No idea how many laps in the senior race
No real ‘crashes’…jut a few (lots) ‘unplanned/ungainly dismounts’
No brakes for the ride home (interesting…)
No love lost between me and the washing machine
No way I was missing it 🙂

Emrbocation sounds good… never tried it, any recommendations?

The Elite stuff[/url] is very ‘warming’ (ignore all the guff about ‘converting pain into rainbows’ etc, it just makes your legs feel tingly toasty)

This stuff[/url]‘s nice if it’s properly grim outside, as it lasts for quite a while

Crikey’s list above is a good cover-all – I’d keep an eye on brake pad wear (in fact on long winter rides I chuck a spare pair of pads in the saddle bag; if you’re riding in the hills on mud/grit/salt covered roads you can get through them frighteningly quickly).

28c tyres offer extra grip on those cold, greasy, leaf covered roads and offer a little bit of extra cushioning (call it your little bit of luxury for riding in the shitty weather)

If you’re using your ‘summer’ bike, it’ll need a lot of looking after to survive in good condition. If you’ve got a ‘winter’ bike treat it as such and spend the time on yourself rather than trying to get everything perfect.

Warming embrocation is a lovely pre-ride treat 🙂

Emergency ‘cafe-stop’ money should be topped up frequently (but dipping into it requires you to ride the long way home) 🙂

Cake
Beer
Lots of light for your pit area

I’m using a tiagra BB on a gossamer chainset ATM on my CX bike. It all fits fine and doesn’t seem to die any quicker than the original, overpriced, FSA BB did.

What better Christmas pressie (to yourself) than 2hrs of bicycle based self-flagellation followed by top notch food? 😀

Utter win!

How skinny would you go for mud tyres on the course?

I’ve got 2.0″ bonty mud tyres, wouldn’t go any narrower simply because there’s not that much claggy mud on the course…and anything too narrow will be a pain on the rocks

I did it all in the same clothes – I just thought if I changed, I was going to get all muddy again within 5 minutes, so why bother?

Same sort of idea applies – start out wearing stuff you know will keep you warm/comfy (so keep an eye on the weather forecasts – in previous years it’s been anywhere from sub zero with gale force winds to 8 degrees and totaly still), getting changed at 3am when your hands and feet have gone numb is nigh on impossible…and getting back out on the bike when you’ve stopped and have lost that ‘riding heat’ is even harder.

Small things like a clean, dry pair of gloves/jacket can give you something to look forward to, won’t muck up your ‘flow’ too much and mean you can tailor your clothing as the temperature falls/rises/turns into horrible freezing sleet easily.

(Saying that, make sure you do have at last one full spare set of clothes, just in case you crash/fall into a pond/etc)

Can’t stretch to a pair of ice tyres though, is having one any use or am I just going to have to hope for snow/warmer weather?

TBH even in last year’s ‘icepocalypse’ conditions I ran studded tyres for about 3 laps then sacked them off. A rideable line tends to form after a few hours and much of the roacky/singletracks/foresty stuff doesn’t ice up too much

Been using these[/url] for the past year, they seem to fit all your criteria and are pimpy light to boot 🙂

There’s a fair old bit of climbing per lap on the ‘Puffer course, but it is very SS friendly (speaking as someone who has never singlespeeded it and has no intention of doing so, ahem)

Parts of the course are quite rocky, but then again, I’ve raced it many, many times now on a rigid bike and not wanted anything squidgier 🙂

Hopefully!

I’m in negotiations to get the whole day so I can ride there & back. If I do, I’ll be falling off on the flat bits in the seniors cat 🙂

on-one are selling various Lunar lights cheap ATM: here

They seem decent enough for commuting

::sigh::

I miss my old berlingo 🙁

Well, I miss the load space, the ease of packing, the lack of concern about how dirty it was getting as you could just clean it out with a stiff brush and the ease of finding it in a car park.

I don’t miss the ‘handling’ (ha!) or (in my case) the lack of air con or fuel economy or the comments about needing a wheelchair to use one

[/url]
berlingo2[/url] by twinklydave[/url], on Flickr

I *think* I miss the delightful interior colour scheme now, too…

I beat EVERONE on my commute home yesterday. Everyone. Fast as. 🙂

(I think Stratobiker[/url]‘s already been mentioned – but he’s done, and still does, lots at a properly high level)

‘The Damned United’

Despite having little interest in football, or Leeds (apologies to the people of Leeds) I really enjoyed it.

I rode the field bit every lap (then took my place in the stumbling queue to grovel up MTFU hill like every other fool who’d entered). My average speed, according to the computer whenever I looked at it, was around 3.5mph

Flat out.

