Saw the thread title and immediately thought of shoelaces. Lots of shoelace chat did not disappoint.

My maternal grandfather was left handed and taught me to tie my shoes his way round. I taught my daughter. She never got to meet her great grandfather but inherited his left handed shoelace tying (after 3 generations of right handers carried it down)

I might teach her to slap the monkey who goes near the tap too.

First thing you need to do is get the other people in the house on board with the idea. Otherwise your lights are going to be switched off at the switches each time because the switch is the easiest way to switch a light on and off. And then it doesn’t matter what routines or automations or even sensors are hooked up as your light is not powered on.

So my recommendation is to spend the time to get the hue lights working like normal lights for people who aren’t interested in smart systems first of all. The colour temperatures and times of day can come later.

I’ve been trying to explain to Strava for a while that they have an incredible asset available to them in planning and that’s all the activities that have already been recorded. I think the current state is that they’ve added the heatmap to the base map but not yet got to the point of proposing routes based on the weight of prior activities between those points.
The risk is that it could become self referential but it would have to go through a state of being usable to get to that point…

Thank you for sharing. Genuinely.

Some great advice up there.
If I could do it again, I wouldn’t. But if I was forced to I would have liked to have know this:

1) the baby. It will be fine. It makes noise when you need to do something. If you’ve tried everything try some background noise
2) your partner. Probably won’t make noise when you need to do something until it’s too late. Talk to each other and make sure they’re ok
3) you. You will be holding, moving, carrying, twisting, lowering, raising, stretching in a way you’ve never done before. You will hurt your back. Stretch and strengthen your back and shoulders a bit now and you might get away with it.

Congratulations and all the best. Just the fact you’ve asked the question means I know you and your family will do well!

@thols2 it’s worth having a read of the linked article about the 538 model oddities. It doesn’t make me doubt the usefulness of the model but I do think some of the choices made are in hindsight hard to defend. (And that they’ve only left them in so outcomes can be consistently tracked over time)

The AXS dropper is a game changer for me to the point I’ve had to relearn how to time pressing the button and sitting/lifting. And then when I ride a hydraulic post it just doesn’t work any more!

That said I’d wait for v2 now. It’s a bit more rattly than I expected for this much use.

The next question then has to be if there is a better way of allocating time than just booking TSS? (->CTL)

If I was just looking to increase my CTL I could do a ton of Z3 as my physiology means I can tolerate a stupid amount of work just below threshold and I have the time to do it = max CTL.

Thankfully I’ve broken my CTL fascination and now do the sessions that make sense to reach my goals and TSS is just an interesting artefact.

As long as you’re scaling your intervals inside vs outside because of your physical response (and power meter) then you’re doing the right work. TSS is so rough as to barely be more than an idea.

p.s. Slightly wonkish but my inside vs outside power is so influenced by temperature that ‘% FTP’ is not something that is even slightly consistent in vs out. For example doing VO2 max intervals doesn’t raise my core temp inside as much as long threshold intervals, so my VO2 max and above power/HR is pretty similar inside and out. But long threshold workouts inside (I avoid them!) are dramatically different to outside because they raise my core temp so much.

The TSS can’t be consistent (within 10%?) with itself anyway.

The method of scaling effort in relation to FTP is not going to account for the stress varying depending on your condition. Sometimes a few minutes over FTP is barely going to tax, sometimes it’s going to destroy. The TSS calculations aren’t smart enough to cover that.

Can I ask why TSS matters to you? (I’m assuming you already scale your intervals based on the expected capacity so this is just about booking numbers?)

I listened to an interview with the founder of mumsnet recently. What she described reminded me very much of here.

https://anchor.fm/do-lectures/episodes/DO-Podcast-with-Gav-Thompson–Trailblazer–Carrie-Longton-ekev8p

Really good post Liam.

Only thing I’d add is that if OP gets on well with weight loss (if that’s what they want to do) and then wants to get a bit faster then:

Ride mostly at a pace that is fun, ride occasionally a bit faster than is comfortable for just a bit longer than you think you can.

