From a quick look at Pauls Cycles, I think the other differences between the 2011 x3 and x4 are :

X3
SLX ish drivetrain – 10 speed
QR15 through axle on the fork

X4
Deore ish drivetrain – 9 speed
9mm QR on the fork

Which makes the x3 a bit more future proof, especially if you’d be tempted by trying 2×10 or 1×10 later on. Not that there’s anything wrong with 3×9, but it’d cost a lot more than £200 to go to 10speed later.

Edit: I think the blue/black x4 looks better than the red/silver x3 though..

It’s a problem with road cyclosportives as well. The French ones (including the Etape) have a rule to disqualify people spotted littering by the “eco-patrol”. They also provide occasional nets to chuck rubbish in which seems to help.

There are also movements like “Ne Jetez Plus” which are basically people pissed off with littering

Nobody’s talking about pedals…

My local trails have a lot of short & steep ups and downs. Although I have a hardtail I considered a dropper post, as I do find it more comfortable to drop the seat a few cm for the downs.

However, I then switched to SPDs and it changes things. When riding flats, and going downhill you have to drop your heels to keep your feet in place (bouncing down my extra-rocky local trails may contribute to this point of view). Dropping heels like that means that my bum needs to be exactly where the raised seat is!

But when riding SPDs you don’t need to apply technique to keep your feet on – they’re attached. So I can keep my feet flat, stick the saddle in front of my crotch and blat down the short descents without having to stop.

If I went back to flats I’d want a dropper post to avoid stopping every 2 minutes. With SPDs my body/foot position isn’t always optimal, but I don’t have to stop.

I thought I’d very slightly bent the bars on my bike due to a reasonable crash about 3 weeks after buying it.

About a year later, while measuring up for a road bike fit I realised that actually my arms are different lengths and the bar is fine…

Another hint: he was such a bad-ass that the Russians named fighter jets after him. (To paraphrase BigRingRiding)

Nice looking bike (I like white frames)

I am very very interested in this:

Special thanks also to Highpath Engineering for selling the spacers necessary for Campagnolo gears to run on a Shimano cassette

I’ve been trying to find a way to re-space a SRAM/Shimano 8-speed cassette to work on 8-speed Campag.

I’ve been building up to buying one of these from the States : http://www.bikewagon.com/wheels-manufacturing-camp-sh8-kit-shimano-8-to-campagno

But it looks like Highpath can supply the same thing for half the price?? (When Chris gets back from cycling 3500 miles to raise money for http://cyclistsfc.org.uk/)

Mavic shoes are OK for grip – they use the Contagrip rubber from Salomon: a lot better than hard plastic but I don’t know they compare to the rubbery Shimano soles.

There seem to be a few FFC trail centres to the south (about 100km away!):

From : http://ffc.fr/a_VTT/a_SitesVTT/index.asp

But there are a couple of GPS traces here http://www.utagawavtt.com/gmap/carte-generale-topos-vtt

And if you’re out there until the 23rd there’s a rando (organised non-timed mass ride) : http://www.vetete.com/rando_vtt/xriy9q/sur_les_traces_des_loups_d_aigonnay

Top three quick guys:

Kulhavy: FastTrak/Renegade

Shurter : Dugast Tubs – can’t see the tread pattern very well, but I seem to recall he usually uses Ritchey treads?

Fontana : RR/RR

I’ve had FastTrak LK and Captains (all 2.0 control versions). For the riding I do they are excellent. The rubber seems to cut up a lot less than the Schwalbe NN/RR combo I tried (both triple compound Evo Snakeskin versions) but that may be because Schwalbe design for Germany/Northern Europe/earthy trails and Specialized design for California/dry/rocky trails, and I live in southern europe.

I started off running FastTraks front and back ghetto tubeless with no problems (normal rims with a cut BMX tube), but have now moved on to a pair of UST rims with a Captain on the front. If you read the Specialized documentation, it’s pretty clear that 2Bliss tyres have a UST-spec bead, but they don’t call it that to avoid any licencing issues.

Anyway, Captain controls + UST rims work v nicely. I will probably try one of the new fasttraks on the back when my current Michelin XCRDry2 (cheap UST bargain) wears out.

From the look of Kulhavys bike I think he had a Renegade on the back and a FastTrak on the front.

They made him smoke the cigar in front of the team boss at the communal dinner table. The team had a no smoking policy.

