Today only advent special offer Shimano R501s for 76€ ?

http://www.alltricks.fr/route/roues-jantes/roues/shimano-paire-de-roues-route-r501-noires-a-pneu-256-133085.html

Trying to resist these as they’d be cheaper and easier than replacing the cracked freehub on my old OEM Scott road wheels. Heavy though.

That’s sort of funny – I ride mostly xc stuff around Montpellier and don’t descend that well, so I was thinking that for me the TV would be a much more achievable thing to do than the enduro races like the TP (where I’d surely die either from skidding off a switchback or from being ridden off the trail by eveyone else overtaking me…)

Nothing really constructive to add, just wanted to say “Good effort” for getting the places. I guess you’ve already seen most of the published stuff, but by chance I was reading Adam Craig’s writeup on his blog last night ; http://www.adamcraig.net/trans-provence-2012-the-best-riding-of-your-life/%5B/url%5D

Oh and I think Juan is down in South East France somewhere? Juan, do you think the Transvesubienne would be good training for Levi and his missus?

Colossal Cave
Pong
Elite
Doom

can’t decide…

If you really don’t mind pedalling uphill then there are the Eiger Bike Challenge and Grand Raid Cristalp, there’s the MB Race as well but that’s 7/8 July, might be a bit early?

If it’s Celtic Cheese, then surely you need to get something from Brittany? Something from the Abbaye de Timadeuc?

8O

He has a rear rack just for carrying dead moose.

I hope he and his friends ride single file only.

This is one of my moon-on-a-stick daydreams too!

If you want a short travel alu 29er, then there are some interesting options:

Complete bikes for about £2k:
Orbea Occam 29er H30
BMC Fourstroke 29 fs03
Giant Anthem X 29
Canyon Nerve AL 29 (don’t really like the look of the lower shock mount on this, but I am not an engineer)
Rose Dr. Z (I saw a review that suggested the handling isn’t great on this – bit of a barge)

Self-build (frame only):
Titus Rockstar
Salsa Spearfish (good prices on these at the moment, but does anyone think that engineered flex in alu seatstays is a good idea? as above IANAE)

Over budget:
Cannondale Scalpel 29er (over budget if you want the one with the new Lefty)
Devinci Atlas
Intense Spider
Niner Jet9
Pivot Mach 429

I climb and ride. Last year I concentrated on training for climbing and rode my bike for fun, this year I’m trying to get fitter and faster on the bike (Academic year, starting from September).

If you’re going to do both on the same day then tailor both sessions to get the most out of both – I found that I could not go hard on the bike at lunchtime and then do any kind of worthwhile endurance or stamina climbing training in the evening (or even the next day) so I calmed it down on the riding to make the most of my climbing time, and fitted rides around when I could train stamina/endurance/power at the wall or go cragging.

This year I’m going harder and/or longer on the bike outings and have switched to just bouldering to keep the climbing ticking over – even if I’ve been out blamming it for 40 minutes to an hour at lunchtime I find that I can still have a decent session on 3-4 move powerful boulder problems in the evening.

There’s a useful side-effect in that losing a couple of kilos from increased biking makes climbing noticeably easier, but I don’t think this is going to be sustainable as the year goes on and I’m expecting to drop a few climbing grades on routes.

If you are going to do two sports at once then I don’t think you can do three week blocks of cycling and one week climbing and expect to maintain your current climbing level. My experience is that one good session a week is required just to maintain a level, and two or more is required to make any gains for climbing. Obviously this could be different for you depending on your base level and your individual limiters.

Reading your OP again if you really are limited to 2 sessions a week of training then I don’t think you can expect to make decent gains in both sports. If you do a 2 week cycle of 3 bike and 1 climbing sessions then I should think you’ll get fitter on the bike, and keep up the climbing.

If you haven’t already read it, then Dave McLeods “9 out of 10 Climbers” book is very good at making you think about how to organise training around life. Get that and a fingerboard for Christmas, start riding your bike more, and you should be sorted.

