ormondroyd – Member
Do you ride the CX bike up hills a lot more?

Yes – the road bike is new. My cross bike is going from being a do-everything bike to just being a cross bike. Climbing was always my strength on the cross bike and I deliberately did hilly routes and left better riders for dead on climbs.

Stiffness is interesting. Now you mention it, I did hear a bit of brake rub when I was really fighting it.

Thanks all.

Sorry – wheels and gearing are also the same (transferred across)

Cross is alu; Road is Columbus steel. As I said, weight is the same.

It might be feel but I doubt it – I am struggling on things I cruised up in the saddle last year. I’m not as fit as I was a few months ago but can’t imagine that I’ve lost this much ability.

Still a bit confused!

piemonster – Member
Im a very different runner to most of you lot

Not at all – I only run roads to train for fell. That’s a good training run. Where are you?

I sat in one while waiting for the dealer to do a recall for my tedious family runabout.

It looks ace from outside but, when inside, I couldn’t really see the point.

The back seats are unusable (for anyone over the age of 2). Taking these out of the equation it’s basically a 2-seater, the rest of the inside wasn’t as nice as my mother-in-law’s MX5, I can’t imagine it driving as well as her MX5 and it cost nearly £10k more.

brooess – Member

A sub-40 will see you in the top 25% of a 10k – not a fun run but one with club runners too.

Depends on the race,. Last year I ran:
35:30 in a low-key club 10k and came about 65th of 500ish.
36:50 in a big charity 10k and came 11th of about 7,000.

Actually, scrap what I just said.

‘Good’ is either better than last time or the same as last time but it feeling easier.

Don’t compare yourself with other people. Unless you’re winning races you’ll just get frustrated. I came 2nd in a little hilly road 10k last year and was really annoyed as I should have won it. But I was fast and felt good so it was a good performance for me.

‘Good’ is tricky to quantify. The faster you get, the faster ‘good’ is (and if you’re anything like me, you’ll never quite get there!)

I think 40min for a 10k is generally thought of as ‘good’ so maybe 20min for 5k is a nice round target number? – Edit – If you’re a reasonably healthy 15-50 year old male.

You’re looking for a ‘do it all’ shoe and there’s nothing that will do pavements and slop without some sort of compromise.

Best for mud is things like Walshes or the inov8s you mention. The inov8s have two types of sole – the marketing boys call them sticky or endurance – the sticky is grippy as hell but soft and doesnt last long. The endurance is harder, so isn’t as grippy, but lasts longer.

I have x-Talons, Roclites, Walsh PB trainers and Wave Harriers. My race shoes are the x-Talons, fell training in Walshes, trail stuff in Roclites. I reckon Roclites are the best compromise.

Bear in mind though that if you’re heavy or have an awkward running styles, you may go through inov8s in a matter of weeks.

mrblobby – Member

Live streaming, I may well tune in to this one.

Link please?

Edit – beaten to it!

I usually reach the 13-15 mile mark during training and suffer from severe shin/calf pain

I find that the best way to avoid this is to forget about distance and run offroad for a target time instead. Build up to close to the time you think the marathon will take.

I think it brought a huge return on the investment in terms of gross national happiness

Hello Mr S – had an eye on your race as I’ve heard great things about it but Darwen’s tricky to get to at the moment. Might try to have a run out with the bedlamites soon tho.

Some great efforts here. Well done all.

2013 targets are Coledale Horseshoe and Snowdon. Longer stuff in 2014 when the kids are a bit bigger…

Mixed!

35:30 10k. 1h21 half. A few fell races I was really chuffed with.

Then a big bike crash in September and a new job in Oct and I’ve got out of the habit of running.

Been for 4 short, easy runs this week and it’s going to be a long way back but I’ll get there eventually.

That’s true Rob.

What’s the climb from the Chapel side of Peak Forest up towards Sparrowpit? I’ve never managed to find it and it’s supposed to be a killer.

Both options look good.

The top Pindale climb heading SE from Castleton is good – longish, steep in sections but generally steady, good surface at the top. Downhill there are a couple of corners which make it very dangerous, but up is great.

You could link it to Abney, Hathersage, Hathersage Dale to Ringinglow Road, then Fox House and back down to Froggatt. Lovely!

Mam Nick from Edale is great too – and you get the Winnats descent as a reward…

3 year old son on being asked what he wants from Father Christmas:

“I love Lego. I’d like some Lego. I don’t want any of that Barbie crap”

Message received loud and clear!

b r – Member
Nope, customers are key. You can easily/expensively ‘handcuff’ people, but can’t force customers to stay.

