I would ride/carry up Rossett Gill, over past angle tarn, descend to Sprinkling Tarn, past Styhead Tarn and down to Stockley Bridge. Then pick up the trail that leads into Grange to the West of Castle Crags, either ride up Honister pass and ride it from the top, or you can pick it up lowere down.

Quite a few add ons if that’s not enoughg for you, best one is to go all the way up Honister Pass, turn right and onto Dale Head and descend towards Cstle Crags.

Just bled my front brake and discovered a seal has gone, so if you see someone locking their rear wheel and overshooting the turns on the descents, that’ll be me!

It’s two laps, a 17 and a 14 and the start has changed this year. The finish might have changed too, where you cross the road and enter the forest for the last climb isn’t accessible.

Grisedale Pike I reckon. Descend off Hobcarton End, or for a longer ride down Coledale.

It’s not so much the viscosity, but an issue of compatibility with the material used in the seals. DOT fluid will destroy the seals on a mineral oil-only brake.

Sorted then, I’ll just pull some Magura stuff through. Can’t believe I’ve not done it since the Keilder 100!

Cool. Doesn’t that chaps citroen have Dot fluid in it?

I did the climb to the top of Spooky on Saturday, it was clear no problems. We were told that the descent was also fine, it had just been cut up a bit in a few places by the logging. When we got there they were doing the repairs to the trail, so we turned round and went back the way we came.

I have the deal Extreme rear light, it pisses over anything else and they’re available for £43 here:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Magicshine-MJ-818-Rear-Cycle-Light-Insanely-Bright-/140667906375?pt=UK_SportsLeisure_Cycling_Bike_Lights&hash=item20c075e947.

If you have a DX light, you’ll now have a spare battery for it and if you buy the y-cable also on ebay you can just plug the light unit into your existing setup.

Can’t decide. SS if it’s muddy then either Anthem or CX if it’s frozen. No idea if it’s snows!

Oh right, cheers. Too big for me and more suited to commuting than the velodrome I reckon.

Whats your track bike and how much do you want for it?

Wheelbase have some good deals on last year’s Trek Madones. I picked up their 5.5, fantastic bike.

Magura did a road hydraulic brake years ago, they occasionally pop up on ebay and sell for very good money.

For discs on road bikes, one of the problems listed above is the weight penalty associated with asymetric forces – primarily the brake twisting the fork. Would a solution not be to run a pair of 80-100mm discs rather than one larger disc? You would run the piping inside the forks and have the calipers take their fluid from the fork mounts and then plumb the front brake hose from the lever into the stem cap or similar. Using the smaller discs would largely solve the aerodynamic ‘problem’ as the calipers would tuck in behind the forks fairly well.

At the rear you already have asymetric forces due to the drive, so I wouldn’t expect the weight penalty to be an issue there.

All sounds interesting.

What did Bob say?

Anyone know if the course was frozen last night and if it’s likely to be frozen on race day? If it’s cold enough it won’t be a mud-fest and I can wheel out the nice bike, if it’s not then I’m not trashing anything nice in all that mud!

Yeah seen the Hylix ones, they look nice. Some of the 29er ones I saw were 485, which I reckon is too big, but I’ve got a few on eBay I’m watching.

Great answers! Cheers.

That sounds BAD!

Interesting. Any chance you could work out a probability for your scenario mintimperial?

I hadn’t considered the spokes running to the wrong side of the rim, thanks for that.

I’m probably not going to run it at all, but I was bored at lunch time so I loosely fitted everything together to see what it would look like. It hasn’t built up at all well, I think it needs different length spokes at different points perhaps. Some spokes are really tight, some are quite loose and one I can’t even get into the nipple.

Might just need fettling, might just be a bad idea!

Yeah, that’s brilliant Tomaso, thanks really appreciate it! This is for a winter wheel so it just has to be vaguely the right shape.

When the rim split I did about 400 miles on it with a 6mm buckle in it without issues. I managed to pick up some Kysrium SLs very cheap, but I’ve since been told off for riding them in the winter grit as apparently they’re too good for that, so I need to fix my broken wheel!

What’s the worse that could happen? Recipe for disaster = red rag to a bull 🙂

I hadn’t considered the spoke lengths, that might be a problem.

Tomaso, that would be fantastic, thanks! Can you drop me an email to paulrockliffe(at)mail2web(dot)com please.

Cheers all!

The Garmin cable is a rip, but I believe that their devices are quite flaky when connected to the PC with a normal USB cable. I know mine struggles if it’s not being treated as a USB hard drive on a normal cable. No excuse I know, but I believe that’s what someone might buy that cable.

