Is that what I suspect it is? It looks to me as if the change in thickness of the (presumably) butted tube occurs just at the tip of the lug, and this has exacerbated the potential for the lug to act as a stress riser, and consequently it has cracked at the tip and around the rest of the tube where the thickness changes.

If so, I would have thought that either the tube should have been cut so that the change in tube thickness occurred 10mm or more further away from the lug, and/or a tube should have been used with a change in thickness sufficiently gradual that the impact of the lug tip as a stress riser was not significantly more than if it were on a plain gauge tube.

it’s a Randonneur just like slowster’s ight even be the same year – ’87?

Mine is either 87, 88 or 89 – it’s not strictly a Randonneur, because it was sold as a frameset and the Randonneur was a complete bike. I think Raleigh were making more frames at the time than they were able to sell as complete bikes at full retail price, so they gave batch of the frames a cheap and nasty champagne/bronze fade paint job and the Raleigh dealers sold them for £125. I think the only physical difference compared with the proper Randonneur frame is that they did not bother with the spoke holder.

Guessing this dates from late 80’s/early 90’s going on the kit on it?

That style of Dawes logo doesn’t look very 1980s to me, more like (mid?) 1990s, but to be honest I’m just guessing.

ride it

This!!

I have a 1980s Raleigh Randonneur frame which is the equivalent of the Dawes Galaxy. I rebuilt it last year and rode it again for the first time in many years, and I was amazed at how comfortable and what a pleasure to ride it was, compared with my other more modern bikes.

I’m not going ‘touring’ with my 70’s Karrimor panniers on any time soon

I don’t think that very heavily laden touring is what these bikes were best for: they were ‘do it all’ touring bikes for when people would have only one bike, and whilst you can use them for cycle camping with front and rear panniers, in my experience the older narrower tubesets mean that the frames are probably more flexible than is desirable for that compared with something like a modern Surly touring frame*. The other side of that coin is that they handle very nicely and feel incredibly comfortable with a saddlebag for day rides, or B&B touring with panniers.

(* That said, I’m talking about the weight of cycle camping kit available 20+ years ago: your Galaxy would probably be perfect for carrying the very lightweight camping kit you can buy now.)

As for stripping it down and updating it, what is there that needs updating? It looks fine to me as it is. Just ride it – you can worry about different tyres etc. when you’ve worn out the existing ones.

I would not even bother taping bars to begin with: wait till you’re sure the stem length is OK (it’s probably the one thing you might need to change) and you’ve got the brake levers at the angle/height you prefer. Unless the mudguards do not have enough clearance for the tyres, I would leave them on, but would fit a couple of the Secu clip[/url] type emergency release fittings to the front mudguard, given that the risk of mud being picked up and jamming between tyre and mudguard is obviously higher if you are going to ride it on gravel/off road.

I received an email which was virtually identical to the one in the article, including the misspelling of amount. What caught my eye was the use of a French ISP email suffix – that and some of the slightly odd phrasing in the email consistent with the author being a non-native English speaker, made me wonder if the perpetrators were French/French speakers, in which case it might be likely that they had gained my email address etc. by hacking a non-UK webshop (i.e. European, possibly French).

It would be interesting to know if other recipients of these emails have made purchases from any non-UK webshops.

That’s as high as my torque wrench goes.

I think that torque wrenches are supposed to be less accurate at the ends of their scale, and it’s better to use a torque wrench which has a range with the median close to what is required most of the time. For cyclists this is usually more of a problem at the bottom of the scale, e.g. using a torque wrench with a 5Nm-20Nm range to tighten allen bolts to 5Nm.

Even if your wrench is adequately accurate at the top end of the range, the wrench itself is likely to have a shorter handle than one with a higher range and for which 24Nm is nearer the middle of the range. That shorter handle equals less leverage and using it at the top of the range is going to feel much more extreme than using a longer torque wrench at the same torque setting. However, a longer handle/higher range may also mean a 3/8″ torque wrench, instead of 1/4″, so you might need new bits and also a new ratchet handle/breaker bar to undo the bolts, since the torque wrench itself should not be used for that.

When you say ‘stand on the bottom pedal’, do you mean literally standing on the one pedal (putting all your weight on it), or do you mean pushing downwards/sideways on the pedal with one foot while leaning the bike away from you, with most of your weight actually being taken by your other foot stood on the ground?

