She is guaranteed a quick finish, but she is probably used to it.

I “dropped” a few very fit looking lads early one Sunday morning last Summer on the Col de Montets. I finally got round to Googling the event tonight.

http://www.sportcommunication.info/letourdumontblanc/index2.php

No wonder they were taking it easy!

I have the Halfords 2 for 1 specials. They have been fine over a couple of years but I was driving across the Dales a couple of weeks back in very high winds and the front wheel attachment twisted round leaving the wheel at a 70 degree angle to the side, the bike twisted in the downtube clamp and was leaning away over to one side. It was still very firmly attached to the car and it was extremely windy when it happened, but I think the beefier attachments on the new Thules would have kept the wheel straight and stopped the problem occurring.

A cheapish pisspot is worth the money. Check your goggles fit the helmet, and the helmet has a strapy to hold the goggles on. When its warm I tend to take my helmet off on the lifts and enjoy the sunshine so I don’t really think vents are that important. You will get years out of a half-decent helmet, I think mine is about 10 years old now.

I would just ignore them and wait for them to go away. They are acting totally outside the spirit of the scheme in an attempt to bully a few quid out of you.

England will never beat Ireland at Lansdowne this season, it’s just not going to happen.

Wales have got their good game out of the way and can go back to being mediocre, Scotland have lost twice but could still upset either Ireland or England.

Scotland need to keep the head, and try and ride out this pressure without shipping a load of points.

Ton you played to a decent standard, did you see Italy miss a lot of first-up tackles last week?

We squandered a couple of chances to score last week and Italy provided a lot of gimmes today. Even if we lose to the French tomorrow this slump is going to come to an end at some stage and our guys have too much pride to roll over for the English at Lansdowne.

Great show from England, they have had a decent amount of quick ball in their last two games, they need to be stopped on or around the gainline and slowed down, or they are going to be dangerous.

Italy were a lot worse than last week, first up tackles missed all over the shop.

If our lads can’t get the finger out against France tomorrow its time for a new coach or the World Cup will be another shambles.

Cut carbs whenever you can, but allow yourself some before, during and after exercise.

Protein recovery drinks and protein at breakfast.

Protein = speedy recovery = less snacking.

There is nothing going on there that a set of QR15 Floats couldn’t fix.

It doesn’t really matter what breed you get, just make sure you get a proper pedigree or a full-scale mongrel. There are loads of ads around for dogs for a couple of hundred quid that aren’t pure pedigree, usually “both parents can be seen”. These are the dogs most likely to have health problems. My wife’s friend turned up for a walk with her “bargain” Staffy pup last week, its rear legs/hips are all over the place and it tried to attack a massive labrador that just wandered over to say hello.

If you’re just going to the mid station there is a trail from there in the direction of Le Praz.

If you had filmed me with your helmet cam I might have laughed a wee bit too.

All the big tour operators are like this, to one degree or another.

The lifties don’t give a fiddlers, and in any case there are official trails off most of the lifts so they are used to taking bikes all Summer.

You could do Chamonix, Verbier, Pila, Les Arcs, in a loop, I don’t think there would be more than a couple of hours driving between each of them and the scenery over the passes would be stunning. Or you could do the first 3 and then back through the tunnel, or ride Cham, then Pila, then Les Arcs.

Double Post.

I thought the Flegere trail had potential, there was a lot of loose rock and stones on it when we rode it, if it beds in it should have a lot more flow to it.

July and August, most of them are ok all Summer but you need to be respectful and give way to the walkers.

There are a load of threads from last summer if you search back for them.

That bikejames site looks really interesting. I do free weights, kettlebells and a bit of core training twice a week, I will start doing some circuits in the Spring as well. Doing upper body weights to relieve arm pump is slightly counter-intuitive, as the harder you grip the bars, the worse it will get. If you do some all-round conditioning and concentrate on staying nice and balanced on the bike with as much weight as possible on your feet you will probably see a decent improvement.

Why oh why oh why is Tomas O’Leary still selected?!

Wales benching 5 of their best backs is an interesting idea, probably best to try that for the Ireland game.

You’re only allowed to complain on this forum if you post 20 times a day and Chain Reaction are a day late with your order of spare inner tubes.

Lets face it lads, Ireland are still a top 3 side and England will do very well to beat us at the Aviva. We’ve 3 starting Lions coming back from injury over the next lot of games and a couple of other Lions just back from injury. That loss will have hurt their pride, we might go down swinging to the French but we will play some decent rugby in this tournament.

That was muck. Wallace is past it, O’Leary is woeful.

We’ll be ten points up soon enough.

Some of them are getting on but they’re still a year or two short of being past it. Hayes is out of the picture now, Wallace wouldn’t be starting if Ferris and Heaslip were fit. O’Driscoll and D’Arcy are the oldest backs and they are still playing good rugby.

We always piss about like this for the first half against the Italians.

Just as Ireland are currently a fading force compared to what they were 2/3 yrs ago.

We’ve actually got the best squad we’ve had for a long time, if we can clear up the injury problems.

This Tesco analogy is one of the stupidest things I have seen on this forum.

I think “bigger” casings are the new generation that they released more recently, sized 2.2 and 2.4. The 2.4 Ardents come up bigger than 2.5 High Rollers.

The thing about Tindall is he offers very little chance of a line break any more, he doesn’t have the gas. He can break then gain line or draw defenders on the crash but Hape is a strong offloading player and he could put a quicker 13 through more gaps.

Cueto has lost a bit of pace but he makes very few mistakes and is still a pretty effective carrier.

Why are the shop owners not trying to squeeze there suppliers ?

Manufacturing, raw materials, freight costs, exchange rates. It is very difficult to get around any of these factors, so most of the suppliers will be making similar increases, hence no opportunity to play them off against each other.

And, if there’s a 40% mark up on tubes then there’s no evidence that there isn’t a 40% mark up on my next £2k bike purchase, especially with the recent huge price rises. Do I want that £800 mark up to go into my pocket, or my lovely LBS owner with his BMW X5. This is the same guy who pays his staff minimum wage anyway, so I’m not going to pay their wages by paying any more than I need to.

Ironically the kind of bike shop owner who is driving an X5 is exactly the same kind of bike shop owner that can afford to sell a bike way below RRP, because he has a massive bike shop. So you are more likely to be buying an X5 for somebody who pays his staff minimum wage by buying online.

There are a lot of costs involved in running a business. 20% of the bike shops sales go straight to the VAT man, and most of the rest will go in running costs.

Cueto just about the only saes back that shows a bit of flair.

😕

Foden & Ashton have been dynamite for Saints and looked pretty sharp in the AIs.

You could trim the festive allowance by a day or two and insist that you have rota cover year-round to avoid paying for freelance work again. You could give them the holidays elsewhere in the year to keep them happy, or find out the definition for custom and practise and knock it on the head now if it is going to annoy you in future.

Quick, quick, jump to conclusions and tell everyone what to do!

This is turning out even better than last night’s “nobody started an Obree thread because everyone hates the gays” thread.

Is it really though? 20 posts is probably a the longest yet before somebody felt the need to make a post rubbishing the whole idea.

Don’t try and prove stuff folks, you heard it here first. Keep your so-called opinions and experiences to yourselves.

And so, the inevitable degeneration of the barefoot thread begins…

I am happy to put a few quid into fitting. I’m 6’3″ with long legs, shortish body, broad shoulders, so I wouldn’t be surprised if I was recommended wider bars, or a slightly different frame size based on my shape.