I now have a light fast 29er and a cross bike.

I was quiet happy with the 29er but then I started to commute to work on road. I wanted something quicker with a 55 min commute every minute feels like it makes a difference so I got a crossbike and put on road tyres.

I’ve timed my self on strava repeatedly and I not any quicker on the cross bike even with road tyres. My quickest ride to work is still from early in the year on the 29er. Although some sections are quicker on the cross bike, but anything where I need to corner or stand up seems slower.

Therefore I’m wondering if it was worth buying a cross bike as I dont seem to be able to get used to it. Im so much quicker round corners and up steep hills on my 29er.

I’ve got crest 29er and have them tubeless with Bontrager XR1 Team Issue 29″ 1.9″ tyres.

On this basis I dunno if its worth getting a cross bike the 29er is so much more versatile and as long as you get the right wheels to me it doesnt seem that much slower. Especially if you need to sprint I just cant seem to get as much leverage from the narrow road bars.

Basically I’d say 29er with light wheels/tyres/tubeless.

apparently all the kids in his class have them

If this is part of the reason I’d be tempted to wait for the new one maybe next crimbo as he’ll just be annoyed he’s still behind the kids.

Also the 360 is still really expensive considering its age. They just dont seem to have gone down in price like the playstation/playstation2 did.

I’d recommend getting the 250GB version (kinetic or not).

I dont see why they should be say more than £130 ish now aday (without the kinect).

There were about 5 or 6 at battersea bridge last night.

Most kids dont think like that at least I didnt. I was perfectly capable of taking on the idea that bad things happen with out over reacting mainly cos I was nt that interested to be honest.

up to 5 in 9 days now

and sadly its declined by one more today. How can training kids in a school playground ever be a bad thing?

Im not saying its a bad thing. Im just saying if there’s money to be spent its probably better spent on some thing else. Like a campaign to ban lorries from inner cities or on decent cycle infrastructure.

If there was plenty of money do both Im sure the dutch do.

Bring back cycling proficiency training in schools

Why ? Where has this got us cycling has been on the decrease for the last 70 years.

Although ur quote may be sarcasm.

There are a lot of bad cyclists out there and there are a lot of bad drivers, but its always going to be the driver that ends up winning in any accident.

It is true that vehicles have a duty of care towards more vulnerable road users, however, vulnerable road users also have a duty – to behave in a reasonable and responsible manner and to mitigate their damage/losses.

This is just old school thinking. It like saying some people just had to die working down the mines or deaths on oil rigs are just collateral.

Your never going to make every driver/cyclist perfect. We need to be working towards improving safety. An easy way to start would be to redesign lorrys to give the driver a better view. This would mean the lorry drivers would make few mistakes. Also item in cities should be carried in as small as vehicles as possible. I cant see why both drivers + cyclist would nt be in favour of safer vehicles.

The next step is some decent cycling infrastructure.

2010: 10 deaths, 4 involved HGVs
2011: 16 deaths, 12 involved HGVs
2012: 14 deaths, 5 involved HGVs
2013: 12 deaths, 8 involved HGVs

source

That’s somewhat extreme – I’d think a bit of driver and rider education probably wouldn’t go amiss

That exactly what the CTC have been saying for the last 70 years where has it got us no where. Cycling number have been dropping and dropping and now they’ve picked up in London 4 people killed in 8 days.

Also the driver stopped and theres no suggestion either him or the cyclist where at fault, add it that people make mistakes. In which case how do u stop this other than redesigning the trucks ?

Get the story in the local news as well.

NO !

And I want a 10 speed one which works with the new shifter with out any hacks

PS everyone who said they want one sign the petition we need to start some where.

yeah are old Rapid Rise Mechs about but I want a new one with all that Shadow/Better Cabling/Clutch malarkey the new ones have.

see they still live ! :)

Dont see why u’d go for 24/36 this is only 12T

Sram do 26/39 or 28/42. This is 13T or 14T difference.

why cant they do 26/40 as this would seem to make alot of sense.

I’ve got a 28/42 on my 29er but I have fast tyre and only tend to use it in summer.

Is this the state of the art of Linux or what?

No it isnt the draw of RedHat is that they support it for a long time. definitely not state of the art.

could be sciatica, brought on by bad back or another pelvic issue.

Core strengthening or pilates may or may not help.

I did the RATZ rampage in the checkendon in the chilterns last night.

Really really dry which I was totally surprised about, chilterns normally terrible in rain.

Like other posters mention I think a combination of the dry summer, warm autumn temperature and probably most importantly high wind speeds is helping dry things off quickly as protecting the trail some what.

However if it continues to rain this much it cant be log before there a total mud fest again.

Hopefully we’ll get into the cool crisp dry weather soon. Then it will suddenly switch from winter to a full on summer next spring :) well I can hope !

Im from Staffordshire originally so I might be a bit bias. Currently live near Reading.

I like foresty trails like Swinely, Chase, FOD.

I’d say the Chase is much much better than FOD (at least way marked route not Downhills).