The latter used to be a recommended way of checking that a frame had a nice bit of flex for comfort in it and was not excessively stiff. If the former, well you are a big guy and if you are putting all your weight effectively on one side of the bottom bracket, I would not be surprised if you could get the chainstay to touch the tyre.

At the end of the day, what matters is stiffness and comfort when you are riding it. As long as it feels good on the road and you can’t make the chainstay touch the tyre when you are pedalling, I doubt there is a problem.

Can anyone tell me which is the correct kinesis spare mech hanger.. Been meaning to buy one for ages

The one you need will depend upon your frame number series, scroll down the page here. Triton have no. 9 in stock, but you may need to go direct to Upgrade Bikes otherwise.

Actually I think these are the particular bars Epicyclo uses. I don’t know how they compare with the north road bars for drop and sweep.

finding a medic who knows exactly whats going on is tougher, they basically say, live your life, you’ll need to get it fused sometime anyway.

I’ve heard it said the NHS is a National Sickness Service, not a National Health Service, i.e. they often don’t have the resources, knowledge, skills and sufficient determination to properly cure chronic conditions, and consider that if you are fit enough to go back to work, that’s the best they can do.

From the little that I’ve read, for sports injuries and injuries that affect sporting performance there can sometimes be a big difference between the treatment offered (and the resulting patient outcomes) by the average run of mill consultant vs. the specialists to whom the top athletes go when they have a problem.

I can’t help wondering if there are any sports where similar injuries to yours are not unknown and would be potentially career ending for a highly paid professional competitor (tennis, boxing, motorbike trials?). If so, I would expect there might be a very small number of doctors who would specialise in that field and would offer better treatment than normally provided. It might be worth trying to speak to the doctor employed by a national sporting body, such as the Lawn Tennis Association, since they are likely to be the people who will know of any specialists in this field. Obviously, if there are such medical specialists who do offer better treatment and outcomes than a typical NHS consultant, they will doubtless charge at the top end of private healthcare treatment prices.

funny you should mention road bike hoods position , I jumped back on the road bike, all be it on the rollers (not trainer) and as you point out hoods are probably the best position for me, no wonder i managed years of racing on them with the bust wrist, occasionally the peloton crosses tracks or doesn’t call out a pothole and i could get hurt a bit but it didn’t knock me for weeks like this.

Maybe it would be worth trying a pair of the north road style bars, even if only as part of a process of elimination to confirm that different handlebars are not the answer. Judging by the images of Charlie the Bikemonger’s website page for handlebars here the north road bars don’t have a full 90 degree sweep, but it is greater than the sweep of the Jones bars. On One have some more extreme bars, such as the Snorky and Mungo, but I think they are road lever diameter.

I hope you find a solution that works for you. It sounds like you are having to consider a ‘trial and error’ approach to find a solution, rather than being able to take advantage of expert opinion based on medical expertise and/or the personal experience of others with similar conditions. I presume you have already trawled the internet to try to find similar experiences to yours and medical experts in this field with a sports injury bias.

I think a lot of athletes use weight training to build and strengthen muscles in order to take some of the stress on vulnerable body parts and thus prevent and reduce the risk of injury, but I imagine that it might not be possible to do that for the wrist, which has little in the way of muscle to begin with.

I take it you have also investigated and experimented with different handlebars. Personally, I’ve always thought that one of the best positions for long term comfort is provided by the classic position of riding on the hoods of conventional drop bars, where the hand is almost gripping the hood at a similar angle to holding a pistol, with the resulting force of any road shocks transmitted straight up the arms (hence the guidance that the elbows should always be slightly bent and not locked, so that they absorb the impact). It strikes me that the hand position of the traditional north road bar, which Epicyclo uses and has mentioned in a few threads, offers a similar position.

In a chaingang what happens if someone gets a blowout or hits a pothole -how do you avoid taking down the riders around you?

The answer to this is that no one hits a pothole in the first place. OK that’s overstating it, but such accidents will be rare and probably comparable with the accident rates for solo riders. The riders at the front of the group will be looking out for road hazards and will communicate them well in advance verbally and/or with hand signals to the riders behind, so that they will easily avoid the hazard. In a group, the riders at the front will be concentrating much more than when riding solo. You could think of it as being akin to the difference in concentration you give to riding on a red run at a trail centre compared with an empty gravel track.