Woo… Cheers njee

I was looking at this one:
http://www.alltricks.fr/vtt/pedaliers-boitiers/pedaliers-manivelles-10v/shimano-2013-pedalier-slx-m675-double-40-x-28-175mm-10-vitesses-boitier-161-134263.html

I started off looking at chainrings, but two Spécialités TA rings come to the same price as a full Deore chainset with HT BB (currently on M442 chainset with Octalink BB, so looking at changing).

How is Medium for you?

http://www.alltricks.fr/vtt/cadres/suspendus/yeti-2012-cadre-asr-5-26-taille-m-alu-blanc-rp2-103-128873.html

http://www.thesufferfest.com/video-sufferfests/%5B/url%5D

Not sure about the “massive impact” in football.

Cycling is unique amongst sports as it’s as close as you can get to a pure endurance sport – the power output of riders is the most decisive factor in winning races (cf US Postal), much more important than the skill of the participants.

I’d say that sports like football or rugby are the other way round – individuals level of skill and teamwork are much more important than physical endurance (remembering that they play for 90 minutes – there are road climbs in the Alps that take longer than that!). That’s not to say that having a team of players off their tits on EPO isn’t going to give an advantage, of course it is, but less of an advantage than in road biking.

Not sure if they’re available yet, but BMC are pushing their new Fourstroke 29er as one bike to do it all:

http://www.bikerumor.com/2012/06/19/revealed-and-ridden-bmcs-2013-fourstroke-fs01-full-suspension-29er/%5B/url%5D

And they claim that their sponsored marathon racers AND freeriders are using it:

The carbon fs01 comes in quite pricey, but there are some interesting lower end models, including a reasonably priced alloy version.

They are zebras – La Paz’s traffic control team of disadvataged youths in zebra suits.

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2009/1027/bolivia-in-andean-capital-dancing-zebras-direct-traffic

Only slightly less mad than some of the riding in that vid!

I never knew that there were “cebras” in Bolivia.

I’m pretty sure that you can’t buy kateem stuff, unless it pops up on ebay or so on.

But on the bright side it seems to be fairly low-end stuff (strong but heavy), so pretty much any replacement would be an upgrade!

Voeckler is voted best French rider, Bresset is second.

So winning the polkadot jersey, 2 stages of the Tour and being a bloke is more impressive than winning worlds, olympic gold and national championships… ok.

I hope you get it back – sounds like there’s a better chance than normal if there is cctv footage.

Just in case you’re searching on ebay, I think the KTM own brand components are marked “kateem” rather than “kateen” (I have a kateem seatpost on my road bike, thanks to LBS who where KTM dealers)

Not a direct comment by him, but he’s removed “7 times Tour de France winner” from his twitter description.

Anyway, he doesn’t need to protest his innocence – there’re plenty of Spanish cyclists doing that for him (Indurain, Sanchez, Valverde!!!)

Funny, I’ve seen debates like this on a couple of other forums recently.

IMO to decide what is unethical and what is not you need to think about why certain things are banned. Look at the WADA website and read the WADA code. Under “Purpose” it states:
“To protect the Athletes’ fundamental right to participate in
doping-free sport and thus promote health, fairness and
equality for Athletes worldwide”

The key things are health, fairness and equality in that order. Basically anything that has the potential to affect an athletes health is right out, and after that the questions about what’s fair and what’s not come in.

If someone gets EPO dosages wrong there is a significant chance of them dying in their sleep.

If someone gets their altitude training wrong then they might have a bit of a headache.

I don’t really see how hypoxic tents can be considered to be unethical, as they only cost about as much as a top-end bike, but apparently they are considered to be so in Norway and Italy.

German bike shops are good for price, but you still have to pay shipping to France.

For delivery in France it’s worth keeping an eye on alltricks.fr (I had some wheels off them for a very good price) and probikeshop.fr – I suspect that they’re actually the same people behind both as they often have remarkably similar special offers.

There are other places like http://sergedutouron.fr/ and rcz but the two above seem to be the pick of the bunch for price and service.

Have’t done it, but I read this a while ago and thought it sounded brilliant:

http://www.alpkit.com/daring-deeds/giro-di-monte-bianco

Yellowstone 29er looks like a good budget choice, interesting component choices for the Nerve CF – seems like the cheaper ones are more XC/trail and the pricey options are XC/race, they seem to have dropped the alu time trail bikes and I think they’ve dropped the cheap Ultimate Al with Di2.