Its also much better than Swinley being both bigger +longer, and feels much more like a “real” MTB trail.

Personally I’d rate it more fun than CwmCarn (except for climb which is good at CwmCarn).

I’d say u should go and see what its like. The best thing about it is the way marked trails are long + continuous. I dunno if the black monkey is open but that section in terms of difficulty + enjoyability blows the XC trails at Swinley+FOD+Cwmcarn away (not including the DH trails.

the Downhill trails arent too far from the Monkey and as an XC rider I really like the Red (or I did like it seems to be quite changeable). In the dry at least its hugely fun with out being difficult for an XC rider plenty of drops.

yes

The LCC purposed some resigns to lorry to make them more city (not just cyclist pedatrian scooter and other cars users) friendly.

click here

Seems like a good new just start introducing charges to lorries that dont match that spec.

If I get the tube home, I don’t really feel like I’m home, on my own time, until I’m walking up the stairs to the flat, jangling my keys in my pocket. But on the bike, it’s as soon as I’m turning the pedals.

So True !

lol ur living in someone else house !

As parents are responsible for their kids until their 18 it basically her house. More her house than urs anyhow.

I must be riding a different Cwmcarn. The free ride and last descent are good but the rest are too short and you always get hit by a climb after every descent.

In otherwords, the climb isnt worth the effort.

I agree the descent is not good. The climb is good in itself if you enjoy a changeling ascent or want to improve ur proper XC riding. If you just look the climb as the bit to get out of the way before going down I think CwmCarn offers very little.

I find Cwmcarn much more challenging than the newer, smoother TCs.

The down or the up, the up is obviously much more changeling at cwmcarn think the downs are pretty similar my self.

In comparison to other trail centres the down on the XC track just is nt that good at Cwmcarn.

It is as people say however a proper XC route with a challenging climb, but the down is the bit that sells it too u to come back again.

In some ways Im glad it was almost empty last time I went. Cos Swinely, Cannock, FOD always seem to be totally packed now adays.

yeah similar advice to njee. I found I didnt get much quicker trying to pace my self.

Best advice is to go hard from the start and keep trying to go as faster as possible for as long as possible. Ok u might blow up on the current race but u’ll be quicker for the next race and probably blow later or preferably after the race has finished.

I got rid of a wart on my finger with hydrochloic acid when I was a chemistry student.

Was quite pleased it seemed to die pretty quickly. But then the whole section of skin just seemed to die too. It was pretty small only like a 2mm circle but it went pretty much all the way down to the bone.

It wasnt that painful but the cold couldnt half get in there.

Now I just have this white lump there.

surely use can easily fit 700cc wheels and tyres in a 27.5 frame. I mean u can normally fit 700cc wheels to most 26″ frames

Im not sure what exactly he’s getting at. I think it generally considered the foot you kick with is the dominant one.

But he does make the point that often your legs/arms strengthen to learn certain things.

For instance the ball is in a bit in front of me and I want to use one foot to pull it closer. If I do this with the right it feels fine. If I want to do this with the left, its not the left foot that feels weak and funny. Its my right leg can’t seem to support me leaning as far forward as my left can.

Like wise when I jump forward I always think I want to land on my right foot first as its stronger. But if I force myself to swap round its not so much I cant land properly on my left leg but I cant seem to get the power/timing to jump as far off my right leg.

This kinda supports his theory.

But I think what he’s really trying to say is your legs specialise in different abilities and arguably the left is strongest as this is the one that needs to stabilise (or power for jump) the rest of your body.

Really you should train yourself to be able to do both on both.

PS I agree with you on the bike I tend to use my right more than my left, but I suppose pedalling is more akin to kicking rather than the stabilising actions your left leg performs playing footy.

Personally, I wouldn’t confront them with this. If they do indeed take pleasure in putting you down, then they are the sort whom won’t heed the meaning behind your plea and see weakness.

agreed, also try not to work for ur FIL

ah cheers nick looks good reading

This might be what Im looking for

click here

Bit more expensive than Im looking for but come with a decent battery 2800mAh and a spare.

hey guys cheers for the advice. yeah tried a few of the tricks mentioned ie turn off wifi.

Kinding thinking if I could get a cheap phone for £50 I could set it up permanently in these modes and would nt need to change it.

Where do you live bandito ? Is it me requesting I have a tendency of adding all the locals to my strava. Its mainly for picking up route advice.

ok cheers for the answers guys

I’m amazed by the hardware we have in my work (I use a quad-core Thinkpad) being constrained by the software

Bit of both for us. Our IT has been outsourced to HP subsidiary.

Alot of users are still on winXP 32bit ie 3.25GB of RAM max.

But HP are still specing 4GB of on alot of the new computers. This is fine for using as an office PC but some of our colleagues need to actually use then a scientific workstation generally dealing with lot of large databases.

We’ve managed to move alot of the caculations from the PC to the HPC cluster mind which helps.

Rich after this post I went out and bagged a couple of KOM too. Your really inspiring me ! If only the grannies could get out of the way I’ve have all of them round the local tesco’s car park.