Unless you’ve got some medical reason to keep an eye on your heart rate that might be indicating something is broken then I agree with Liam that it’s way down the list of what to think about.

My rationale is this:

Trump lives – COVID is the flu – no or even less action taken – 100,000 more deaths.

Trump dies – COVID is real – even republicans start to think about action – 100,000 fewer deaths.

That and he’s just a hateful individual who has done more to wreck humanity than anyone in generations.

I’d argue that what the world needs now is lots of “everything positivity”

Sex positivity
Sexuality positivity
Gender positivity
Gender expression positivity
Body positivity
Every other type of physicality positivity
And so on

When someone comes in with (well meaning) yeah but excess weight is correlated with reduced life expectancy it allows all the other intolerant people to come in with yeah but genes, yeah but lifestyle, yeah but the children.

Don’t give them the chance

Everything positivity

You should look at Lake as well.

I use the MX 303 but that might be overkill for UK conditions.

My autumn boots are the NW GTX you’ve linked to and they’re a solid 8/10. The dials are their own brand not ‘boa’ and they’ll stink to hell but otherwise excellent in every way. I’d consider them again but would look at others too for the reasons above.

The Lake are 10/10 but the 303 isn’t the model you need as it’s more focused on warmth than dryness.

It’s not about the bike…

If it ain’t moto…

R2 is always my first choice. Luckily they stock nearly everything I use so don’t often need to go elsewhere.

Don’t forget to put the promo code in to get 3% off.

I wouldn’t worry about screaming at idiots, it might help them remember.

Something similar happened to me and the kid when we had our cargo bike. I screamed, a lot, at someone who came frightenly close to taking us out. It turned out to be one of the school dads.

When I got to the school gates I apologised for getting Mamma Bear on him but when someone nearly kills my kid then nature takes over. Did he understand that it was a primal instinct to react like that? He did, and then the lightbulb went off that he’d caused it with his driving. He was much better for the next year or two but then last week I saw him sail through a red light 200m from school.

It does at least have an end date (as it stands) but I’m with you on the concern about very contentious things like this getting waved through while no one is watching.

As they say “never let a crisis go to waste”

I’ve never really thought about it like that before @thegeneralist but you’re absolutely right. Insurance companies collect more than they pay and wouldn’t have a business if things were at no risk of being stolen.

I’ve had plenty of bikes stolen over the years. One particularly painful loss was 2 S-Works chained together in the garage. Both frames built up with a very specific set of parts. Spotted some of the parts on gumtree the day after and called the police who were not even remotely interested in the information. Do they think that bike thieves steal one bike and they’re done? The chance of getting someone who’s prolific must surely have been enough to get them off their fat asses. But I’m not bitter, 12 years later, no.

I read the first few posts but then tuned out when it got all closed minded.

Some of you might find this interesting.

https://podcasts.apple.com/se/podcast/science-of-ultra/id1042673386?l=en&i=1000485802972

Plenty of examples of studies where eating more calories resulted in weight loss so shouting 1st law of thermodynamics isn’t particularly useful when it comes to the complexity of the human body.

All Calories are not equal but even with the depth of study done so far we don’t really understand all the effects. n=1 studies on the most important subject you can think of are more valuable than woo, thank you very much.

All my bikes have DT ratchet hubs so I was a little reticent to get a new pair with incompatible EXP free hubs but I did and they’re great. Very quiet at slow speed and progressively noisier at higher speeds.

I’d guess the XMC 1501 rims are very close to the old XMC 1200 30 rims. Everything moved pretty quickly towards lighter and cheaper in the latest generation of all things carbon wheel related.

The best piece of advice on here seems to be to document procedures in such a way that if an employee gets ill you can reasonably justify that none of their colleagues will also need to isolate.

Not something you’ll find written explicitly in government documentation but something that they’ve no doubt thought of themselves when doing what they do best (arse covering)

I hope it’s ‘bikes’.

Just regular, get you round, maybe carrying something but not much, not ever so far, not ever so fast. Maybe when the ground is damp, maybe when visibility is low. Definitely when you’re wearing clothes, or even if you’re not. Nice to look at but not fancy. Durable and simple, lightweight, ish.