I guess it’s like any other potentially hazardous activity where people are taking part either as a team working together or as individuals who may be affected by the actions of other participants, e.g. Formula 1: they don’t just behave as a collection of individuals, and instead they act and function as a group (think of it as being assimilated by the Borg).

I find that diagram on page3 well dodgy

I completely agree.

I wonder how many motorist s would see a group such as B in the diagram above and say, “they were riding three abreast you know!”

Whether you say they are riding 3 abreast, 2.5 abreast, staggered, or whatever, they are certainly not riding two abreast. In fact they look like just the sort of rag bag, ill-disciplined muppets who give cyclists a bad name. If you look at the image, you will realise that they would struggle to single up quickly in the event of an oncoming road hazard, and they only would do so haphazardly, since they would waste precious time as they worked out betweeen themselves who should slow down and who should maintain speed/accelerate to create the necessary gaps for the outside riders to move in. In contrast a disciplined group that is riding two abreast will quickly create gaps between the inside riders for the outside riders to slot in alternately.

Personally I will NEVER ride in a chaingang under any circumstances because it puts my safety in the hands of others. I want proper gaps between vehicles so I can stop safely without folk going into the back of me. I find it odd that you can accept a bike a foot off your wheel and another a foot off your elbow but a car must be 2 seconds behand and 1.5 m off your elbow

Riding in a group does entail a lot of trust, and requires a significant level of skill and everyone to behave similarly and predictably (is that not a bit like tandem riding though, where the stoker’s safety is in the hands of the captain?). I found the concentration required to keep a foot behind the wheel of the rider ahead to be very tiring initially, but it quickly became automatic (a bit like driving a car). That said, I now ride solo and like you I would not now be comfortable riding in a group, since I would have to re-learn those skills. I particularly dislike mass participation events because the other riders are unknown quantities with wildly varying riding standards, and I have had a couple of close calls where other riders have behaved carelessly and unpredictably.

I think most of your argument stand up tho until you get to the larger groups like in the situation I described above where due to the length of the line of riders overtaking was very difficult as yo had to overtake the whole line at once and it must have been the best part of 75m long Keep the groups of riders under 6 then overtaking is not too hard.

I think you are hoping/asking for too much to keep numbers under 6, but certainly in my club days once the numbers started exceeding 20/approaching 30, they would be split into two separate groups, although this often happens naturally in clubs with splitting into groups of different fitness levels/speed.

It looks like there is a split on this thread between posters who have never experienced riding in a disciplined group on the road (and who consequently are less familiar with what to expect when encountering such a group while driving, hence the OP) and those of us who have.

The OP was unsure about whether the group he drove behind should have behaved differently, and if so how they should have ridden. In other words, their riding created confusion and uncertainty in the mind of other road users, increasing the risk of drivers making a mistake, such as a decision to overtake when they shouldn’t.

A major part of road safety for drivers and riders is behaving predictably, so that other road users can anticipate each other’s actions. A group of badly disciplined cyclists is a major hazard to themselves and to others.

Riding in a disciplined group is safer than riding solo, because of the increased road presence which forces drivers to take more account of them, as opposed to just driving past a solo rider without altering speed or leaving an adequate gap.

However, it’s also safer and better for the drivers such groups encounter. If in a car you encounter a disciplined group, you will know it. The group will behave predictably, confidently and even assertively (which is sometimes essential for safety, as opposed to hesitancy). So the group will give clear hand signals for turns, it will have an awareness of other road users, if turning right it will make a judgement about when to pull out into the middle of the road (if necessary, preventing cars behind from overtaking them as a result).

Where the group considers it would be unsafe for cars behind to attempt to overtake, it may deliberately maintain a doubled up formation to discourage an attempt. A driver may not like this, and it might not always be in compliance with the Highway Code, but ultimately we all have to make our own decisions about taking risks on the road – that may mean briefly irritating another road user is the price paid to prevent an unsafe overtake. I think drivers are more likely to accept such actions from a disciplined group which is behaving in a safe predictable manner.

