Of course, if it’s not steep and deadly and terrifying and deserving of a full face helmet and basically a downhill race, it’s not a proper enduro and you should just do an XC race instead

I would, but the Lycra terrifies me even more ;-) ;-)

Thanks Nobeerinthefridge. Sounds like one for the list.

Totally respect/understand that more experienced riders will want challenging events, but I’m also sure there is a big place for events that cater for the less-skilled ;-)

Interesting thread, I’m also looking into this too as per OP.

Additional question – which enduro events are the ‘easiest’ from a technical perspective? I’d love to try out an enduro event but am put off by the idea of jumps and big drops, or tech challenges which would be way beyond my ability or risk-take level (I don’t want to do a DH event)

Studying some of the videos from Ard Rock 2014 the course looks fantastic and (good for me) as although steep and tech in parts, seems to have no jumps/drops, or extreme gnar. What other enduro events have a similar course level?

Edit to add – the PMBA events seem to be ‘harder’ from a tech perspective, is that corect?

Having spent the last year going through similar situation. My 2p’s worth;

– be reasonable at all times, even if no-one else is. You’ll feel better in the long run and ultimulately your children will love and respect you more for it in the long-term future.

– although you may split up with your wife, You will always be the father of your children

– try to talk through things if you can and reach solutions with your wife …life is a lot easier if you can both sensibly agree a separation between you,,, but be prepared that your wife (and friends/relatives) may not want to enter into discussion and may be completely irrational. With this in mind be prepared that you may not be able to make her see sense or have a rational dialogue with you.

– look after yourself, keep fit, eat properly and try to think positively. Try and find a friend who you can have a series of discussions with to try and sort out in your mind what’s happening and what you want.

– don’t rely on drink (or drugs) to try and makes things better….it won’t

Good luck, hope this helps

Guys, Guys, guys…it’s not the words that matter, it’s the delivery, the timing and the attitude…

watch and learn, watch and learn… :-)

Background – Timing is key, be 5 mins behind her.

Rule 1 – Learn to eliminate your desire

Rule 2- Do something excellent in her presence.

Rule 3 – We pursue that which retreats from us.

Fwiw I tried loading a route onto my edge 500. It loaded ok, but the gps would crash frequently making it next to useless (for this task)

This kind of stuff boils my p&ss. 2 weeks ago someone hacked my ebay account and sold a industrial metal folding machine of all things for 1650 quid. I ended up with 165 ebay fees and a 3 hour call with ebay to try and sort the mess out.

They had also used an image for contact details etc

I’ lol be there suffering too ;-)

Weather forecast looks fairly good for the next few days

fwiw – Stay well clear of The White Swan pub in the town centre, unless you feel the need to buy some A-team stimulants, or bump into big bubba, that old cellmate who still gives you nightmares, despite the fact ‘he was gentle with you’

Old gate etc, as above

in fact I like the sound of the Filoment…

Me too, will be interesting to see what price it starts selling at.

Wasn’t using Mavic tyres (no experience with them yet). I used maxxis and schwalbe. Fwiw I tried to use a mountain king but couldn’t get it to seat ok witha track pump

http://www.evanscycles.com/products/mavic/crossride-ust-rim-tape-ec054043

Link to Mavic Crossride UST rim tape kit

Wheyyy!!

Weirdly, If I visualise myself attempting a 75ft gap jump, that’s exactly what I think it would look like ;-)

Its a borderline road ride Tony

I need some lessons from you :-)

8km through to 18km is good fun, with the singletrack bridleway down off Bodkin lane, down to the Stones by Oxenhope, up the road and then over White Lane, followed by the singletrack over the moor downhill to Ogden. That’s my after-work ride…

Not mega technical, or up to blue pig type tech levels, but enough sustained rocky parts to make it really fun. Best get in there whilst it is still dry as the peat starts getting boggy as winter sets in.

Agree with original post that it’s best to get someone to guide you round Hebden as there is more than just Blue Pig and Pecketts well.

It’d be ok for a cross bike I guess due to the mass of roads and wide farm tracks

I’d love to see someone ride a CX bike down the singletrack BW off Bodkin Lane down to stones, or cross the moor from oxenhope to Ogden (cleanly).

does it work for 48 year olds

did for me ;-)

First off – sorry to hear that you are facing redundancy.

The key item in your post is ))payment of 2 years salary(( you are very lucky in this respect.

My 2p’s worth

– you are in great position, treat this as a fantastic opportunity to get another job, whilst benefitting from a once in a lifetime financial bonus.

– don’t rush. Stop and take the time to think what you’d really like to do. You don’t need a new job immediately. Perhaps even work for yourself.

– get into a positive routine, exercise and enjoy life

– why don’t you treat yourself to a short holiday. Time to think and consider what you want to do

– think of it as a opportunity, not a problem

Good luck, enjoy life, everything will be ok.

