My impression is that FIFA and the FA aren’t interested in tarnishing their game by outing drugs cheats.

It’s completely inconceivable given what we know about footballer’s morals and the amount of money involved in football that a large number of players aren’t juiced to the max. Given that it could be the difference between a £50k a week contract or a £60k a week contract and some England caps and that testing doesn’t really happen, once you remove the moral objection, why would you not?

Sure I can’t prove that, but we all know it’s the case.

Why *is* the word Stout included in the thread title?

Yes. Mine has a similar gauge (caused by me fitting a 113mm axle BB by mistake), over a year old, hasn’t snapped, worsened, done anything. Use it as a bargaining tool, that and the fact it’s red should get you a good price!

What’s your leccy bike?

My birthday weekend! Interesting.

What about North and East from the top of Werneth Low, looping around to Etherow Country Park? (ie not the way I usually go to Etherow Country Park via Uplands Road)

I asked my girlfriend about this. Apparently there’s only room for one set of shaved legs in our relationship. She did, however, leave the choice up to me.

I suspect her general sentiment is correct though.

Is this on the North Face Trail David? You should try some of the other stuff around there, I’ve heard it’s quite decent. So long as you’re suitably experienced.

Binners, it’s possibly your attitude on the other thread, or possibly the replica kit thing, I’m not sure.

It would make a cracking addition to the place to put their over-flow carpark at the bottom of the hill and run a singletrack climb up to the red trail and a black descent back down again, would make a proper climb of it then!

I put the DH one in a Bullit and it was fine for about 18 months until I changed frames and it became surplus to requirements. When I took it out it literally dropped out, though it hadn’t been loose in use – frame or headset issue, not sure.

I had no issues with it, it was well ridden including a lot of trail riding in the Peaks etc, didn’t require a re-grease or new bearings, or tightening. There was a bit of surface corrosion when it came out, but nothing serious – the design depends on it being made of steel though.

2Pure sent me a second headset race FOC when I asked if I could buy one and I had no problems with regularly swapping forks about.

£20? Worth it based on my experience.

What channel is it on?

BBC iPlayer app works very well.

If you have access to someone’s Sky account you can get all their sports channels via the Sky Go App.

Currently watching the US Open courtesy of my Dad’s Sky Account……

ahwiles, racing isn’t about the trails, it’s about yourself. It’s about personal development and the desire to be the best you can. But, that aside, as crazy-legs has said, pretty much any trail is difficult if you’re racing it as fast as possible.

The club thing is interesting. MTBing definitely suffers because of the lack of club structure, sat underneath a national-type organisation that looks after all club’s/riders interests.

There have been a number of threads on here about clubs in the past, a lot of people oppose the idea of a club for various reasons, but I would consider it a very strong part of a strategy for long term improvement at international XC. It isn’t good that riders coming into the sport (at a young age especially) generally have to join a road club to get access to riding fitness information and competitive riders to train with. It’s obvious how that ends up with any talent being largely channeled onto the road.

What are people’s experience with MTB club’s promoting competitive riding? I find mine doesn’t at all and I think that the over-riding ethos means that anyone new to the sport that might end up deciding to take racing seriously ends up drinking beer between laps at SITS instead, because that’s what others are doing. The club is very strong in other areas, but offers very little towards any furthering of XC competitiveness-type objectives.

Courses were really very good. One of them was a bit flat, but the other two were challenging enough. All of them had bits in that you couldn’t normally ride, though I’d accept that new trails wouldn’t be a draw for those races compared with what surrounds Manchester.

Interesting thread.

All I’d add is that that over the summer BC ran a series of races around Manchester, 3 venues, 2 races at each, every other Thursday evening.

Manchester has a massive catchment area of bikers, both road and mountain.

There were between 40 and 60 at each race, which seems incredibly small to me. I’m a member of a mountain bike club with 240 members, there were 5 people that raced from the club over the 6 events. Most only did 1 or 2 races. In fact there were more people entering from my similarly-sized road biking club.

D0NK – I needed a spare crown race, so I emailed Jon and he posted me one out FOC the same day.

Huge scope for variation:

Eg:

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/65194370

vs

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/83582724

Virtually the same ride, one done in the winter, less fit and muddy on a 456C, the other on dry trails, a bit fitter and on an Anthem Advanced. 3mph difference.

Njee, the Garmin Graph clearly shows your max power was below 1000 watts on that there ride. :-)

I’ve averages 12.2mph this year, 8.4mph mountain biking and 16.6mph road biking according to connect. I think the road biking average is affected by something though as it seems low, I’ve done two 110 mile rides at 17.5mph and most of my other rides have been quicker. Wonder what else it’s lumped in there……

What number is this, 3 or 3.5? Need to get these parameters established early or it will get confusing!

