I favourite a segment it tells me how slow I am compared with 10 years ago as it heightens my agony on the climbs.

The trick with your feed is not to follow all your friends on Strava, I only follow people that I know through sport, ie actual athletes, not people uploading a 1.5m run at 11m/mile once every blue moon. The worst thing there now is that there’s lots of commutes posted, but it’s vaguely interesting to see that. I wish auto-upload forced you through the edit process and forced you to add a name to the ride. I hate the default “Morning Ride” that ends up all over the place.

The other day I looked at my dwindling list of KoMs and was pleasantly surprised to see no one has managed to get my 15s sprint segment from waaaaaay back still, some guy went through pulling 950W on his power meter and still didn’t get me. That was nice! And there’s still one that I’ve got with over 32,000 people having had a bash at, I like that they’ve archived my greatest hits like that.

I don’t think the analysis is all that great as it’s a bit of a pain to track my progress in a way that works well for me, but the API is there and I managed to create a program that gets my data back out automatically fairly easily, so I have my own live training tracker thing. It’s nice they made that available.

The training vs tiredness thing is a bit bobbins too, it way over estimates the short-term effect of going for a ride vs years of bashing out the miles. I’ve not ridden properly for nearly 10 years and it’s showing my 4 rides in 4 weeks recently as almost 90% of what it shows for my peak way back when the reality is my fitness is barely 10% of that!

Are they really less popular? I used to ride mine because it was cheap to run in the Peak District grit over the winter (both in money and time terms), because it let me ride with slower riders and still thrash myself and because if you’re riding 4-5 days a week it’s a great way to stop yourself getting bored. None of that has changed I don’t think.

I put gears on mine a few years ago because I wasn’t riding and was hideously unfit, but then I’ve never ridden it much with the gears and I have other bikes, so I’m going to swap the kit back on and hunt out some suitable trails.

Best thing about it was the strength you built in your arms and back, the only time I could ride down Fort William without stopping was when I’d spent a winter on the Singlespeed.

I saw about the receiver hitch thing, but it’s too late now, as are most of these recent posts as I bought the first one that was recommended to me! The thing with vertical mounting the bikes is also that nose-weight is a function of weight and the horizontal distance to the COG of whatever you put on the back, so if it lets you package the bikes in the space better, potentially you can get away with more weight closer to the car.

Trailers the other downside is that you can’t go as fast with them and it’s another thing to think about when you’re driving. I have an 8’x 4′ livestock trailer that would easily adapt to carry the 7 bikes that my 7-seat car could fill with riders, but no way I’d want that hassle unless it was the only way we could do it. I’d rather put 4 bikes on the roof and 3 on the back and have people pack very light!

I actually resurrected the thread to ask about wheel adaptors for my road bike wheels, which are really undersized for the wheel tracks and straps.

I can’t believe I have to point this out, but the range of gears is often less important than the gaps between the gears. There’s little more annoying than feeling like you’re in the wrong gear, changing and it still feeling like you’re in the wrong gear.

Usually you’re either riding up hill or downhill and having a front ring that covers each scenario seems like it’s about the right balance for me, for riding where you’re pedalling downhill at least. I can see 1x working great for climbing to the top of technical descents because you can sacrifice the top-end you weren’t going to use to keep the gear gaps right, but anything away from that and I feel like 2x seems like the way to go.

I bought the Yakima in the end, it arrived today. Really impressed with it, it’s all well thought out and easy to use. I’d cocked up the wiring for my electrics on the car, so 4 pins needed to be swapped over, but that’s all sorted now. I’ve had to order a different tow-ball so Friday I’ll be able to go on adventures.

Does anyone know of an adaptor or whatever for the wheel straps for road bikes? With them designed to accommodate fat bikes, they’re not really the best on my road bike so I was thinking some sort of shaped rubber block to pop over the rim first to get things nice and snug. Before I start up my 3D printer and find an old innertube, does anyone make something suitable?

Thanks, those Yakimas look really good. Has anyone used the 2+1 version rather than the 3 and is there any issues at all with the click-on extra rack? Didn’t realise that was an option and generally will only need the 2, with the third only needing to take a kids bike and I sorta think I might never need that as I can put all our gear in a roof box if I need to put the kids bikes in the boot.

Budget wise I don’t really want to spend £4-500, but if a middle-budget option is £300, I probably don’t mind spending the extra if it’s worth it.

The way to do regen is basically as a speed-limiter for road bikes, so you don’t have to hang onto the drops at 40-50mph absolutely terrified as your arms go to mush and you wonder if you can slow down for the next corner. Imagine cruising down the Colombiere at a sensible speed and feeling fresh as a daisy when you get to the bottom and you’ve added 70% of another go up to the top to the battery too.

No idea how you would sort the mechanics, some sort of direct drive to the motor then put the freewheel only on the cranks somehow I guess.

I’ve done two, when I used to ride loads I didn’t usually go much past 60 miles, but got carried away a couple of times.

First I rode from Manchester to Wales and back, was supposed to go with a group but everyone bailed as it was pouring down. Proper Manchester pouring. I had nothing else to do so figured I’d set off and see what happened. In the end I got sunburnt somewhere near Wrexham and when I got back to Manchester it was still pouring down. No one believed me when I said how nice the weather was!

Second one I was in Les Gets with my wife, and fancied a flat day, so we rode around Lake Geneva. She’d properly talented on a bike, she was fit from running, but was only doing 30 mins on a turbo 5 times a week on the bike, so not really enough. I figured she’d get round as she’d managed to get to the top of the Colombiere a few days earlier, but the second half would be tough. After 70 miles she hadn’t broken, so I spent the rest of the ride trying to break her to see how tough she was, struggled to drop her. 111 miles in 6.5 hours. Awesome day out!

Had an issue with XT calipers leaking after not being used for a while. I fixed my issue by dragging some even older Maguras out of the parts bin, they didn’t even need bleeding and they’ve been sat for 8 or 9 years.

I hadn’t seen those Bafang motor kits on eBay until just now, but they look like just the job. 750 bonus Watts for your private track to work.

You’re in the same position as me, I have an entire second car for the 2-3 days a week I need to go into the office, I’d bike it if I could cut the journey time rather than just arriving less tired.

Because they aggregate the reviews they do publish rather than all the reviews they receive. It’s dishonest to claim or imply that your customers have rated a product 5 stars when the truth is they rated it 3. It is fraud by misrepresentation.