For those of you who have not experienced riding on the road in a good group, I would urge you to try it. It is a great experience, which can really add to the pleasure of a ride, and it will improve your road riding skills. If you do get the opportunity, be prepared to swallow your pride a bit: on my first group ride I made a mistake which caused the group to have to stop, and it was made very clear to me what I had done wrong (to prevent me repeating the mistake). I quickly got over that, fitted in the group, and acquired the necessary skills – it probably helped that I was young, whereas it’s often harder if you’re older to listen to (constructive) criticism and change, as indicated by theotherjonv’s experiences above.

Road riding safely and well in a group is a skill. It requires good shared understanding between riders so that they know and can anticipate what the others are going to do given the conditions, good communication (riders at the front warning the others of road hazards, those at the back letting those in front know about cars behind/overtaking), good group discipline, and a substantial degree of cooperation/common purpose.

It’s a skill which cyclists used to learn on club rides, where a new rider would quickly learn to copy what the other more experienced riders did.

The problem now is that there are a lot of cyclists riding as groups of friends on the road, who have never been on group rides with more experienced riders, and who lack those skills as a result. This includes a lot of mountainbikers who take up road riding.

From what you describe, the riders sound like just such a group of mates with poor group riding skills. In the situation you describe, I think they should have singled up to make it easier for you to overtake, but I would not have expected them to pull in and stop to allow you to pass (I’ve been in groups where we have done this if a vehicle has been behind us for a long time with no prospect of the road straightening/widening to allow an easier overtake, but that is usually the exception – it’s a lot less disruptive/easier/safer for an individual to decide to pull over than a group).

As for the missed turn and hesitating in the middle of the road, there was no excuse for that. Usually in any club group ride, one person is leader/navigator, and halting the group in the middle of the road like that would have earned him/her some withering remarks.

ton, I suspect that a fundamental problem for you, like many cyclists, is that you expect that you will get fitter simply by doing more rides/longer rides. That is only true if by fitness you mean stamina.

However, as your first post makes clear, what you are seeking is better/quicker recovery and higher average speed, and lots of miles will provide only limited benefit in increasing average speed, e.g. the extra miles will make an initial difference as you burn more calories and lose a bit of weight etc. Similarly lots of long slow miles will not do much for improving your body’s ability to recover.

If you want to go faster, you have to train to go faster. That means adopting the scientific training methodologies used by racing cyclists and athletes. The problem with those is that I think they can turn cycling into a joyless tedious experience, if taken to the extreme of following a rigid training program with a heart rate monitor or power meter and turbo trainer (‘on day X you must do a ride of Y distance at Z heart rate’).

For normal people, who are not racers and who are not targeting some major sporting event, I think the trick is in continuing to ride for pleasure, and at the same time incorporating some of the scientific training techniques into those rides.

It’s not been long since I started cycling again, and at the moment I am just satisfied if I get out and do a ride, no matter how slow (I have noticed that I am often overtaken by other cyclists, but I never overtake anyone – I don’t let it bother me). However, like you, I do want to improve my average speed. My plan is to start doing some intervals on some of my rides on a couple of long flat sections of road on my usual route, not sprints but something like a minute hard, a minute easy to recover and then repeat. I’ll do this just by feel (no heart rate monitor and not even a bike computer to measure speed): it may not be as precise and as effective as when I have used a HRM in the past, but I would rather do that than be a slave to a stopwatch and an HRM. Since I don’t bother to time my rides, I will not even be able to tell if I am getting faster, but I don’t care just so long as I still enjoy my ride (and I do actually like putting the hammer down, even if I can only manage it briefly).

Maybe something similar would work for you. If you decide to give it a try, you should probably check first with your doctor that it would be OK, although I’m sure they would encourage it, since I’m only talking about levels of effort and intensity similar to what you would experience riding uphill.

With regard to being able to keep up with riding partners, there is more to it than just whether mates ride faster on the downhills (and have better technical skills or simply take greater risks).

It may be more productive to seek to increase cardiovascular fitness to ride faster on the uphills and flat sections. Time permitting, training and improving cardiovascular fitness – however you do it (turbo, road rides, running, heart rate zone training on the MTB etc.) – is safely within your control and achievable, whereas pushing your skills to the limit and taking possibly too much risk to get to the bottom more quickly is likely to end up in further crashes, more time off the bike and loss of fitness (a vicious cycle).