If you want something as bright as a gamma headtorch then why not just put one on his head?

Otherwise one of the ebay Ultrafire 501b torches would fit the cheap and cheerful category (and didn’t tesco do a pretty good LED torch a while back?)

The Clinic over at Cyclingnews must be exploding right about now.

I thought with road bikes you rode up and got people to drive you back down

If you’ve a van driver then can’t you do road bikes for the ups and mountain bikes for the downs, like this: http://www.velovert.com/article/5942/le-tour-du-mont-blanc-un-exquis-melange-d%E2%80%99effort

Never ridden around there, but I know of this place in Formiguères: La Dressere. sleeps up to 20, run by Brit ex-pats (Martin has a SMBLA as well).

Won’t racers still want QR forks and wheels for quick changes, or can the latest QR15 axles be changed over just as quickly? Or do they just not worry about that kind of thing? (genuine question – I have no idea, never having raced)

If you mean 2013 SLX then there’s a 3×10 group here (bike-components.de) for 295€, without brakes. (they have the 2012 version for 279€ too)

If you’re after 2×10 2013 SLX then I haven’t seen anyone offering full groupsets yet, but I’d be very interested if anyone else has.

Edit: actually Merlin now have group plus brakes for 495€

It’s wierd. I drive between Lyon and Montpellier on a fairly regular basis and it has always been my impression that there is no gradual deterioration. Somewhere between Montelimar and Valence there is an imaginary line, that once crossed erases any road-sense or courtesy from you.

Really? I ride a fair bit around Montpellier on and off road and I’ve always thought that the driving standard is pretty good (with respect to cyclists), as long as you don’t get too close to the city. It’s a different story if you’re in a car though.

It’s possible that I am still making unconscious comparisons with being in the UK, or that things are really a lot better further north!

Nicolas Vouilloz may disagree with you there

I was thinking of things like this : EI Shock, so I guess I should have written “some of the same technologies”

One of the brands owned by the Accell group – along with Haibike, Koga and Lapierre, so they share the same technologies.

Colour-match the mud on the downtube.

It’ll never look dirty again.

Depends on age group:
http://www.sportcommunication.info/web2010/epreuve2.php?langue=1&trophee=128

A, AB, B are female categories, C to G1 are men. Bronze isn’t listed as it’s everyone else who finishes (inside the time cut).

There’s some good stuff up around Grindelwald and Lauterbrunnen, stuff like this:

http://bikeland.myswitzerland.com/en/routen_etappen.cfm?id=315651&subcat=NationalRouteSegment&flags=route1&tour=etappe_route&rkey=787&oid=342778

I’m pretty sure that the local tourist offices had route maps, but I can’t find one online.

And there’s this in August : http://www.eigerbike.ch/%5B/url%5D

You could always get one of these

http://www.bikeradar.com/road/gear/category/accessories/product/review-k-edge-computer-mount-for-garmin-edge-12-46397

I noticed this as well last week, and did some searching.

Whether it’s a good deal or not all depends on how well the Magic Link system works scaled down for XC bikes. I’ve never ridden one, but most internet reviews seem to indicate that it works very well and unobtrusively for general riding around.

However, there’s a bikeradar review of the DL (deluxe??) version of the 2+2 that suggests that the Magic Link can engage when trying to bunnyhop. I’m not sure about this as it’s the only review I’ve seen that mentions this, and Kona are still using Magic Link on their enduro bikes (now with air damping instead of a spring). I also spent an hour or so riding with one of their sponsored riders (Karim Amour) who is very particular about his bikes, and seemed to have no problem at all manualing, hopping and flying over and down stuff with ease on a Magic Link AbraCadabra.

Mind you, I notice that Kona are dropping the 2+2 from their line-up this year, so there are no Magic Link bikes in their XC range.

Even given all that, at 50% off you’re basically getting the frame for free (based on a quick tot-up of wheels, forks, shock, groupset and brakes).