I have a Polaris RBS jacket: Really bright (although the orange strip makes me feel like a Danish policeman – dunno why), good all-round reflective bits (including on the arms), light and reasonably packable.

But it’s definitely a windproof rather than a waterproof, and the shape is “relaxed” rather than “athletic”.

It’s mostly dry where I live, so I didn’t need a full waterproof, and I always beat the breathability of waterproofs anyway, due to sweating like mad.

On a related note, I see that the full range of 2013 SLX bits and pieces are now up for sale on French and German websites.

Despite not having 840m of awesomeness I’m planning to go 2×10 when enough bits wear out – previous calculations suggested that I’d lose half a gear on each end (compared with 3×9) and I reckon that’s a fair trade-off for less front changing, simpler & lighter.

A quick add-up on alltricks.fr suggests a set of cranks, FD, RD, shifters, chain and cassette would cost 319€. Seems OK.

Excellent. Love the attention to detail on the mosaic version of the photo – it’s been reversed but the chainring and cassette have been put to the correct side.

I’ll let you know in 2-6 days when a pair from CRC turn up!

I just hope I’ve ordered the right size – I’m normally UK 8 or 42, but Shimanos own conversion chart and some internetz advice suggested size 43.

One of these?

http://www.freeborn.co.uk/devinci-2011-dixon-rc

Haven’t got one, but reviews (and a couple of guys over on the BR forums) suggest that it’s as good as the CAAD10, and better than cheap carbon.

It’s also the frame that Phil Gilbert was using in his second to last year at Lotto, but it was painted up to look like the carbon model : http://inrng.com/2011/02/what-do-the-pros-ride/

Not sure that the voies verts are off-road – the site front page says velo ou roller, and as “roller” means roller or inline skates I’d guess it’s two lane tarmac cyclepath all the way!

The routes on utagawa are gps traces of what others have done, usually full mountain biking.

The ffc trail centres are a mixed bag, with little consistency between the relative difficulty of routes between centres, but the route marking is pretty good. They usually have circuits of up to about 30 km.

More helpfully, have you seen geoportail.fr ? It allows you to display IGN maps for all of France, with satellite images too. Very useful for route planning.

I suspect that a lot of the older cyclists out there dabble in a bit of low-level doping, mostly because it was part of the culture in their formative cycling years (talking about speed and strong cough medicines and so on).

But injecting EPO seems like a big step up, mostly due to the increased danger – if you don’t know what you’re doing, there’s a really good chance of not waking up one morning after the heart has failed to push overly-thick blood around at night. I can’t imagine that it’s easy or cheap to get hold of either.

After being totally inspired by this post I had my first go at bikepacking this weekend. Sorry about the pic quality.

My bike:

3/4 thermarest and old single-hoop goretex bivvy bag on the bars, either side of cables and held in place with two straps. Map on top of this under rubber bands. Spare clothes stuffed in with bivvy bag.

Top-tube bag with energy bars and phone.

1.3kg down sleeping bag behind the saddle, in a stuff sack from a synthetic Decathlon bag – this bag has compression straps built in which makes it easy to attach. Small saddle pack attached below the sleeping bag with multitool, spare tube and levers.

Two bottles with 750ml of plain water in each. I considered getting a cheap triangle frame bag to replace one bottle, but the 35°C heat meant that I needed a LOT of liquid.

Camelbak Mule with 2.5l of isostar, food pump and other tools.

I usually run a fast XC tyre on the back (Specialized Fast Trak or an old Michelin XCR Dry2) but a fully loaded test ride saw me put a big hole in a Michelin so I went with a Specialized Captain control front and back, pumped up a bit more than usual.

It was moderately epic. I thought that two 70km days would be reasonable, so I planned to do this:
http://www.gpsies.com/map.do?fileId=jzjhauqdbnqjettu The route was chosen to take loads of fireroads. Most of the first day follows the “Grand Traversee de l’Herault” or GT34 – a bike/horse/foot trail that goes from near Montpellier to almost Carcassonne. After that I planned to go up fireroafd to the summit of Roc Blanc and bivvy up there, then the second day was to traverse the long line of La Seranne to Mont St Baudille, take a rather spicy descent and come back via fireroads and a GR footpath that uses an old rail track for most of it’s length (GR653).

First day up to the summit of Roc Blanc went really well. No bike problems, but the final long, long fireroad climb really meant I had to dig deep (and keep stopping – amazing the difference a few extra kilos make!).