Improved cardiovascular fitness would probably make your rides more fun: you can relax and enjoy the downhills at the pace you want to ride them, knowing that you can easily catch everyone else up when the trail flattens or goes uphill. Improved general physical fitness should also help improve downhill performance, since you will have better stamina and be less tired and more relaxed when going downhill, and so better able to concentrate, reducing the risk of crashes. The longer the ride, the more this physical advantage will tell.

Obviously improved skills – by getting tuition – and improved cardiovascular fitness are not mutually exclusive, but for some people improved cardiovascular fitness may be more easily achievable or offer a better payback for the investment of time/money.

For a road bike, if it’s kept in generally good condition and well maintained, I think you can reasonably get away with a lot less in terms of size/leverage/capability of tools – and even quality – than you should take for off road riding.

I think the best answer to the chain tool question in that case is to have a separate chain tool, probably something like the Park CT6, and combine it with your preferred multi-tool, which will give you a lot more choice of tools. For sheer simplicity, I like the Park MT1, which has no moving parts, and the socket wrenches are handy for things like SKS mudguard bolts.

As others have said, the inverted method works and any drips when you finally turn it over to press are minor. Hasbean’s brewing guide for the aeropress is here, and uses the inverted method.

And do take a good look at the cable where it runs through the bottom bracket cable guide. For example, if the cable were frayed at that point, I could imagine that the rogue strands of cable might interfere with and limit the amount of cable movement in either direction.

If operation of the STI shifter IS causing the front mech to move, just not enough to shift the chain either onto the outer ring or the inner ring, does that mean that when you to try to shift to the inner ring, the amount of cable released by the shifter is more than the amount of movement by the mech, and consequently there is excess/slack cable, i.e. you can feel with your hand that the cable is under no tension and is loose? That would indicate the problem is with the mech (or with the movement of cable through the bottom bracket cable guide, e.g. if it were gunged up).

You say the front mech will not move all to way to the stop/limit screws in either direction – is that based purely on using the STI shifter, or have you confirmed this, e.g. by pulling the cable as much as you can by hand to mimic a shift onto the outer ring?

If you had a double chainset, and it refused to shift onto the big ring, that might suggest the cable was not properly clamped to the front mech and was slipping between the clamping surfaces, but for a triple to be stuck on the middle ring and move, but just not move sufficiently either way to change gear, suggests that the problem is with the front mech. I would have a very close look at the mech to see if there were any foreign objects/grit lodged in the mechanism.

NB I presume no one has undertaken any work lately on the bike, since the obvious cause then would be if someone had incorrectly re-clamped the cable (incorrectly routing the cable in a front or rear mech where it is clamped, can sometimes alter the amount the mech moves for a given amount of cable pulled).

A suggestion:

Try pulling the exposed bare cable (where it runs parallel to the down tube) away from the down tube. If it moves away freely, then again you should see the front mech move. If it is stiff/resists movement, that might point to the cable not running smoothly in the bottom bracket cable guide.

You could also pull the cable away from the down tube and then operate the STI shifter (small ring to big ring) to feel if the shifter movement is pulling the cable.

Remember, nobody was expecting to be quizzed on this. Its a retrospective enquiry years after the event. Why leave a trail for someone to unpick later?

Indeed. Remember that the Sky team were formed, Wiggins joined them, and Freeman and Geert Leinders were employed all before Armstrong was finally busted by USADA.

At that time, it probably seemed to most people involved in professional cycling that you still had to dope to compete/win and that the risks of getting caught were low, despite changes such as the introduction of blood passports.

A Tour win for Sky and Wiggins at that stage was still only a dream, and they could never have imagined the level of success and financial rewards that they and Sky would go on to achieve, and the subsequent levels of scrutiny they would later come under.

So at that stage, they would not have been thinking about faking records etc. as a precaution against the day several years later when a House of Commons committee and the media started asking awkward questions about a jiffy bag sent many years ago.

The trick to any conspiracy is to keep the numbers involved as small as possible*, rather than engage in a major effort to create false records, which is itself highly dangerous because those records are then another thing which will be closely scrutinised for any error or evidence of fraud: better to have no records than fake records which can be proven to be fake.

(* It’s interesting that Freeman had responsibility for all pharmaceutical purchases by Sky, as well as being Wiggins’ personal doctor in the team.)

