I re-learnt to swim a few years ago when I got into triathlon. I followed the advice of a friend and used the Total Immersion (TI) method (others are available).

I would advise you look into TI or similar. They teach you how to find balance in the water (i.e. from tip of fingers to toes) as part of being efficient through the water. If your bum is low chances are your head is high and/or your arms are too high/not spending enough time outstretched in front of you.

Although you can go on TI courses I can vouch for just buying the book and doing for yourself. It will take a few months to learn how to swim again from scratch but I can promise you you won’t regret the investment. It absolutely transformed my ability to swim crawl. :-)

Have fun!

Their site – http://www.totalimmersion.co.uk/
An example of a how good it can be – http://youtu.be/rJpFVvho0o4

Thanks guys, I worked this one out for myself and can confirm that while coatesy’s advice is accurate my experience was closer to Rorschach’s description.

;)

zimbo +1

Errm, I maybe a lone voice here but I’ve certainly know Herbalife be very useful to people, including myself, who wanted to lose weight but keep or gain muscle mass.

It seems to me that Herbalife has two parts to it: 1) tailored advice that gives you a target for how much protein and how many calories a day to achieve (i.e. something to inform what “a balanced diet” may actually be – it may not be what you were expecting!) and 2) food products (shakes, bars, etc.) that help you achieve these goals.

Once you know your protein and kcal target you don’t actually need to buy/use any Herbalife products as you can achieve the same end results just by closely monitoring what you eat. However, achieving your protein goal while not exceeding your kcal goal is challenging and this is where the Herbalife products help out.

I am not at all the kind of person who you’d ever expect to find going on a “shake diet” (besides, it’s much more than just shakes – lots of healthy “real food” too) but my own experience tells me that it has a lot going for it. It definitely can help you to lose the fat and gain muscle. Perfect if you have a training goal in mind, as I do.

As far as expense goes, although the products are not cheap because they replace a chunk of your normal diet the overall cost works out about the same or cheaper in my experience.

Even if you don’t fancy a diet like this the basic principle of having a high level of protein in your diet is a sound one. High protein levels support muscle development and also keep you feeling fuller for longer (useful when trying to cut down on calorie intake – even M&S have a range of food and advertising based on the principle).

The main benefit I have found is that my recovery from hard training sessions is much improved. I’ve often caught myself running upstairs the day after a heavy session the night before and realising that my legs feel great, not heavy and screaming at me to stop. This is a good thing! :-)

vinnyeh: What has informed your point of view on this? I’m interested to know why you have such a low opinion of it.

Having just re-read what I’ve written it comes off like I’m a paid up Herbalife marketing machine. I’m not, I’ve simply found the whole experience to have been very positive.

Yes, you called?

Hi Sneakyg4,

Although you commented that are eating “good protein” you don’t say how much. As someone using the Herbalife diet to enable me to train and gain muscle whilst fat I have to ensure that I consume a specific number of grammes of protein per day whilst staying within a kcal target (which can be quite challenging to achieve without the aid of the Herbalife products!). The amount of protein and the kcal target are calculated specifically for me as part of the Herbalife scheme. As a guide, I am 6’4″ and 39y/o and my targets are 141g protein/1700kcals (not allowing for additional exercise requirements).

So, although you are eating “good protein” are you eating enough of it? Protein helps you feel fuller for longer and of course is vital for muscle recovery and growth. If you are getting insufficient quantities of protein this could explain why you are experiencing a loss of fitness.

Another thought is that carbs should always be complex carbs. This is usually taken to mean brown rice/pasta/bread, skins left on potatoes etc. However, as I understand it there are actually only a few genuine complex carbs out there which include quinoa and two others (which I can’t remember or successfully Google for just at this moment). Apparently brown rice/pasta/bread etc. are nearly as bad as white rice/pasta/bread in that they almost immediately get turned into sugars from their starch content when consumed.

Good luck!

Interesting to see the price you quote LoCo for servicing a Float. How come Specialized think it is reasonable to charge £90 + postage + parts?!

Thanks LoCo and cheeseburger for your responses.

For info, I actually have a number of shocks I might want to service including Fox & X-Fusion but my current one is a Specialized “own brand” AFR.

ads-b – I’m very glad to hear that you are OK. My motto is ALWAYS get the driver’s details. Later on you can decide whether to lodge a complaint or not but without reg or other identifying details you’ll struggle to make any complaint stick.

I don’t mean to hijack your thread framebuster but I just wondered if anyone else who had done the Loch Morar route had had a similar experience to that which me and my SO had recently.