Near the start, looking at Hortus and Pic St Loup:

First view of the days objective – Roc Blanc:

From near the top of Roc Blanc looking at Pic St Loup from the other side:

From the top of Roc Blanc I had the first surprise. The ridge path was exactly that: a path along a ridge. The end of the fireroad was just a carpark, and exposed to the wind so I started climbing down the path, to see if I could get to the end of the rocky section before bivvying. Not far along I found a lovely flat platform sheltered from the wind:

I slept well. Day2 did not go as planned. The ridge path became a tiny, unrideable path through dense spiky vegetation over rocks. I lost the path, clambered through bushes then found it again and descended down to what looks like a big right turn on the map, I think. All that took about an hour.

But sometime during that hour I’d managed to loose my map…

I tried to follow trails from memory, but I got really badly lost. What looks like a long obvious ridgeline on the map is really quite flat on top, with a myriad of hunters/animal tracks that seem to be good then just stop in the middle of bushes. I got cut to ribbons whilst sturggling through dry spiky vegetation with a fully loaded bike balanced across my shoulders.

After a couple more hours of very slow progress I spotted a path heading down the hillside to the valley below, near St Jean de Bueges (the village in this picture):

Fortunately I found it, and escaped downwards, dropping about 600m in about 20mins. This picture shows one of the sections between terrifying crumbling hairpins:

After lunch in a cafe:

I followed the road parallel to the ridge. No way did I have the reserves to go back up to the top of Mt St Baudille and do the descent, but I picked up my original planned route and went to St Jean de Fos by fireroad:

No more pictures after this, as I managed to loose my phone SOMEWHERE on the long descent down… This meant that I was absolutely ragged, still about 35km from home and with no backup.

Fortunately an old lady out for a run (!) found it and handed it in at a local Town Hall, where I picked it up the next day. How lucky!!

I did Aniane to La Boissiere on the GR653 – rocky but mostly flat old railway, then I dropped my plan and used the road to head home.

A very interesting experience.

I thought about one of these, but there was a thread either here or on BR discussing it, with input from people who work in the emergency services.

What it seemed to boil down to was that if you’re fecked up enough not to be able to give your name, then anyone medical treating you isn’t going to arse around with pendants, wristbands or phoning your partner to tell them you’ll be late fro tea. they’re too busy saving your life (and they have to test and match your blood before giving a transfusion anyway, so blood group is redundant information)

After that, it’s the job of the Police to find/inform next of kin, and they are very good at that, especially if they’ve got a name to go on.

If you don’t have any other kind of ID that you carry, then a wristband is probably worth it to speed up the Police’s job.

Actually I might get one.

I like the way that internet bike shops are still desperately trying to sell “Garmin-Barracuda 2012” kit even though it’s already out of date.

Well, just in case anyone was wondering, I ordered the 199,99 € MT65 wheelset from Alltricks.fr.

I got e-mails from the shop everytime the online tracking was updated. The wheels turned up really nicely boxed in one big carton, with bubblewrap, polystrene sheets and brown paper. This contrasts strongly with a recent delivery I saw from Actionsports, who had stuffed a pair of Dura-ace road wheels into boxes sized for 26″ mtb wheels with no added padding!

Put them on my bike last night : Specialized Captain and Fast Trak LK tyres (both 2Bliss Control 26×2.00 versions) mounted easily with just a track pump and satisfying pop noises.

I also finally weighed my old stock wheels without cassette or rotors : Alex RHD rims on Specialized hubs. Front 950g, back 1200g. I didn’t weigh the MT65s but if the official weight of 1796 g is about right then I’ve dropped about 350g.

The only bad thing is that alltricks have just put up a reduction code that would’ve saved another 6%. Oh well.

Just to add a different suggestion – instead of degreasing the seatpost, have you cleaned and lubricated the seatclamp?

I thought I was doing up mine dangerously tightly, but the post still slipped. Eventually I cleaned & oiled the seatclamp cam and I could close the thing more easily and tighter.

Somethings wrong there in that pic.
An opened QR lever doesn’t/can’t double back on itself. Even locked it can’t travel into the spokes. The amount the lever can travel is limited in both directions.

That’s not true with the kind of cheap QR pictured. The lever that sticks out of the side of the end cap HAS got enough movement to double back on itself (and stick in a disc and then finish under the fork as pictured). I’ve a bike with that kind of QR in the garage and I’ve just been in to open it. You can even see the curve of the lever in the picture above.

The QR has flopped fully open, stuck in the disc and jammed up under the fork, forcing the QR endcaps out of the dropouts, destroying the tabs.