Good point but if the product/ service stays at its current level of quality the customers stay. If some of the key people leave before I’m up to speed with running the thing, the product quality suffers and the customers leave. Chicken or egg?!

I really didn’t expect this level of response – thanks everyone, this is ace.

Where we are now: legal and finance dd being done by experts. I’m the strategy/ project/ programme/ change lead and I’ve been let into the NDA a month prior to planned signoff.

Things that I’m going to spend most time on include:
– Understanding our Directors’ expectations
– Minimising the risk of the key people leaving the target – it’s an information-driven industry so people are key
– It’s an emerging market away from our core so we’re leaving it intact as an entity (and, most likely, a brand) so we need to plan for the succession of the owners
– Culture, strategy, lessons learned and other intangible stuff
– How can we make the most of what they’re doing across our own core areas? There’s definite potential there.

Make sense?

Thanks everyone

what rate are you paying?

Bourbon or Mince Pie? 😆

If you don’t ask, you don’t get! This is great.

CFH – email now in profile. Thanks.
Ourman – you’ll have mail in a minute…
Atlaz – would welcome your help too.

Footflaps – thanks for the pep talk!

Am expecting this to be tricky but it’s bloody interesting.

Training with a coached group that’s better than you sounds perfect.

Find out their PBs and see where you could fit in.

I did 35:30 10k last spring off 3 interval sessions per week and a bit of cycling. I trained for a bike race after that and haven’t run much since.

Now starting to get some motivation for running back and at this standard (let’s face it, we’re not world-beaters!) two approaches will help – running more miles and running hard intervals.

A friend and I bought 6 bottles each at £120 per bottle. We never actually saw them – we had them transferred to the London City Bond.

We bought them after:
1) recommendation from someone in the trade
2) outrageous score from Robert Parker
3) fire sale discount.

He sold after 2 months for £1100. I sold after 6 years for £1200.

It’s all about knowing what you’re buying, the likely supply and demand, the likely drinking age and a hefty slice of luck.

Would I do it again? Probably not. Did it work for me? Absolutely – bought when cash rich, sold when cash poor.

I’ve lived in the Peak District, Sheffield, Meltham/ Holmfirth and Keighley/ Skipton. Work in Leeds, wife worked in Manc, family in Sheff.

I’d recommend Marsden. It’s beautiful, friendly, has easy access to Leeds/ Manc/ Bradford, is ok to Sheffield, has good pubs/ food and ace riding. The only downside is that the secondary schools aren’t great.

Airedale/ Wharfedale are great places to live but limit a sensible commute to Leeds or Bradford as it takes 30mins just to get to the M62.

Not me (he’s much much quicker than me) but this might be of interest:

http://forum.fellrunner.org.uk/showthread.php?18197-Treadmill-for-sale-in-Kendal

Do you use your commuting as training or as transport?

I currently do 23 miles each way 2-3 times a week on a cross bike with road tyres. Takes 1h10ish and includes hills or intervals or headwinds.

I’m about to start 10miles each way most days and am considering buying a fixed gear road bike (pearson touche/ day one etc) as it doesn’t seem long enough to get a training effect with a geared bike.

Anyone commute fixed? Noticing any benefits?

the last thing you want to do is spend £50 on a bottle you hate.

We should set up a whisky swap shop. If anyone’s got any bottles they’ve opened and didn’t like, I’m sure we could find people on here who’d be very happy to help create space in others cupboards!

Isn’t the correct number of whiskies also n+1?

Classifieds subsection?!

A bottle is quite a bit investment if you’re not sure you’ll like it.

Miniatures are ace – you can get about 8 for the price of a bottle and taste them in parallel so you can really compare them and see what you like.

If you’re anywhere near Skipton this shop is amazing: http://www.wineandwhisky.co.uk/

For starters, Id try something from each of the main regions (Highlands, Islay/ Islands, Speyside) and take it from there.

New pads fitted, brakes adjusted (again), orange bag taped to toptube, all ready.

Last night I thought I’d have a final short shakedown ride. Felt great up the climb, took the descent easy, got on the road and completely wiped out in comedy fashion. Over the bars into a wall.

Bike’s fine. I’m less so. Knackered elbow, ribs and knuckles. Chances of miraculous self-healing before Sunday? Slim. I’m gutted.

Ask the School. I thought most educational licences permitted additional copies of software to be loaded onto a home PC.

When I worked at a Uni I got Office for £25 and I think the students got it free.

Are you in a car or on a train? What sort of running? Off-road? Hilly? How fast?

Assuming train and off-road, from Airedale I’d go towards Silsden, Belton Road, Howden Road, Brunthwaite Lane, then Doubler Stones, Windgate Nick and along the crags before descending to Ilkley and getting the train back to Leeds from there. If you’re in the car you could descend to Riddlesden and go back to Airedale along the canal.

