You could be right – I would in no way claim any expertise. I’ve heard that

Green Granite Small was detonated in the Grapple 1/Short Granite test on 15 May 1957. Its yield was a disappointing 200-300 kt, but most of this was from the secondary stage providing proof of principle.

Norman Dombey and Eric Grove on the other hand say that none of those 1957 tests were true thermonuclear devices, and that it was a political bluff instead.

To get back on topic, Vox has a good article about what these threats from NK mean both internally and as a result of external sanctions.

According to the ever reliable wikipedia, the blast was estimated to be a 6 – 9 kiloton yield, which is pretty small. It’s around the same order of magnitude as the first few British fission bombs. When Britain did detonate our first hydrogen bomb it was 200 – 300 kt, and was considered a bit of a failure because they expected one megaton. This was back in the 1950s, to put it in perspective.

It’s possible that North Korea had intended it to be a fusion device and the secondary stage failed, but it seems more likely that it’s a small fission bomb – mostly because they’re much easier to design and build.

I’ve had the complete opposite with my terraduros – soles have been perfect, no problems with anything breaking, and super duper comfy. Feels like they were almost custom made for my feet.

They are narrow though, I never got on well with shimano shoes, always feels like I ran out of room end to end, yet still had loads of room and the sides and constant heel lift while I’m waling in them. I also get on well with shoes that don’t have tonnes of arch support, I’ve tried higher insoles and they always felt horrible.

Looks like bike24 have them here, only as a full headset though? They sell chris king as well, but those are out of stock for a while according to the website.

I had three bags from pact, and was disappointed by all of them, so I went back to artisan roast. Their shop is close by, and every bag I get from them has been different, but always really good.

No-one’s mentioned putoline chain wax yet? For shame.

Ellsworth: “Customers out there are scrambling for trail bikes with 462mm chainstays and a 70° head angle. Believe me, 29ers need those to go around corners.”

“Of course our downhill bike should have 426mm chainstays and a 370mm BB height. How else are people going to get the rear wheel over slow speed obstacles?”

“No one needs more than 435mm of reach. Customers will put 100mm stems on. Trust me, this is where bike design is going”

Microplane is the best. Easy to clean, doesn’t wear out or take up an inordinate amount of space in a drawer. Get an extra course one for cheddar, and a zester for parmesan. The little bit of cheese that can’t be grated on it is immediately eaten, obviously.

BESURETODRINKYOUROVALTINE

Never really got on with a 26″ exo one on the back of my hardtail, could never find the right pressure where it gripped when braking but didn’t go all wobbly through corners. Was fast though – I put on a SG rock razor which was awesome in the corners but really slow in comparison.

Just put in an order for a frameset, shop said it should arrive at the end of Febuary. I’m mainly looking for massive tyre clearance, gonna put 41c knards on with full guards, perfect for horrible potholed wet roads. It’ll likely spend the majority of it’s time on the road, but the attraction of being able to ride almost anywhere is very appealing.

Ah, my mistake, was going off some older and much more optimistic service documents. My old 2011 36s recommended a lowers service every 100 hours, although in practice they needed it much more frequently than that to keep them feeling nice.

Pikes are 50 hours for a lowers service, 100 for the full damper.

Fox say to check the seals + foam rings every 25 hours, and a lowers service every 200 hours / annually.

Personally I’d be worried if my forks went from great to terrible that fast, but at least a lowers service isn’t too difficult.

Go for an XL if the seat tube isn’t too long. I’m 5’8″ and on a medium mega AM, but having tried some larger frames it’s feeling a bit cramped now.

Especially coming from a dune – the megas are great bikes but they aren’t the longest.

I use a 50mm thomson, mainly because I’m a tart – it’s beautifully made, matches my bars, and I think it’s a the nicest looking stem out there. I will fully admit it’s not the lightest if that matters to you.

If I’m being honest, almost any 50mm stem will do. Pick whatever one matches your budget and personal taste.

Hope, easton, raceface, renthal apex; all nice. Avoid the renthal strata though – too many reports of constant creaking

Yeah, just put the funnel on, fill halfway with mineral oil, and flick the lever until bubbles stop coming out. If you read through the official bleed instructions you’re just doing the last step. Either put a bleed block in the caliper, or for a really quick top up you can leave the wheel in.

Not a permanent fix, but it should solve your problem. I’m guessing holding the brake leavers on overnight should put most of the air in the lever and make it easier, but I’ve never tried that.