When Lemond bear Fignon in the final stage time trial he had the advantage that he was using aero bars and Fignon wasn’t . We all know that that was a huge advantage without which Fignon would have won .so IMO great ride , great nail biting finish but not the Greatest ride ever .

So it doesn’t count because of the advantage provided by aero bars, and you are instead proposing Landis, ignoring the advantage provided by doping? Okaaaaaaaay.

Actually, I agree that such a short distance time trial should not be considered the greatest ride in the Tour, but arguably Lemond’s performance and victory in the whole 1989 Tour was one of the greatest TdFs, if you do not restrict yourself to considering just individual stages. Lemond had been written off after being shot in a hunting accident, and had struggled to recover his form and get a contract with a good team. His ADR team was weak and he had no domestiques to support him in the mountain stages, so it was an incredible victory under the circumstances, with, as you say, a great nail biting last stage.

You can either believe Sky or not, some people don’t for their own reasons or agenda

That cuts both ways doesn’t it? Lots of Armstrong fans could not bear to accept the evidence against him until he himself finally admitted he had doped.

He’d have to monstrously stupid to have a shipment of PEDs sent to him at the velodrome by BC and Team Sky’s regular pharmaceutical supplier.

Managing the funding of purchasing PEDs and the medical know how to use them most effectively is probably a bigger difficulty for dopers and doping teams than avoiding failing a drug test.

US Postal Service apparently used to sell many of the bikes supplied by Trek to provide ‘off the books’ funding for their doping.

If we assumed for the sake of hypothesis that Sky were doping, it might be easier for them to get PEDs from their normal pharmaceutical supplier, especially if such purchases could be concealed within all their other purchases. So for every 10 packs of Triamcinolone bought, they get a free box of testosterone patches.

As for monstrously stupid, if people get away with wrong doing for a lengthy period, I think they can start to think they’ll never get caught and become careless. Alternatively, the mistake might have been made by the supplier, who was supposed to send that particular package to Freeman at a different address.

Because there is as yet no evidence that sky riders have actually cheated or broken any rules around PED’s.

We are still waiting to hear what was in that jiffy bag, and the failure to provide a satisfactory answer after all this time is suspicious in itself.

Also, the delivery of testosterone patches: of all the possible drugs that could be sent ‘by mistake’ by a drug company to a cycling team doctor. It looked suspicious as hell at the time, hence Freeman needing to get a letter from the supplier saying it was their mistake to show to the other doctors. (And given the profits earned by drug companies from the sale of drugs used as PEDs in sport, I would not simply accept that letter at face value.)

So there is evidence. It’s not conclusive (yet) and it’s circumstantial, but it’s starting to add up.

Do we know Lemond was clean?

I really want him to have been…

cynic-al, I don’t think there is any evidence that Lemond took PEDs. Reportedly Armstrong offered $300,000 to anyone who would testify that Lemond had taken PEDs, as part of his attempts to destroy Lemond, and got no takers. Given how outspoken Lemond was against doping, not least by Armstrong, but also during his riding career (he said when he left the PDM team that their attitude to using drugs was that they treated them like lubricating a chain), I think it would have inevitably have been revealed if he had doped. His obstinacy in speaking out about Armstrong, Ferrari and doping won him few friends and probably cost him a great deal of money, e.g. Trek dropping his bike brand.

Lemond was fortunate that he raced in the 1980s, when the PEDs available were not the sort of gamechanger that EPO is. Lemond quit in the early 1990s when EPO use started to become widespread and he realised that he would no longer be competitive unless he were to use it as well. I suspect if Lemond had started his professional career in the 1990s, he would have been another Christophe Bassons.

Watching the stage at Le Plagne 87 on TV was an incredible sporting moment.

However, for me the sheer epic nature of Hinault’s and Lemond’s breakaway on the stage to L’Alpe d’Huez in 1986 is the best.

The difference between Lemond and Landis, is that Lemond was clean, and you knew then – and you still know now – that this was a truly magnificent ride.

No, because he hasn’t lied under oath apparently, it’s not perjury. Apparently misleading MPs is ‘contempt of the house’ and means he could be fined or detained, but it’s not happened since the 19th Century.