If car, the Bronte moors – the routes of the Penistone Hill country park races (google Woodentops) are all fun but a bit remote and might be pretty swampy.

Ilkley Moor and Embsay fell races are both classic routes.

Thanks for these.

The point about strengths is a good one – mine is climbing and I descend like an old lady so am probably easier on my wheels than some.

I’ll have a look into OPs and Aksiums to see if I can find a bargain. If not, I’ll continue mincing.

A tenpin bowling ball.

On Kinder.

Many people expressed concern about how CM was bieng percieved by the general public, and that it portrayed a negative image of cycling. Those are valid concerns…

Yep, so address these ‘valid’ concerns – don’t tart it up around the edges. In the eyes of what appears to be a pretty sizeable majority, CM is detrimental to the overall impression of cyclists.

The only real ‘campaign’ the riders have in common is to push for better conditions for London cyclists. This has borne fruit, as many who are involved are also involved in lobbying and campaigning for such improved consideration, and some have been involved in the establishment of more cycle lanes, mere awareness schemes and nationwide campaigns such as Sustrans.

I’d guess it was lobbying and getting involved on planning committees and local govt consultations which got these improvement – not riding round town slowly and whistling?

Thanks for the advert for your ride, but I won’t be there.

Lots of riding but very little off-road on cross bike. Still.

Also doing some carry reps but failing to see the point. It’s not hard – I just get a bruised shoulder! Thinking I might can it, put pipe lagging on and get more running/ riding in instead.

This reminder might be the push I need to get started properly.

Edit – maybe not: stag weekend this wkend!

My dad had one.

It was pretty big but a bit disappointing inside – the floor of the boot was high. Sure you’ll get 3 bikes in it though.

He only kept it for a year as he couldn’t afford the fuel bills!

It was certainly fairly endemic, but I don’t think every single rider was doing it.

Look what happened to Christophe Bassons. Any other clean riders kept very quiet.

An old link but this is an interesting analysis of epo use, effects and masking:
http://autobus.cyclingnews.com/features/?id=2006/epo_protease

Also, death is only a rare endgame from this. It’s the Daily Mail headline.

There’s a sliding scale of symptoms – nausea, dizziness, vomiting, organ failure etc before death.

I’d say don’t worry about it, but don’t drink pints and pints of water.

There have been at least 8 reported deaths from EAH (5,10,11,26–29). Many of these reports relate to a series of fatalities in the military between 1989 and 1996 (27–29). During this period, military recruits were encouraged to ingest 1.8 L of fluid for every hour they were exposed to temperatures above 30°C (30). At least four other deaths have been attributed to EAH in the United States (5,10,11,26,31).

http://cjasn.asnjournals.org/content/2/1/151.full

I’d suggest that runnersworld isn’t the most reliable source of information for anything, never mind running. It’s a whiny, bitchy, marketing-oriented forum populated by unthinking sheep.

Hyponatremia is very rare but can be fatal. It is caused by decreasing sodium conentration in the blood. This can be caused by significant exertion (sweating out sodium) or excessive water intake (increasing dilution of the blood). It also caused deaths a few years ago among ecstasy users too.

try the other one – HYPOnatremia

My fault – slightly too slow with the sneaky hyper>hypo edit!

drinking, i always try to stay hydrated, but really force the water down if i know my legs are in trouble, probably at the rate of a pint an hour till bed

Crikey. Please don’t do this, especially after a relatively short run. Google hyponatremia for reasons why.

Muscle soreness happens to everyone. Some days it’s worse than others because of what you’ve done before, how you’ve prepared, how you’re fuelled, if you’re ill, what surface you ran on etc etc.

My advice would be start and finish all runs with 10 mins of easy running.

When my legs are sore, the best thing for fast recovery is always a gentle 30min spin on my bike. Gets the legs moving, the heart rate up a bit and flushes out the crap without causing any more muscle damage.

its just a shame non of them live in Skipton

We’re in Silsden so used Ilkley midwives. Apart from being really scatty, they were very good!

When we had our first, NCT wasn’t available. We didn’t bother with it second time around as we knew lots of people with kids the same age and knew how to drive a baby.

Lots of people I know recommend them though as social/ support networks rather than for the content. Some groups really do stay friends for life – my mother-in-law still meets up with her NCT friends 30 years later!

The support network is hugely important. When you’ve been up all night, you’ve found it impossible to make and drink a warm cup of tea and you just need an hour’s break or a bit of a moan it’s great to be able to call on a spare pair of hands. If you can, make a nice wide circle of friends in similar circumstances.

…and congratulations. It’s brilliant.