I had a quick measure of mine and on a flow EX (25.5 int) the shorty was 58mm at the tread, and the MM on a flow (22.5 int) was 58, pretty much identical. On the same rim, the shorty will only be a few mm less, probably not enough.

A beaver on a flow EX was ~57mm at the sidewall, and 55mm on the tread, so only a couple of mm less than a shorty. That’s the 2.25″ version.

To get something significantly smaller you’ll probably need a 2.0″ tyre.

convert it to FIT format with gpsies.com

If this works properly then I will be very grateful. I’m on OSX and never managed to make any of the conversion tools work properly. This might strike off one of my main complaints about it.

I’m in the like camp as well. It’s not perfect – if you want to look at all your data scrolling through screens can get annoying. The navigation is just about enough, mostly useful for “you’ve obviously gone the wrong way”. It’s teeny tiny though, which makes it great for chucking into a jersey pocket and recording rides when I don’t have a pack on. My biggest bug bear is that you can’t put standard GPX files onto it – all routes have to be manually created on garmin connect, the worst bit of software in the world.

The best bit about it is once I got garmin, bluetooth and strava to all play nicely together, all I have to do is open the garmin app on my phone and it syncs my ride onto strava right away.

It was even small enough that I used the rubber band stem mount to make a ghetto gps watch, so I could record my runs and pace myself a bit better.

All the trails are still boggin wet though, so every ride ends up with being splattered in mud, and washing all my waterproofs constantly. I’d rather it hurried up and got cold enough to freeze so it could at least be dry.

Certainly not as impressive as some of the numbers here, but:

1021.5km
90h 28m
45,149m (25,415m of which was in chairlifts in the alps :D )
45 rides

2 road rides in all of that, and subtracting the alps figures leaves me with 28m of ascent per km under my own power, which I am fairly happy with – maximum fireroad slog up, ridiculous steepness down :)

Geometron e-bike please, I would like to be greeted with maximum hostility everywhere I go.

Three weeks from receiving a broken reverb to sending me a new one last month.

That was through CRC, no idea if that made a difference in any way.

I think they only work on the front hub – end caps space it out to 110, and then another spacer moves the disc across so it fits in the caliper. It can’t be done on the rear hub since the cassette is in a different place.

If you’re looking to swap a wheel between boost and regular forks, you’d need to move the disc every time, you can’t move the caliper across on a boost fork.

I think they’re like the stumpys, where just the bearings drop in. The headset cups are already a part of the frame. Something like these.

Someone with the bike should confirm though!

Don’t 20mm end caps have a circlip inside them as well? All other adaptors are just press fit. Remember to grease them when you put them back on as well!

Butcher or Minion

Shorty or Magic Mary if it’s muddy. Buy schwalbes from Germany, they’re much cheaper there.

It looks very similar to the manitou hexlock QR15, but that obviously came way afterwards (2012?). I guess the advantages to these sorts of systems are that they’re much faster, and don’t have threads to strip or seize. Downside is that they’re a bit more fiddly, and require aligning your axle before you put it back in.

There’s no real incentive for any of the big manufacturers to decide on one unified system though.

I’ve got both a charge spoon and a scoop (the radius shape) on my mtbs, and I feel like the shallow one would have been a slightly better match for the spoon. The radius always seems to come a bit higher on the nose than I would like. It’s not uncomfortable, but it took me quite a while to dial it in into the right position.

You could also look at the line saddle for the road bike, if you like something a bit narrower.

Judging by the number of stains on the outside of that mug, the lid isn’t helping.

I’ve written up the basic outline of what I do at the gym in a similar amount of time. This does required a barbell, free weights and a squat rack though, something a lot of gyms don’t have. Doing a lot of machine assisted lifts isn’t going to be as effective as getting under a heavy barbell though.

You can use a little bit of time at the start to work on any niggling mobility work, rolling, etc, make it a part of your routine to feel slow but steady improvement.

Start with 5 minutes of warmup depending on what major muscle groups you’re working out. Get in a little bit of skipping/jogging on the spot/star jumps/whatever. Then light weights for specific movements, think squats/presses/swings/push ups/high pull deadlifts etc.

Then spend 20-30 minutes on weights – think squat/deadlift/bench/overhead press/row. Cleans, jerks, and snatches are more fun but the time taken to learn and perfect the form required will work against you. A lot of people use something like the classic stronglifts 5×5. Some people will mix it up, do 5-4-3-2-1. Or 5×10. It depends on your goals, and how quickly you get bored. Take time to rest in between each set, 3-5 minutes.