Bought a 2014 Canyon Spectral AL 6.0 in red, back in May.

Delivered quickly and the bike assembled with no problems at all.

I’m a low-intermediate rider, so probably aren’t best placed to give advice on handling etc, but my 2p’s worth is;

– Great value and a good basic spec.
– I am 183cm and have a large size frame which fits me ok.
– Now have 450 miles on it and not a single problem.
– As posted above, Fox 32 Evo CTD forks aren’t the best and even at my riding ability I’m thinking of upgrading them to Pikes later in year.
– Ref CTD forks, I run them on ‘descend’ when on flat or descending. But find the forks can dive too much on some terrian, or when climbing on tech stuff. don’t know if this is me or forks, or setup (noted previous comment ref fork pressures).
– I haven’t yet, but have read that Fox CTD Float performance rear shock on this bike benefits from a large volume spacer being fitted internally. This is to enable the rear shock pressure to be set up properly without leading to it bottoming out (gives a more progressive suspension). Plan to do this later in year when i strip and clean.
– I’ve found that pedal strikes can be a pain on sunken singletrack. Don’t know if this is me or the bike, or that the rear shock needs a spacer (noted previous post comment above).
– replaced rear tire with faster rolling maxxis
– replaced saddle with Charge spoon
– fwiw Looks good. Bike normally attracts positive comments from other riders, who presume it costs a lot more.

In short i love the bike, it’s very confidence inspiring, hasn’t let me down and I will 99% certain buy another canyon when i next buy a MTB.

I’d guess that if you bought one of the cheaper spectrals and sold the fox forks and fitted Pikes from day 1 you’d have a great bike.

hope this helps.

Thanks for the feedback, I’ll start looking into these (although some seem wayyyy above my ability level at first glance)

Doesn’t the image of XC have a massive affect too?

Most MTB riders seem to associate themselves with DH/Enduro/Freeride style culture and clothing. Yet XC appears (as an outsider) to be a load of Lycra-wearing roadies on hardtails. It just doesn’t look cool…

Respect and Kudos to the guys/gals doing XC as the skills and fitness involved are massive, but why is XC so ‘different’ to mainstream MTBing? Wouldn’t XC attract more attention, support and interest from the mainstream, if it adopted a page out of the book of some of the gravity disciplines in terms of style and culture?

What’s weird is that for many MTBers, XC is possibly the most closely aligned to the actual riding they typically do on a weekend (far more than say DH)…yet it just seems that XC is a different culture and not something the average joe wants to emulate. I don’t see people rushing to watch that latest cool XC video and I don’t think it’s just because of the actual riding…

Have you done Stainburn? Gisburn seems much easier in comparison

I found the opposite. I found both very enjoyable/educational but as OP says there are lengthy parts of Gisburn red that are (very?) technically difficult, inc some of the DH parts.

I’m not complaining btw and it is a case of MTFU and learn. But like OP I find it a bit strange that you can go somewhere like Dalby red and then go somewhere like Gisburn red. They are polar opposites. IMHO it would be helpful if the rating was related to the technical difficulty, rather than the length, as that’s possibly what most riders want to understand from the grading. eg. Red-Long or Red-Short.

You could argue that Dalby red is a blue route, with a few short sections of red included.

Really? Arrested for streaming content? I know there was an arrest regarding camming in the cinema, uploading a torrent and then selling fake DVDs, but haven’t seen anything regarding streaming.

see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-29016566

If I buy a film, say, it’s mine, and I want to play it on whatever playback device I chose

wanting to and it being legal to do so, are two different things :-) I’m not going to get into the whole media-usage, copyright and piracy debate as we’ll be here all year…and my job determines my attitude to this anyway.

My point was although piracy and copyright violation will always be with us, there will be increasing chance that people breaking the law will get caught, especially in countries such as UK.

…back to talking about MTB :-)

It’s probably worth not posting too much online about your usage.

There has just been a successful arrest in UK ref illegally streaming content and this anti-piracy activity is going to step up a notch or two over the next year in UK.

Traditionally hosts are hit at source, but clients are going to be increasingly open to finding themselves in trouble, as new DRM tech starts making tracking easier.

I’ve been on a couple of group courses and hope my 2p’s worth is useful to others considering tuition;

In the past I’ve done a few sports/hobbies and received tuition. I learnt to fly and held a pilots license, I learnt to drive a racing car and hold a race license, blah, blah. I guess these experiences are my reference point.

My observations (in no particular order)

– It’s often difficult to know what exactly the level of tuition is aimed at, prior to attending the course. What exactly is ‘intermediate’? A previous post said >>the intermediate course and was pretty clear up front that it’d be done on reds and blacks and require a decent level of skill<< well…if I could ride round reds and black routes with a decent level of skill, I would not consider that being intermediate. I guess I’d probably consider myself a pretty good MTBer, perhaps even advanced (I’m not BTW).