I don’t know, the lift operator said that they’d been asked to remove all of the middle section, ie where it goes straight down the steepest bit of the hill. Seemed to know what he was talking about and there was no mention of the weather.

The chairlift doesn’t go up to the top though btw, only about halfway up.

We were actually there because Fort William hadn’t opened – it was a little windy, so they sent their ‘rider chap’ to test it out, he couldn’t do the red, so wouldn’t let us up. We were a bit annoyed because the red is more exposed and very hard if it’s windy as it’s all boardwalk that you don’t want to be blown off. The black is much easier in the wind and once you’re off the top, not really exposed. I could have understood if they’d said it was too windy for the lift.

Sounds like I need to get to Llangollen.

When we were there the lift operator told me that the BDS had told them they weren’t going back because the track was too hard. So maybe that’s what the red run is for. Surprised that the country’s best DHers weren’t up for the challenge!

I was there a few weeks ago, the Red track doesn’t appear to be open, it isn’t signed from the top etc, however much of it is clearly visible from the car park. No idea when it is due to be finished, I would guess that given that it’s now September they would be aiming to open it for next year.

The owners are very approachable, so I’d suggest popping an email across and reporting back.

Brakes, are you sure you’ve thought this through properly? What’s the first thing any financial planner is going to say? “Stop spending so much money on bikes.” I’d be very cautious about going down this route!

They’re not in the public domain, because if they were people like you (and me) wouldn’t send them to Windwave for the service. Sorry.

I travelled from Manchester to Fort William last weekend; my Garmin told me sunset was only about 20 mins later in Fort William, which is basically ****-all.

Was out last night, lights were back on, no big deal. But yeah, go for the double shift please.

Apparently the Santa Cruz V-10 Carbon frame has the carbon over half an inch thick in places. Kinda defeats the point in Carbon…….

Flow – you’re talking shit, stop it.

OP – The frame is awesome, you won’t find better for the money. It looks shit if you build it up with skinny forks, xc kit and skinny tyres. So don’t. Put Lyrics, short stem, wide bars and Rubber Queens on and it’ll look awesome. I’ve got quite a few bikes and this is one of the cheapest and one of my favourites.

You put F100s on the C456?

No wonder people complain about the looks if people are building them like that! 36mm minimum stanchion diameter, 2.4″ tyre minimum and the look all make sense, especially mat lacquer over carbon. Put XC race kit on it and it’s going to look fat.

Seriously though, if you’re using F100s, why didn’t you buy the Wippet?

Big stack height on the headset and the same on the stem? Depends what you were using obviously, but there’s potential to lose 15mm there if you spec well.

What did he say exactly? Not that I ever liked him mind.

Canceller is toes down and Evans is cornering.

That photo might be a little misleading as he’s nailing it round a corner and probably adjusting body and foot position so as not to fall off?

I’ve just bought a Kinesis Crosslight 5T frame and their Pure CX Forks for winter riding. £345 delivered from Winstanleys (delivery due any second now……) Went for that as even though it’s a CX bike it’ll be better than my current road bike and it’ll let me race CX too. Planning to get a new proper road bike in the spring to go with it.

It works on a road bike as a means of putting in a short burst while staying seated. You can ride as you were, but add in a short burst of extra power from your calves. Useful if you want to push on whilst maintaining an air of nonchalance.

Got a new frame coming today, really want to build it up ready for the weekend as soon as it arrives, but I need to ride the donor bike to the velodrome tonight, so wouldn’t have time to get all the components cleaned and shiny first. And if I find I’ve forgotten to buy some crucial component I’m screwed. On top of that, if I don’t build it today, I probably won’t get it built until Sunday night.

Decisions, decisions……

In at 5, an uphill wheely!

Epic!

Best of episode 1-9, so should be good. In at number 10, a chap that wobbles a little bit.

If that’s top 10 from 9 episodes it doesn’t bode well……

That’s what I thought njee, so it would be fair to say that if you’re not that good, don’t assume you can do lots of short rides as a shortcut because that’s what one of the best guys does.

I’d want to know what Eatough did to get to the level he’s at though, it sounds like what he’s doing now is maintaining fitness rather than building his massive aerobic base. What I mean is, does the training he does know work for him now because of his background, or did he do the same training when he wasn’t as good as he is now?

Not sure exactly where you mean without getting a map out, but from Bowness, take the ferry across and you’ve got the whole of the Grizedale Forest area to play in, it’s really good out there!

Have a look at connect.garmin.com, you can use that website to search for rides around Windermere that match your criteria quite easily.

HTH.