Then use your last 10-15 minutes as a HIIT cardio session. None of this sit on one machine at a steady pace type stuff. There are so many options here that you can build whatever type of workout you want, but make sure you’re doing it at as hard an intensity as you can sustain. Don’t think that every workout has to be a solid 15 minutes of work. Sometimes you could do a ultra fast tabata workout of push ups and pull ups. Maybe another day it’s box jumps, kettlebell swings, and double unders, with a minute rest in between each set. Be sensible, plan your workouts well. (Ie. don’t do heavy squats and deadlifts then a workout of more squats and lunges.)

After that’s done, you can maybe fit in a little bit of core work, arch + hollow holds, weighted sit ups, or maybe even something like l-sits, tricep dips, etc. That’s a bit more optional, some days you’ll be just too ruined to get into it.

Then stretch off, don’t skip or rush this. Work on glutes, hamstrings, shoulders, and especially any muscle groups that you’ve worked hard on that day.

This is not in any way meant to be an ultimate guide. Some people will suggest doing a 45 minute only weights session. Others might say use light weights, focus on strength endurance, do a mix of short fast stuff and longer endurance workouts. It ultimately comes down to your goals, what strengths and more importantly, weaknesses, that you want to work on in these sessions. There are a million different ways you can work out, it’s up to you to find out what works for you to get closer to your goals.

Since Innerleithen manages the magical trick of having a bog on top of a hill in the middle of summer, I’d guess it’s time to get out the full mud spikes.

The marked trails all hold up reasonably well in the wet, though the off piste stuff can be, uh, challenging.

The reign is just ‘Overdrive’, ie. 1-1/8th top, 1.5 bottom. Giant finally ditched their ‘Overdrive 2’ standard a little while back.

Maxxis EXO beaver, in the spirit of recommend what you use. Nicely rounded, seems reasonably tough for a (claimed) 700g tyre, and clears pretty well to boot. Go for the 2.25 version.

Your nose works better when it’s moist on the inside, the humid conditions of a shower are perfect for maximum sensitivity. Same reason why dogs have wet noses, and why the outdoors smell more strongly after rain.

I had one, but I think mine was a pulled muscle/sprain from squatting. Took about a month off from cycling + lifting, went to the physio, did lots of stretching but it took a very long time before I felt I was back to 100% strength. Honestly, after two months getting back into cycling and working out again (gently!) helped me more than just sitting around and stretching it out. The rest was important to get some good healing time in, but I think it would have been nagging at me for longer had I not started strengthening it again slowly.

I didn’t do any running at that point – mine never caused me too much bother walking or doing easy cycling, but I think that’s just due to how I injured it.

Fairly sure there’s no conversion possible. Quite a few reports on mtbr of people using a 650b wheel in a lyrik from back in the day before there were lots of 650b forks. From the sound of it you need to be careful with tyre choice, very tall ones only just clear the arch, there might be very little mud room inside. It is possible though, and the tyre should clear the crown as well.

And what will happen to Martin (Maes)?
Martin is not only a phenomenon as a rider but the best team mate that we could ever have wished for. When he joined us as part of the Atherton Academy in 2012 he was just 15 and pretty shy; he’s grown-up with us and we’ve watched him lay waste to the Junior fields in Enduro and Downhill World Cups and develop into a very serious contender for an Enduro World Series win this season. We’ll be cheering him on all the way and we’re delighted with the move, it’s the perfect step for him and we’re confident that he’s in the best possible hands at this stage of his career. We’re expecting an announcement from his new team anytime so it’d be wrong to steal their thunder.

From the Dirt interview. Sounds like Maes isn’t staying with GT.

The one in that link is for a 44mm headtube, you’re looking for an external one to fit a 34mm headtube. A hope 1 and A on this diagram.

The crank bros one is the smallest, because it uses bearings in a race, not a cartridge bearing. I’ve also seen a friends one crack open and spew bearings absolutely everywhere, which was very amusing :-)

Woof, is this what happens now that Dom has left? Geometry is pretty conservative for 2015, I’m sure some taller riders would like more than 434mm of reach. I guess it’s not meant to be rad stoked enduro numbers though.

67 degree head angle for that long low and slack handling

Not so sure about that.