So a mixed bag then 🙂

I have a mortgage and paying off a car but for some reason I really fear the idea of any other credit! I must be old before my time 🙂

I thought (might be urban myth), that in a deep submarine if it leaks the water comes in so fast into a sealed compartment that it compresses the air raising the temperature so you are incinerated rather than drown…..not totally pleasant but faster than drowning so I was told by a submariner friend!

Bill Bryson ‘Down under’ back in July 2000! Amazon won’t let me see any prior orders before 2000, and my memory is crap so I am going with that 😀

I was on the off camber rooty section last year (can’t remember which section), it was great to see how the fast peeps took it (never seemed to touch a root) and how more mortal riders (I think how I would ride) did it, bouncing off every root and ending up at the bottom of the slope! Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves though!

As someone who couldn’t go into wookie hole and had to snorkel on the barrier reef, I find reading about this fascinating and terrifying in equal measure? I dont think I haveclaustrophobia, and have been in fully smoked out compartments with breathing apparatus, but the thought of diving into a cave makes me shudder just sitting here in my garden!

I would be interested to read your article trimix but it will scare the beejeezus out of me 🙂

Had a great day out, but I should have put two bottles on my bike not just one, as it was a bit warm!!!

Had to drive back down south afterwards and I may have looked a bit of a state in the Warwick Services, where I inhaled a large amount of KFC 😀

I am already thinking of putting it into the diary again for next year as it was great!

I will be there, supposed to be setting off at 9:30am, but I think I will be setting off somewhere between 9:45-10am! Riding it with my brother and Angellus of this parish 😀

Possibly riding in my stormtrooper jersey, on a cheap Boardman CX bike…..don’t know about the gearing 🙂

Eurosport has full coverage. I think ITV4 did coverage last year. not sure about this year though.

I am doing it on my Boardman cx bike, with 28mm schwalbe marathons! This may or may not have an uncanny resemblance to my commuter bike 🙂 I am trying to decide if I can be ar&d to take off the guards and rack 🙂

Tea and biscuits anyone

Coupling…..loved that series, it made be giggle like a child at times!
Black Books (weird and wonderful)
Spaced!

Looking at the position in the photo, you could do with turtling your head a bit (exactly like it sounds!) try rolling your shoulders and tucking your head down, it is supposed to be more aero, and yes as with everyone else, rotate your body around an axis to get your frontal area smaller. The timetriallingforum are a friendly bunch (i frequent there as well) and have loads of useful information if you ask!

If anyone is down Hampshire way, my club (…a3crg) are starting our club 10’s on Wednesday 11th May, and then every wednesday after that. We run a league with a variety of special nights for bonus points (fixed/ road bike/ 2 up). It is P881 course (A3 up around Liphook), first rider off at 7pm at 30s intervals! We are also hosting the mens 10M TT nat champs this year, so it is going to be a busy year!

I help out with signing on, results (bad back so no racing for me at the moment on a TT bike)!

Cheers Yak!

4:45 for the marathon, I was heading for 4:30 but the wheels came off spectacularly in the last 6 miles! My best mate got round in 2:57 so I really don’t count myself as fit!! Got the medal though 🙂 Also based on my performance at the southern xc I think saying I race xc is stretching things! A ride will be good, apologies for the huge amounts of huffing, puffing and cursing when I am riding 🙂

Many thanks for the advice 🙂

Will send a request to join the East hands group! I just need to have a stern word with myself and get out of the door!

I hope my fitness is ok! It is my ability to go really really slowly in any single track/ descents that worry me 🙂

DON’T train every day!!!!

Running is my nemesis (doing London marathon next Sunday!) and the biggest cause of injury seems to be doing too much too soon! I know you only have three weeks, but if you could bash out a 5km today you aren’t that bad! As someone above said, maybe run/walk (9min run/1min walk) and do maybe two runs a week between now and then! It hurting on the day is better than panicking and trying to do loads and injuring yourself for ages! I did this last year before London (and had to defer my place) and couldn’t run for 6 months with an achilles problem I picked up trying to do a bit too much!

Cheers for the advice all! Didn’t know about the hope v twins…… Tempted by them purely because of the name! Gosh I really am a sucker for branding 🙂 I imagine anything will be an improvement over what I currently have!

I would love a full 105 hyd set up but the cheapest I can find the groupset is £449 which is about the same as I paid for the entire bike so it is a bit of a no go!

Do you have to sign the home/school agreement? I may be wrong, but as this is a local authority allocated place, then don’t the school have to take your child. They may encourage you to sign an agreement to show that the school and parent s are working together blah blah blah but actually it is the LA who are ensuring that your child gets the education.

If the school refuse to take your child it could be an interesting situation where the LA have allocated the place, you are willing to work with the school and support their behaviour policy, but are retaining your right not to take part in acts of worship which don’t match with your own, and the school are being unreasonable.

Otherwise it sounds like they are requiring you to sign a contract with them to get access to the education, which is a bit of a new one to me!

I work in a secular school and have never work in a religious school so I may be wrong about what their rights are!

Still tempted 😀 I am doing my normal thing of waiting at least a week once I have seen something, to make sure that I actually want it, and am not just falling for my impulse spending habit!

I checked with my wife, and she thought it looked a lot better than most of my current kit, so she said go for it!

La passion might be liked by snobs, but I have just had a quick look and it is definitely not to my taste, it is cheaper than Rapha though which is a plus 😀

Gahhhhhh not helping 🙂 ….. how do you enter the comp?

Just carrying on a proud family tradition:-) it’s childish and puerile but it has my lad and I giggling every time 🙂

I have been a juror and found the process fascinating! Thankfully it was a long time ago so the compensation matched my income! I would struggle to do 2 years with mortgage and 2 children!