This probably happened due to the QR not being done up tight enough. It may have happened due to a faulty OR that does not close properly, but if that is the case then the QR will still be faulty and impossible to close properly – this should be easy to test.

Of the bikes I’ve seen recently purchased, all but one have had the QR lever on the left next to the disc (the exception being a Trek hardtail).

But a quick whizz around the Trek, Specialized, Giant and Cube websites shows all the QR levers next to the discs. Every single one.

http://www.bike24.com/1.php?content=8;navigation=1;menu=1000,2,140,17;product=12400

(6€ shipping I think)

and

http://www.alltricks.fr/vtt/roues-jantes/roues-26-/shimano-2012-slx-mt65-paire-de-roues-6-trous-26–9-mm-serrages-178-65968.html

(13.90€ shipping but free in France)

Don’t buy them all – I haven’t made up my mind yet!

You guys do know that Valverde is riding for Spain, yes?

I don’t follow, but dip in via the website from time to time.

People I find interesting
JVaughters : @Vaughters
GVroomen : @gerardvroomen
Jens Voigt : @thejensie
Velocast John : @sofaboy
Velocast scott : @velocast

as well as Cav, Millar, Wiggins (already mentioned above)

Satire:
Not Pat McQuaid : @UCI_Overlord
Chade O Grey : @GreyManrod (really Floyd Landis, or at least it used to be!)

Odd mixture of mens and womens-specific bikes.

The Specialized Secteur is the alloy framed version of the Roubaix. Specialized do a women-specific Roubaix-alike called the Dolce.

Boardman also have womens bikes – the “fi” range.

Having said that, there’s some debate about whether “womens” geometry is really required. Cervelo say there’s no point. It might just be marketing, unless your friend is particularly petite it which case it seems to be better.

Never been there but I know a few websites:

Local vtt route (gps trace from 2005, so it might not be valid)
http://www.utagawavtt.com/randonnee-vtt-gps.php?topo=530

Organised rando on the 16th September:
http://www.vetete.com/rando_vtt/26ptrz/epte_vexin_seine
(these randos are usally good fun – non-timed marked routes. It’s like going biking with a local)

If you’re feeling a bit more gnarr there’s a local Enduro on the 30th Sept. Like a rando but with 3 timed special sections
http://www.vetete.com/rando_vtt/2w9694/l_enduro_val_de_seine

There don’t seem to be any ffc trail centers near there.

I’d change my name to “William” and leave them on.

France is pretty big. This means that the rules can be (and are) different everywhere, and that there are too many paths to put signs on.

Generally anything goes, except certain national parks (Ecrins for one)

But you need to check local commune/department byelaws.

Generally the FFC centres give a good idea of what’s possible, and the GPS track sites like utagawa give an idea of alternatives.

I’m tempted by this : http://www.lyonfreevtt.com/course-vtt-lyon/

as I’ve some friends who live nearby. Maybe not the full Enduro version though.

The hills north of Montpellier are stuffed full of quiet roads and trails.

There are FFC mountain bike centres (marked trails) around Bassan & Montagnac (west of Montpellier), Lac de Salagou and Gignac (bit further north).

Gignac is also where the local cyclosportive starts/finishes:

It’s not far from St Guilhem/Mt St Baudille which looks like this:

If you’re looking for more local fun then the woods near Clapiers (just north of Montpellier) are popular. The best place to find someone to give you the tour is probably here : http://forum.vtt34.com/%5B/url%5D

By the way, you do know that it’s probably going to be about 40 degrees C in the shade in August, don’t you?

The Grand Bornand tourist office sells a map of the waymarked trails for a few €s – mostly XC loops with a few DH-ish trails (those are from the La Clusaz lift I think).

Good stuff nearby in the Montagnes Noir to the north, the Corbieres to the south (don’t miss Mont Tauch if you’ve a road bike) and La Clape next to the coast.

There are a load of GPS traces on http://www.utagawavtt.com and a list of Randos (organised and waymarked rides that are usually a really good way of not getting lost) on http://www.vetete.com

There’s also a FFC VTT area at La Clape, so there will be some way-marked trails, but it’s quite a new one so info may be sparse (some stuff on http://www.ffc.fr/a_VTT/a_SitesVTT/index.asp). There’s a pic of the guide here: http://gruissan.blogs.lindependant.com/archive/2011/02/17/jean-claude-meric-presente-les-projets-2011-de-l-office-de-t.html