Bikes.

I’d consider paying for STW if there was a toggle to hide all ebikes.

Have a look at CyclingTips for how to write about all things cycling <>mtb.

To add another data point: A Bomboloni on 35mm internal will fit in a Fox 34 with 6-7mm all round.

No comment on whether it’s a good idea in your case or not! Just adding to the thread as I would have appreciated knowing these compatibilities when I was building mine up.

I ran Bomboloni 3” on 35mm internal and getting a pressure that didn’t simultaneously result in folding the tyre or pinging off stuff was next to impossible. I’ve put 2.2 tyres on the same rim now and everything about the tyre is better. Grip, comfort, support. Everything.

Does it fit? Yes
Is it a good idea? No

“Where are you looking to move to?”

You’ve done well picking up the local usage of to there @longmover.

‘Where’s the Falmouth bus to?’ is a perfectly reasonable question.

3*10 at 105% is a hard session, basically FTP test level of stress, so I’m not surprised you end up a little less than relaxed.

(FTP protocol being 20 mins at 105 or 2*8 at 110. Where FTP is what you can achieve at most, not what you can do after work on a Tuesday. And a couple of watts either way on what you think your FTP is can make a big difference between a 102% session and 105%)

I do a couple of high stress sessions a week and also suffer poor sleep sometimes. Never usually with dropping off but more often not being able to stay asleep. My solution (after all the warm down, relaxation, general sleep hygiene) is to have a good low GI supper and fluids just before bed.

If you wake up hot it can be a sign that your body is trying to replace glycogen but doesn’t have enough water to do it.

Anyone doing structured session like your 3*10 owes it to themselves to look after themselves and educate on what the effects are (on them). If the session loses you sleep then do something different.

I don’t think Strava calculates elevation but rather just accepts what it is given by the GPS device.

On group rides I always see a wide variation in elevation amongst the group.

https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/life-changing-pizza-dough-with-joe-heffernan-of-seattle-s-independent-pizzeria

The dough comes out so well every time my 6 year can throw it into shape.

I put our oven on the cleaning setting and a pizza takes about 4 minutes on a baking steel.

Weigh the water and put polenta on your peel are my top tips. I coat the dough in oil for first rise and again for proving to get the surface from drying. Make your own sauce or it’s a waste of dough. And simple and sparse toppings win every time.

Sweden has a very high proportion of single person households.
It’s also not remotely true that we didn’t, or haven’t, implemented social distancing.
And arguably we were told to be alert before it was cool, with information about what alert means.

Ordinarily I would have come into physical contact with people or things people had touched hundreds of times per day. Swedes are (were) as physically tactile as they are socially distant. Since CV I can’t remember the last time I touched another person and have 3 different levels of hand washing depending on the level of CV-risk/dirt.

I read something to the effect that in a poorly ventilated space you’d need >10 minutes of breathing at each other or >5 minutes of talking to make a worse than evens chance of transmission. Outside there is almost no chance of transmission. All the pictures you’re seeing are people outside – and mostly with that great ‘journalistic’ telephoto lens trick.

Something in the stories about Sweden that somehow never makes the news is the change to social security that sick pay (which is nearly 100% salary) is now paid from the first day of illness which means that everyone* can afford to make the right decision about staying out of the workplace if they have symptoms.

Our epidemiologist is the first to critique his own early choices about care homes (where 75% of the deaths have occurred) and crucially the vast majority of the country believe that lessons will be learned for later in this crisis and the next one.

Junior schools are open but most schools are outside most of the day and parents aren’t allowed inside.

My concern now is that Sweden chose such a sustainable ‘lock down’ that we’ve become altogether too comfortable with social distancing and that normal is further away than it will be for countries that went into unsustainable lock down and quickly back to open again.

I probably won’t post again unless I can solve the cookie consent pop up thing.

*Everyone. Always deserves an asterisk.