– I found that some of the obstacles we rode were just wayyyy too challenging and that we dove in at the deep end too much, to early. Perhaps this is back to my previous point about ‘what is intermediate’ and knowing what course to be on. Regardless, if the course includes leaning drop offs for example, I can’t see the point in trying to get someone to ride off a 5 foot drop, when you haven’t yet shown them how to do a 2 foot drop properly and made sure they can do it reliably and understand the basics. IMHO effective training is about doing things in a graduated way, start small and build up. I guess what I’m saying is even if a course is intermediate, if it includes a new skill, the starting point for that skill tuition should be as a beginner to that particular skill.

– For me, I think i’ll be going with 1-1 tuition in the future. Plus, I’d want to define what we got out of the day and make sure we approached skills/obstacles in a gradual and structured kind of way, with explanation before and after. I’d rather attend a course and come away having properly learnt one core skill that i could then use in the real world, than stumble through 7 or 8 tasks, learning little. Perhaps for me a tuition session working only on berms and cornering for example would be best, making sure that by the end of the session we had done so much work on the subject that we had really moved this skill on for me and explored almost every aspect of it.

– Although it comes naturally to some people I’m sure, riding a MTB to a good standard off-road is difficult. It will take time, practice and experience to get good (lots of it too for most people). Some of the skills and techniques aren’t immediately obvious by just watching someone, so i do think proper tuition is valuable.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for FB link. I’m going to give it a go, sounds good fun, although I can feel the burning legs and lungs already ;-)

Ed Oxley….

At what age do kids stop doing that reverse head butt thing?

…For my two, it was about 10 minutes after I’d slapped the back of their **** legs. Associated action-pain training usually works as well as action-reward.

Those innov 8 Roclites look the business, thanks

Thanks for the advice. Preferably I’d want something more lightweight than the MT91’s for regular use.

I had thought about waterproof socks the other day, but having never tried them, I wasn’t sure if they were a good option for cycling. Perhaps I should try them

+1

Have had one for about a year now. Absolutely brilliant. Use it all the time with ipad.

Fwiw I also have the Bose in-ear noise cancelling headphones , they re A1 too (do a lot of business travel, great for flights )

three words…hair care products :-)

We are quite near to Ennerdale water, but will check out

bit of less demanding stuff from wasdale to eskdale and in an around Irton Pike, follow the bridleways from Boot or from wasdale head

thanks

Whinlatter is a fairly technical trail.

agreed, but he’ll be able to do some of it, or at least have a go at parts but this will be at the limit of what he can do.

Whinlatter blue would be just the ticket.

thanks

Grizedale – dare I say the North Face – not good for enough the ubermensch on here but a decent spin out for intermediate riders

claife heights

loughrigg and terrace (do it on a weekday).

Tilberthwaite

as dunmail says. wull check these out, thanks

Whinlatter Blue is nice, but quite short. The red are on the stiff side IIRC

Further south there’s Loughrigg Terrace. The bottom half has been completely sanitised and is devoid of anything technical, and the top isn’t very tricky either, but it’s still a picturesque ride.
Claiffe Heights is quieter and better, although I’ve known people to complain about both the climbs and the descents there !

Problem is that these all tend to be long ups followed by long downs I guess anywhere is going to involved some climbing and/or walking…I’ll call it ‘character building’ :-)

Thanks Dunmail, I’ll check those out (in the Vertibrate Publishing book?)

We’ll be based on the Western edgeof the lakes about 30 mins drive to the west of keswick, but don’t mind driving to reach some good routes.

Why, oh why can’t you put the spoon you have just used *in* the sink (or better still actually wash it) rather than leave it right next to the sink leaving a coffee stain on the work surface.

Consider yourself lucky Johndoh I have to put up with that same situation at home… perhaps the passive aggressive “loud tidying” will eventually get the message across.

This is very, very worrying…do either of you two live with me? :-)

If the answer is ‘yes’ then as I’ve explained before, there are people who can help you resolve your issues and move on with life…

Canyon Nerve AL 29…. and save a load of your £3k

Pate, soufle and pear tart (her indoors has been on a cooking course today)
Coronas
Meatloaf tribute artist at local club, wheyyy!

2 laps of Gisburn

Hope you get the bike returned ok, if that’s what you want to do (and are entitled to).

I’ve a Spectral AL in large and am 5′ 11″ and although I’m not an experienced rider it suits me just fine. The service from canyon was great and It only took about 6-7 weeks delivery back in April.

I don’t think there is much wrong with the bike frame or geometry….if it suits Joe Barnes and Fabien Barel, who are riding the same exact frame, I’d suggest there’s not a lot wrong with the bike’s design ;-)

(Although I can appreciate larger/taller riders may be too big for the large size frame)

as long as collars match the cuffs

I prefer cuff-less…