Yes, I’ve just been reading the guide for witnesses, and as you say it is rare for them to take evidence under oath, and punishing for contempt is very rare. However, I don’t think he could refuse to attend:

‘When gathering evidence, almost all select committees have a power to send for “persons, papers and records”. This means that committees can insist upon the attendance of witnesses and the production of papers and other material. This formal power is rarely used.’

I suspect that the committee members may be unhappy enough with the length of time for which this has been dragging on already, and with the unsatisfactory answers provided to them so far, that they might be prepared to threaten to use some of those powers.

I think it’s interesting that they have left Freeman till last. If he had been the first witness and said “I can’t remember” or “I think it was flumicil”, that might have been the end of matters, but now public and media interest have been ramped up and his evidence will be very closely scrutinised. I cannot see how he could get out of appearing before the committee now, and maybe that’s why they have left him till last, since they feel that they would be justified now in using their powers to compel him to appear and testify if necessary.

That’s why it’s so bemusing that Freeman hasn’t said a thing as per my earlier post. If anyone knows what was happening on the medical side, it was him, but he seems happy for everyone else to take the flak while he says nothing.

I think if he admits prescribing PEDs, then he is liable to disciplinary action by the GMC, although any sanction might not be quite as severe as being struck off. However, UKAD/the UCI would probably ban him from practising as a doctor for any Olympic sport.

So, his professional career and livelihood are at risk, and unlike Brailsford, Cope et al., he cannot simply say he didn’t know what was in the jiffy bag. I think he is probably now between a rock and very hard place. If he lies to the HoC committee, then I think that would be perjury. Unless he is going to come clean and dob Brailsford and others in, his only other option would be to say he could not remember, and I don’t think that the committee would accept that at this late stage of the enquiry.

If something happened to the girl then any reasonable person would agree that there was nothing more that the OP could have done, but if the OP was in a low state of mind, then reason may not come into it.

So I am just saying that he might consider how best to protect his own state of mind.

Turnerguy, please re-read your first post:

If you say there is a possibility she could top herself you really don’t want to boot her out, for your own sake at least. Think how you will feel if something happens, as well as how it could affect your future mental health.

If she wasn’t an apparent train wreck when you were with her then maybe she has been brought to this point by the recent split, splits?

Maybe you could try ‘taking her in hand’, force her to come out doing some normal things, come down the gym with you, etc, to see if that helps.

You were putting the burden of responsibility for her well being and getting better on tpbiker’s shoulders. If her mental health is genuinely that fragile, then tpbiker needs to be clearly made to understand that not only is he not responsible for what she might do, but also that he should definitely NOT attempt to be a substitute for the professionals in mental health services, who should be the ones to determine the best course of action, even if he remains a friend and wants to support that process (which he should only do if he can maintain sufficient detachment to protect himself).

You have already done more than could be expected or asked of you, and the implication that you would be responsible to any extent for her actions, including any possible self harm, is unhelpful and wrong. If anything the opposite could be argued that by continuing to provide accommodation for her you would be allowing her to avoid facing up to her problems and instead become unhealthily dependent on you, such that the longer it continues the worse she will be when forced to act.

I am not very familiar with NHS mental health services or what support might be available from social services and the local authority, and others may be able to provide better advice, but I would suggest:

1. Contact the NHS (preferably her own GP if you know who that is – hopefully they are familiar with her mental health issues), and you can warn them of the action you are taking, and ensure she is on their radar.

2. Direct her to the local authority social services, who have a statutory duty as I understand it to provide her with emergency accomodation. NB They will only do this if she is homeless, so you must unambiguously make it clear that you are evicting her and will not accept her back.

Unfortunately, mental health provision and social services budgets are overstretched. so they will probably do anything they can to avoid being involved, i.e. by putting pressure on you to keep looking after her, and you will have to resist that, not only in your own interest but probably hers too.

The press articles describing how the other Sky team doctors blocked the applications for TUEs by Richard Freeman, seem to indicate that if there was organised doping in Sky, only a select few of the support staff were involved, which would make sense given that the more people involved, the more likely it is that the conspiracy would be uncovered.

I always thought that it was unlikely that the BC track cyclists were doping, especially not collectively as a team rather than an individual, because the money involved for most track riders is relatively so low compared to pro road cycling, both in terms of what they were paid by BC as a salary and also in terms of what they might be able to earn after their racing career was over, with the exception of a few high profile riders like Chris Hoy and Victoria Pendleton.

