Used it for the last few Puffers.

It’s brakes will be worn out then 😀 😉

You don’t need to cancel Christmas, just calorie control your roast dinner

…and eat it while on the turbo trainer
…outside
…in the rain

😉 😀

Yes. To both your descriptions.

I’ve had night road rides where my only company has been a shadow from the bright moonlight, while surrounded by the silhouettes of the hills around me, done in utter silence

…and there’ve been rides like, well, like the one I’ll be doing in a couple of hours. Where it’s lashing down with rain, the rush hour traffic seems to want to eat you whole, the wind reduces you to the speed of the old man staggering out of the (warm, dry, soooo inviting looking) pub and even a bus shelter full of chavs looks like a wondeful place to hide…

Must be bloody mental!

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!
😀

Never before IN MY LIFE have I seen such a collection of people being wrong in one place at the same time!

Many of you are ruining perfectly good foods with your sauce-lunacy and I am disgusted with you. Utterly disgusted.

🙂

Michelin Muds are the bestest clinchers I reckon, though you’ll be looking at around £30 each

Saying that, with enough skill I reckon these’d be alright and seem a bit bargaintastic to me 🙂

Kinda makes me want to go for an all day ride in the hills and only come back when I run out of food & drink…

…oh look, I’ve got Friday off work, that’ll do then 🙂

I am as yet undecided as to whether that is awesome or f-king awful 🙂

That’s vomit to the power of departing markedly from the usual or customary 🙂

Fantastic event!

Course is interesting enough to keep you on your (posibly numb) toes, scenery (for the brief period it’s visible) is lovely, atmosphere out on the course and in the marquee is always good and there’s guaranteed to be no midges 😀

Re: Drinking.
Go nuts, drink as much as you like, from whatever receptical you desire, it’s just very hard to go utterly flat out and swig at the same time – I’d drown if I tried (though I often carry half a small bottle with some flat coke or similar in it, in case I start to die a bit towards the end of the race) 😆

Cyclocross is ace!

Just get your head down, chase anyone in front of you and try to drop anyone behind you until someone tells you to stop 🙂

Well, to keep you dry in a really heavy downpour that lasts all day long, you’d probably need a jacket with a hydrostatic head rating somewhere over 30,000mm

…it’s also need to have a breathability rating similar to that (if not higher) to cope with the amount of sweat you’ll produce while riding, otherwise you’ll get wet from the inside out

…of course, it’ll also need to have a good/strong enough DWR treatment on the outside of it to keep the rain beading, rather than soaking into the face fabric for the whole time you’re out – otherwise the outer fabric will get saturated, creating another layer on the jacket, stopping your sweat from escaping, thus leaving you soaked from the inside out again

Hmm
good luck finding that! 😆

I’ll be there, pretending I’m a lot fitter than I currently am and trying to drink my own weight in tea between laps 🙂

(Car willing, of course, it’s due a breakdown soon…)

48hrs of the ‘puffer solo?
You sick, sick little puppies!

Where do I sign up? 🙂

3 Peaks cyclocross

Strathpuffer

CLIC24

Anything organised by riders who do it for the love of it

oh, and the NEMBA series races, from back in the day, as they were my first experiences of racing

I liked it the first time I rode it

I still like it and search for reasons to get out to ride it, even when I probably shouldn’t 🙂

I’ve not yet met anyone who’s ridden one and hasn’t liked it, which says something!

Damn those rock and roll stars and their non confirmist attitudes!

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trig-point[/url] by twinklydave[/url], on Flickr

Earlier this evening – checking everything works before racing it tomorrow (it does, if you don't include 'me' in the equation…)

One way? If you're not including going to a race, then 3hrs to Glentress to see what had changed in the 5 years between visits.

It was worth it (though I think I would have preferred stopping over one night and getting two days worth of riding in and playing up at Innerleithen too) 🙂

oh, and the forte's the bottom of the range model, so don't expect many luxuries…but then that just means there's less to go wrong 🙂

it's french so the electrics will surrender very quickly – the instrument panel and the rear wiper motor on mine died (and neither were cheap to replace)

but i still love mine, it's awful roadholding and random strange noises just make it more endearing…and it's bloody easy to sweep out when it gets filled with mud 🙂

I got decent anti-midge results using the same stuff samuri did (from the campsite shop), however I also got some on my lip and…well lets just say I sort of felt sorry for the midges 😆

£5 for a tiny little bottle though, they know a captive market when they see one up there!

don't know if everyone will be able to see this: example of negligible midges in action

Fair play to Ant White & Rich Rothwell – I was ahead of them at Newcastleton (60-something miles in), they nailed it round the 2nd half of the course!

I clocked it at 107 miles too – a couple of people with Garmins recorded 102 miles.

…so 107 miles it is 🙂

I'm not really sure anyone else did the race – I spent loooong periods of time on me tod with no-one else in sight

…which was nice 🙂

Blue stickers are definitely the best.

Chuffin' well aren't.

I'll be there (car willing, of course!).

Riding a, seemingly, common-as-muck TD-1 as fast as I can without exploding, after camping in a cheap pop-up tent that will no doubt fall apart in the middle of the night.

love 'em for their fast rolling, big & comfy tread and carcass and the distinct lack of weight

don't love 'em for their fragile sidewalls, fast wear rate*, and tyre lever-eating difficulty getting on and off the rim (seriously, I've snapped metal tyre levers fighting them on to stans rims!)

*admittedly all 'race' tyres will wear fast

4hrs 36min (dunno what the 'riding time' was) – but that was immediately after a 37mile off road ride over there and followed by another 37 mile (off road again) ride home 🙂

The ride there/back was better (though if you pretend its a miniature long distance trail it's OK) 😀

What can go wrong?

Mild possibility of cancer?

Do as Zammo commands

Dug the 'cross bike out and started crawling up hills with it on my shoulder in preperation for the 3 peaks next month.

2.4's were great in the snow over Kielder/Newcastleton earlier this year 🙂

brant or dave what tire or should that be mud clearance is in the back end ?

I have no idea what that means 😉

You can get a 2.4" racing ralph in there with room to spare thanks to the sliding drop outs.
Obviously you wouldn't want to run a 2.4" racing ralph if it's dead muddy, so thats a bit of a moot point, but if you run something like a 2.0" Bonty Mud X in the frame it's got miiiiiles of clearance. Miiiiles of it!

18" (just to annoy brant 😀 )

I'm a whopping 1" taller than you and the 18 is spot on for me 🙂

I made 3 seperate orders on Tuesday; one in the morning, one at 9.30 at night and another 10 minutes later (when I realised I'd forgotten something). Everything was "in stock" (and still is) and so far only the order I placed last has been changed to "complete" – the two earlier orders are still "processing".

I'm guessing the warehouse is so big that stuff kept right at the back is an extra day or two's walk for whichever order-picker has to go and get it off the shelves!

I literally rode 'til I puked. DNF at 28 and a half laps.

Your 'death or glory' attitude, after 20something hours of racing, was a joy to behold. Proper racing attitude. Awesome. Next time I reckon you'll nail it! 🙂

I went. I didn't actually 'do it', well, I did for a bit, but then I didn't.
I think I had more fun once I'd dropped out and could sit around drinking beer 🙂

like a VERY TIGHT s bend and where they left a couple of saplings in the main drag

Nowt wrong with the occasional sharp turn, unless it spoilts the flow of an otherwise great bit of trail. Which it didn't, 'cos most of the singletrack's looking very tired now…I remember making a lot of those ruts and holes in the tight, twisty bits a few years back!