I have one of Marc Beaumont’s old Furys, it came with off-set bushes and an angle set, so is slacked out to about 62 degrees; it’s a lot better looking in my living room than any of those pictures look on my computer screen. It’s very light too, my build is around the 37lbs mark, with mostly heavy components on it.

It’s obviously a fast bike, regardless of what some reviews have said, Marc won a World Cup round on it and Mick Hannah hasn’t exactly been slow on it either.

Can Mobile Atlas Creator be used to get OS onto an Edge 700?

I rode it last winter when there was 6 inches of snow from about 2000ft upwards. It was still ace. My route is from Wythburn up between Dollywagon and Helvellyn, left onto the summit, down to Raise, up Raise and down again to Sticks Pass, left down Sticks and back.

Helvellyn seems to get a bad press on here for some reason, but it’s a great ride if you don’t mind a bit of pushing. Which you don’t or you wouldn’t be going up mountains in the Lakes.

If there’s no snow you can pedal onto the summit to cheers from the American/Japanese tourists and get your picture taken! What’s not to like?

I bought a Dare2be thing from mandmdirect for £20, it’s pretty much fantastic, but they’ve sold out now.

It might not be called a race, but it is a race. Do you think the ‘winners’ went round it in under 2 and a half hours for a ‘challenge’ or because they wanted to get to the finish first?

You can’t ride the race course any day of the week as there are a few bits that are run the wrong way btw.

It seems like a lot of your problem was that you turned up late though, parking was fine when I arrived.

I think it could be possible to do a route that gives you a good spread before the first tight section though, if the race started on the other side of the road and from the access point further towards Lorton there’s a good three mile section of relatively flat wide fire road that pops you out where you come off the South Loop trail and cross the road, or you could carry on through and do the South Loop bit first.

If you ride a bit faster the queues aren’t as long 😉

Seriously, they’re modifying the first climb for next year to sort out that bottle-neck. It’s one of the best race courses going I reckon, hills are great.

Only ‘cheap’ shifters I can see are Ultegra DI2, but they would end being very expensive………

Will send it back to CRC and let them sort it out for me then, gonna be a massive pain though!

I fitted SKS Blumels, then got it in the neck because they’re not long enough. I couldn’t find any longer ones, but I bought a spare set on eBay for a few quid, chopped one up and used my rivet gun to link the two bits together to get it much longer. Having ridden them, they’re much better and will keep the roadies happy.

I think I’m going to drill my rivets out and swap the additional section with the section on the second set that has the support wires fitted, so that the extension is properly supported and won’t flap about in the wind.

At the height of my powers over the summer I was driving past Keswick one evening with my XC race bike in the boot, so I stopped off, rode round Latrigg as a warm up then attempted to ride to the top of Skiddaw. It was absolutely brutal, I managed to ride all of it, but on the steep bits I was doing 2-3 minute blasts then having to stop to recover. It’s not easy, but it is the easiest way of getting to the top I think.

If the weather is good to ride Ullock Pike, which it won’t be, you could do a lot worse than pushing back up from the bottom and descending Carlside as well.

Anyone seen the modern stuff that kids are watching these days? Absolute rubbish and it’s quite disappointing the way a lot of cartoons especially have gone. Watched some Ben 10 with my Girlfriends Nephew (4) the other day, it taught him that it was good to shoot someone in the back after letting them leave. Great. I managed to catch some of the new Thundercats at the weekend, that seems to have gone the same way. They’re all lacking in story lines and hammed up with unnecessary violence.

Fortunately I’ve managed to get him the complete original Thundercats, so that he can have his moral compass properly reinforced rather than undermined. And also Dungeons and Dragons.

Ulyses, Mysterious Cities of Gold and Flash Gordon are next on the list…..

I use the Hope Pro 2 Trials rear hub, it’s great. That it uses their bolt-in system rather than an axle that goes through the dropouts is a massive plus when it comes to getting the wheel out when the chain is very tight, you’re not having to knock the axle out against the tension. Makes a great noise too!

I would knock her. Just saying.

I wouldn’t go near that tight rope walk thing though, and I suspect I’m not the only person on here that wouldn’t.

She’s hot, so it’s fine with me.

I think Marple is all you’re going to get I reckon, possibly something slightly North, but not as far as Tod.

I wouldn’t recommend the On- One headset simply because it can’t be drifted out of the 456C.

Personally I wouldn’t go with a normal 9 speed chain at all, if you ride on decent hills and are reasonably strong they’ll be destroyed in no time. I’d also get a proper steel front chainring because anything alloy won’t last, mine has lasted about 3 months of riding twice a week, the wear is horrific because the force going into it is much higher. Hoping the on-one steel ring will last a lot better!