Can’t wait to do it all again 😀

Nope

and working on the “%age is traditionally the age you start paying in, minus 7.” rule there’s no way on earth I can afford to, unless I moved into a cardboard box! 🙁

(Not that I can see myself ever reaching retirement age anyway – I’m sure it’ll keep moving just a few years further up the line than I am at any one point)

Here you go!

(Must admit, I’ve not looked to see if those particular cassettes are listed, but most are)

Yes!

Wouldn’t miss the annual pilgrimage oop norf to repeatedly fall off my bike in the dark 🙂

Best 24hr race of the year!

It’s a work you don’t understand but experience

Is spot on. I read it at Uni (studying English Literature) and at the time found it utterly brilliant.
I tried re-reading it a year or so ago and barely understood the notes I’d written about it, let along the book itself.

Salman Rushtie is awesome, BTW, I remember staying on the train for several stops longer than I should have due to being so engrossed in The Satanic Verses (a Virgin train, I mean, not some little local thing!)

~£1800 a year.

Very little is commuting (as that’s done by bike) so it’s pretty much all going to/from races, visiting family, the weekly shop and random other leisure activities.

Car averages out at around 40mpg

Truvativ thingy that came with Noir cranks: fitted new the day before the Kielder100. Non drive side siezed solid & driveside full of grit by the finish line.

Quality. 😕

[/url]
DD2_076[/url] by twinklydave[/url], on Flickr

…going all ‘light’ as you skip off the end of the berm, over the lump, getting ready to force the front end down and ‘snap’ into the left hander and romp home to victory 😀

Dave, you should bring your caravan down and stay over too.

There’d just be another Dale Farm incident if I did

Anyway, I’d only bring it if I was allowed to park up so close to the race the course would run through the awning 🙂

The porridge is damn tasty.

As was pretty much everything else the caterers were selling (yes, I’ve sampled it all)

A proper nice cup of coffee would be good too 😉

To distract angry cowboys?

I had the Bare Necessities in my head yesterday, to day it was the theme from Thomas the Tank Engine

…which would be fine if I had kids and had overheard them watching said chldrens TV, but I don’t 😕

What p+p are you doing on Curly Wurlys?

Given that they are all now in my belly it’ll be the cost of a return train ticket to wherever you are 🙂

65p from the vending machine for that sort of thing.

Luckily (or unluckily, if you’re trying to be healthy) the H&S office, based across the corridor from us, have taken action against overly inflated prices by opening a tuck shop and selling sweeties at cost!

CurlyWurlys for 40p. Get in.

twinkly……. what happened?

A mixture of just having no time to ride over the past month or two, combined with some sort of bug that’s left me feeling drained after any attempts to train properly meant I was getting outclassed while I could ride and was heading for a spectacular implosion…

I felt I’d be more use helping Jase out when he was riding so well, but had to stop to do all his own spannering than just grovelling round until I made myself sick

It’ll haunt you forever

You were defeated by a bowl of natchos son! So don’t go getting cocky 😉

(Properly well done. It was suitably epic for your first solo win.)

There you go
🙂

get that in writing. you don’t want them wriggling out later.

Oh I did, trust me! 🙂

Yeah but we’re going for the breakfast buffet at the hotel just as much as for the racing 🙂

(note: seperate rooms, in case anyone was wondering)

Any RTAs won’t be reflected in the ‘crime statistics’ though surely? Only break-ins, thefts etc?

Aah, there was a “vehicle crime” section and an “any other crime” section I thought might cover it, but maybe not.

Would love to see the stats for the area I moved to though, to find out why one company thought it was higher risk and everyone else thought it was lower…

To be fair it’s not really about crime, it’s about claims

Don’t most claims have to be backed up with a police crime number though (I know not all will – reversing into a lampost and the like)?

It does seem to be unruly, made-up-on-the-spot stupidity nowadays.

Moving house changed my premium with my (then) insurer from £540 to £1360 as I was moving into a “higher risk area”. I checked the police crime statistics only to discover that there was less ‘crime’ where I’d moved to.
Then I checked on a few price comparison websites and, not too surprisingly, everyone else quoted lower than they had for my previous address.

So I changed insurer, being careful to list the modifications my car has – doing so upped the premium a bit, which I expected – but spotted that my car was described as having “no modifcations” on the policy documents as well as having an alarm (which I’d made clear it didn’t).
On getting in contact with them I was informed that the modifications I have make no difference to the policy so don’t need to be listed…even though they’re included on the list their own website states “must be declared”…and even though it affected the price. Oh and having an alarm fitted doesn’t lower the cost of the policy by the looks of it, as having it taken off the policy made no difference to the price… 😕

Still, at least it gives me somethng to grumble about 😥

Had a pair of sintered ones in since January, raced on all year (including the Kielder 100 that seemed to muller a lot of people pads) and they’re almost worn out…but not quite

Noisy (especially when wet) and not quite as powerful as organic pads (obviously) but yeah, good so far!

🙂