I am quite proud I got the chance to fulfill my civic duty, even though the case was deeply unpleasant:-(

I use the four4th scorpion for commuting and TT’s, it is a superb bit of kit, 3 different modes. I have had a couple of drivers come past me, stop and ask what it is because they want one for their own bike! The TT mode is technically illegal as it uses a 3 red 1 white flash pattern, but they are visible from over a mile away (dual carriageway TT course and lots of peeps use them)!

They are about £90 but imho worth every penny!

Liphook Cycles in … well Liphook 😀

Proper old school bike shop, really knowledgeable staff, Tony is a top bloke who is happy to order bits and pieces and is always up for a chat! His shop is like an aladdins cave, but he knows where everything is! He also is very active in the local race scene, EVERY week in the summer he helps run our local evening 10, either starting or doing timing!

He does mountain bikes but for roadie stuff it is the real deal!

I hated rowing on the tide way for the chop of the water! I only ever did the 4’s and 8’s head, even then slightly begrudgingly 🙂

If we saw white horses on the waves when we were boating we would do an ergo set instead! To be fair though the Thames doesn’t get quite as choppy at Henley and we were not a really high standard crew!

I am always torn in the boat race, Cantab for the men’s, but the Oxford ladies crew boated and trained at my clubhouse so I had some great times with them!

Cheers all 🙂

I am a terrible procrastinator and indecisive according to my wife 🙂 watching the ch4 program this morning got me looking at fs 29ers………. Till I remembered a wiggle Mtb sportive is not in the same league as 7 days across the nz Alps 🙂

Stunning scenery! Thankfully my son loves anything Mtb related so I could ditch octonaughts and he was fine! The race made me king for those early morning starts to races and the camaraderie you get!

Came off trying to ride a bombhole at the southern XC on Sunday, couple of scratches and I thought all was fine! The my knee started to swell up and get very hot, with the heat spreading down my leg! Cue a visit to the Doctor, it seems I have a soft tissue bacterial infection and am on fairly high dose antibiotics for the next week……and my knee hurts like hell!

I am doing the Southern XC at black park tomorrow! First time racing open for me….little bit nervous I am usually pottering round at the back of fun!

We have our mortgage, and 2 years left on a car loan. My plan is to keep the car for at least 8 more years, saving all the time so the next car is bought cash!

I was terrible with money, and have a problem with always thinking the next new bike/thing will make everything better! Eg If I have a Santa Cruz/orange etc then I will be a proper mountain biker….people will look and think I am great! Thankfully I am slowing coming to realise that it is all a pile of crap! I still have days where I find myself obsessing about how to buy the latest xyz, but at least now I realise it!

Current obsession is HT vs FS to replace my perfectly good Boardman FS which I have decided is too small for my 6’3″ size! Then onto Cotic (I like the brand) vs Bird…local to me and much better value….It is never bloody ending, but at least now I am not just caving in and getting anything on credit to satisfy the urge! I just come on here and ask random questions and procrastinate….

I have been getting really tempted with this bike as my commuter (13 miles each way), your pics have really not helped!

Were you not tempted by the complete bike, or did you have enough bits around to make it practical to go frame only? Looking at the spec of the complete bike, there isn’t much I would change!

That is the mercurial nature of QE! Just after rain it is awful….wet chalk and mud are a sketchy combo…..but then as Yak says I was there on Tues and apart from a couple of muddy lines most of it was bone dry and fantastic riding!

I really like the new blue, the switchback climb is long enough to make you work, but not soul destroyingly so, and the final descent (not sure if it is fully open yet) is an absolute hoot!

What they are ignoring (quite wilfully) is that there is already a massive teacher shortage, which is only going to get much worse over the next 10 years or so! It is easy to say that you will route out poor teacher etc, but when the only people who are willing to stand in a classroom are those poor teacher, you are a bit stuck!

Using unqualified staff sounds like a simple fix….until they get crap grades because they aren’t qualified (and you have to ask if you wanted to be a teacher why wouldnt you put yourself through qualification) or they realise that teaching really isn’t easy street and they go and work in another sector!
It is amazing how many people leave teaching for an easier life in another career…..but so many slate teachers for having an easy life!

I think Hannah at Pedal2pedal does adult coaching. She is based portsmouth/QECP way, not sure if thats too far!

Looks great!

How hard are the features? I have been riding a couple of years and have done some xc races and had a session with Jedi! Do you reckon I could handle the routes? (fun class of course!!)

QECP is local to me so I ride the blue and red there lots, not sure how much harder the enduro stages are!

I am just getting started with XC racing, last year when I rode a couple of events I managed to come dead last in one round of the southern XC series……..in the beginner class! EVERYONE else that day was faster than me 🙂

If I looked at things by comparing myself to everyone else I would have thrown my bike in the bin and gone back to eating doughnuts! Instead, thanks to a mate who handed me a healthy dose of MTFU I set these targets: (some of which are nicked from motivational posters)
1) Every time I race I beat everyone who didn’t show up
2) I have lost 10kg since I started trying to get xc race fit, which means I can run round with my children more = BIG WIN
3) I can call myself an XC racer, even if I am last!
4) I make everyone else in the race look that little bit better 😀

I am doing the Southern XC rd1 in a couple of weeks, I am hoping not to come last, I have been doing some training, and weigh a lot less! I also treated myself to a 2nd hand Scott HT as that will make all the difference!

If you do the race, then I can promise you, you will kick my arse all over the course…..I will still be having fun!

Just re read my first post….I meant to say one long run a week……not just one long run! Even I am not quite that lazy…..quite

Cheers,

I have been doing 9 min run 1 min walk for my long runs so far I am up to 15 miles. I have done Ironman races before, but I was super motivated for those…..I think that is half my problem, I am not scared enough, and it is going to kick me on the ass come race day!