If there were organised doping in the track team, I would have expected the prospect of a big payout from a tabloid newspaper to have resulted in a rider blowing the whistle by now, and instead the only whistle blowing we have seen was Jess Varnish’s allegations of sexism.

If the track team is clean, and if the suspicions about Sky and Brailsford are confirmed, then those track riders and BC support staff stand to be amongst the biggest losers and victims of the Sky debacle. At the very least their successes in the Olympics will be tainted by suspicions of doping.

Wiggins and Brailsford built their careers on the back of success on the track funded by UK Sport and BC, so it would be particularly galling if they are guilty of doping in pro road racing, and damage BC and the track team as a result.

The ‘erroneous’ delivery of testosterone patches is strongly suggestive of organised doping, rather than just gaming the TUE system. If it were to turn out that Freeman was helping Wiggins to dope, then as with Armstrong, it is likely that many of Wiggins’ past victories would be annulled, so the other riders in the 2016 Olympic pursuit team could lose their gold medals as a result, as Usain Bolt and his fellow relay team members similarly lost their gold medals because one of the team was found to have been doping.

The Hound of the Baskervilles

The Hound of the Baskervilles

The nice thing about the WMF Ceramill design is that it is effectively stood ‘upside down’ when not in use, which means it does not leave a trail of ground pepper on the table. I think a few other manufacturers have similar designs.

I think the grinding mechanism in the WMF is the Crushgrind mechanism, and it and the Peugeot mechanism are supposed to be the best.

I don’t think much of Cole and Mason, having had one of their salt grinders. That said I am not sure salt grinders are worth having, and it’s generally advised not use ‘wet’ sea salt in most salt grinders, with the exception of those which use the ceramic Crushgrind mechanism.

If you are struggling to get to sleep tonight, a browse of this website[/url] should sort you out.

The increased price now of a brand new Jones frame, due to the drop in Sterling following the referendum, should make a used frame much more attractive to potential buyers.

However, it sounds like you really need to get some test rides in (preferably very testing rides of both the bike and your wrist) before buying anything else, so that before you part with your money you are sure that whatever bike you choose is going to cure the problem, or at least make it much better.

Cougar, I was inspired to have a go by this Nigel Slater recipe, but I also read a few others (below) to clarify the methodology. I tried my first batch this morning and it seemed good to me.

Note that the Seville orange season is short, so if you are going to have a go now, rather than wait a year, you need to get a move on. There were still Seville oranges in my local Waitrose yesterday, but I don’t know for how much longer.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2011/jan/20/how-make-perfect-orange-marmalade

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/how_to_make_marmalade_20072

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/medium-cut_seville_70291

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/food/2011/01/how-to-make-marmalade.shtml

https://www.rivercottage.net/recipes/seville-orange-marmalade

http://www.goodhousekeeping.co.uk/food/seasonal-food-calendar/the-10-golden-rules-for-marmalade-making

http://www.waitrose.com/home/recipes/recipe_directory/s/seville_orange_marmalade.html

Scotroutes, you beat me to it (I was going to go with ‘The dog ate my laptop’).

Interesting that the doctor has missed the hearing “because of ill health”.

I also enjoyed the comments by Simon Cope:

Questioned on why he did not ask what was in the package, he said: “Why would I question it? Why would I question the integrity of our governing body? I just didn’t ask. You may think I’m stupid.

“It must have been something medical, because it was for Dr Freeman, but I had no reason to doubt it. Throughout my career, I’ve looked up to our governing body. We’ve done so well and with a zero-tolerance stance [on doping].”

When pointed to the fact he was taking medical products overseas, Cope – who now manages Wiggins’ professional road-racing team – said: “I probably should have asked what was in the package but the other day I travelled down to Spain with 40 boxes in the car. I didn’t check every box, but I presume they were helmets.”

Cope was asked to explain a discrepancy between his recollection of his movements that week and the expense claim he submitted to British Cycling.

“I might have been trying to fiddle them. We all do that, don’t we?” he said.

Space Chicken? Is it really called Space Chicken?

Someone at On One is presumably a fan of Bleak Expectations.