If you ride on your own and don’t mind what cadence you use then the ease of use makes it a great idea. I did over 10,000km and 100,000m of climbing on a 1x drop bar bike last year.

My gravel bike wears either 38 or 42 on the front and 10-42 or 11-36 on the back.

The only time the gearing isn’t perfect is when riding in a fast group or when trying to do intervals at a defined power. Last week I was trying to sit at a wattage and my cadence was either annoyingly just too low or annoyingly just too high. If I didn’t care about what my power was it would never have bothered me!

There are only two things to do from here, and apologies but they’re both a little political (and have little to do with the disease itself).

1) Fix it so that everyone is financially capable of making the right decision for their health. There are too many people who can’t do the right thing because they’ll starve or be evicted.

2) Learn as much as we can about the spread of the disease so we can do better when SARS4 or Covid-2n arrive. We’re all carrying geolocation beacons round with us 24:7. With a little enrichment about what we’re doing (masks, religiously hand-washing) it shouldn’t be too difficult to work out what actions have the worst transmissions.

I’m in Sweden and they started with ‘what evidence do we have that X will make a difference’. For the next time they’ll know that elderly care needs to be treated properly and that going outside makes not a stuff of a difference. There’s still time to learn an awful lot about Covid-19 transmission and control.

Lastly, make it clear that you won’t put the blame on the public after your strategy goes to shit. Fast forward a month and I can already hear someone making a ministerial statement that people weren’t Alert enough.

Here’s something for road riders with lower back pain to try:

Tip the shifters inwards to rotate the thumbs over and palms more downwards which changes the angle of all the joints from elbow through shoulder and down into the scapula. This reduces tension in my lats and down into my lower back.

Try it just standing without a bike to feel the effect.

I find it also spreads the support into the hand and reduces pressure points too.

If you’re that flexible then you have some muscle strength or tension imbalance that you could work on. Road bikes don’t inherently ravage your (very highly flexible) body and you’ve had a bike fit so there is something you can do for yourself before you give up.

I have to very consistently work on my psoas and iliacus to stay pain free. Sometimes the strength or weakness can be the opposite of what you think for where the pain is.

If you’re serious about solving the problem I’d find another bike fitter and have them diagnose you.

Really interesting reading these replies.

The dead feeling bikes in particular. In my experience the tyres, spokes, rims and wheel build (in that order?) have an incredible impact on feel. A dead bike can be enlivened with a good wheel or even just a good tyre. A cheap way of rescuing an expensive relationship breakdown between you and a bike.

As to the OPs problem: if your fitter isn’t starting with your cleats then all they are doing is matching your physical dimensions to the bike measurements.

Two people with identical dimensions are unlikely to be on the same fit due to flexibility and condition differences. For that reason it’s often a good idea to examine flexibility and condition deficiencies before making changes beyond adjustments to existing components unless something is way off.

Lockdown is a great excuse to spend a bit of time looking at whether you could improve flexibility that you might have decided in the past you didn’t have time for…

What are you going to do with the 5% you save? Get home more quickly, travel a bit further, or expend less effort?

I’ve got all sorts of bikes and the only time it matters what I ride is when I’m with others. If I take the gravel bike and everyone else is on 25s then I’m in for 30W more than them.

When I’m alone it doesn’t ‘matter’ beyond aesthetics.. which may be the most important reason of all!

Carbon-ti make 110×5 2x AXS rings ($$$$)
Rotor make 110×4 2x AXS rings ($$)

I’d imagine that someone makes spiders for Cannondale cranks for those BCD.

Whichever way you go it’s going to be expensive!

I’m still waiting for a 10-42 12 speed cassette and whatever associated ‘mid-cage’ mech before I invest in AXS. There’s no way I’m putting a 50t on (the back of!) my gravel bike until I’m at least 50 years old.

Morvelo and Giro (Chrono) also make bibs with pockets in the small of the back. Deeper than they are wide you’ll never lose anything from them.

I’ve not tried the Morvelo yet but get on well with the Giro as the pockets are above the waistband of my baggies. I have the swat liners too but the pockets are lower and sometimes interfere with waistbands.