We did the route about three weeks ago having previously heard from friends that it was a great route with excellent singletrack and could be done comfortable in about 3 hours. Maybe we would have had a different experience if my SO wasn’t an MTB newbie but we ended up having a bit of an epic due to the amount of carrying to be done. Whilst our friends remember riding nearly all of it we found that we had to carry or push many sections of the route. Some of these could potentially be ridden by very fit/skilled riders but many other sections would have required Danny MacAskill like skills to clear them. In the end we made the boat with barely more than a minute to spare – missing it really isn’t an option!

Dry conditions would certainly have helped a great deal, there were several sections that were too boggy to ride, but I would advise anyone considering this route to be prepared to carry and push a lot of sections and to allow a minimum of 3 hours between Bracorina (where the road ends) and Tarbet. Otherwise this is a beautiful place to spend some time and being picked up by the boat at Tarbet certainly adds an unusual element of adventure!

Although project is right that local authorities (a.k.a. districts and counties) are funded by government by a grant called the Rate Support Grant the Electoral Roll plays no part in this. The amount each council receives is based on the head of population in the district or county but this figure comes from the (national) census data, which is held and maintained by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The Electoral Roll has no direct roll to play in the census.

FYI Failure to complete the (national) census form in March 2011 will also result in a fine!

mattsccm, what on earth are you alluding to when you say,

But then I don’t always agree with the whole principle of allowing so many others to vote.

???

I take it you don’t agree that all citizens should have the right to vote (admittedly allowing for a very few exceptions)? Who shall we disenfranchise first then? You maybe?

For me anywhere between 95 – 105rpm is comfortable for road riding. If going flat out I often get above 110rpm which I can keep up for extended periods upwards of 30 mins. Don't know if this is either "good" or "bad", it's just what I do.

The flipside of prefering a high cadence is that I tend to suffer when the revs drop below 70rpm and I'm trying to deliver power, i.e. uphill on a road bike! I'm starting to cure this but building leg strength (a combo of spinning at the gym and hilly climbs) and have found new speed on and off-road as a result. :D

I agree with the-muffin-man. The whole planning system is based on the idea that you have to seek permission BEFORE carrying out any work. If you choose to ignore this and commence work without permission you stand the very real risk of being refused permission and even being made to reverse any work carried out without permission. Planning laws are there to protect the environment for all and may sometimes be at odds with the wishes of individual landowners.

Sorry, just re-read your post. You already had permission, but council depts not talking to each other. Nightmare!

Good luck, I hope it all works out for you!

Having had a dodgy back for years (I've lost track of the £1000s I've spent on osteopaths etc!?) I've have the opportunity to put my back out in many different ways.

Lamest was squatting down to pick up a coffee from the stage floor (I used to work in theatre) only for my back to go as I reached the bottom of the squat. Collapsed in agony out of sight of anyone else. Once I'd got someone's attention I ended up being stretchered out to an ambulance up a one storey high ramp (the stage was lower than the street outside). Colleagues helpfully taking the piss out of me trying to get me to laugh, which was easy as I was on nitrous oxide, without thought for the pain that the laughing was causing me. Bu**ers!

Most MTB related was bunny-hopping a big puddle. The effort caused my back to go into spasm in mid-aim. Landed in a heap. Thankfully I was out with my sister on that occasion so had someone to look after me.

There's loads more but they're the headliners. The lesson should be to look after your back! Don't just dismiss back pain as something that will go away. If back pain starts to become a regular feature of your life seek assistance. I'd recommend a combination of 30% osteopathy to 70% sports massage. Be prepared to spend whatever it takes even if it does seem ridiculously expensive. If you do not get things sorted sooner rather than later then the eventual bill and impact on your life may be much greater!

A final positive note is that exercise, especially biking, continues to be very beneficial for the health of my back. :-)

I was re-reading what I'd first written and just wanted to clarify one point. I said that the clones were

not… …to be used in turn for further breading.

. I should not have suggested that they would never be used to breed from as this will definitely happen. However, I was trying to distinguish between the use of breeding to produce a better beast vs the reproduction of a single type of very high quality beast. From what I've hard it seems that the emphasis with the current use of cloning in beef is for the mass reproduction of high quality beasts.

Hi Peyote, the other part of my point is that I simply do not believe that the death and abnormality rate for calves produced by these cloning methods is anything like what a_a has suggested. I too am from a farming background and a death/deformity rate of anything like 1/3rd would be horrific and no farmer would want to be involved in it. The farmer in Scotland had a herd of 92 healthy heifers in his fields, no suggestions of high death rates or deformities. I suspect that a_a is predisposed to assume the worst of farmers and the farming industry and that a_a's arguments, whilst appearing based in fact, are in fact no more than conjecture.

Unless a_a can provide direct proof that there is actually a problem with this method of food production I'll continue to assume that a_a has put the urge to get in a froth about animal rights ahead of the facts. And please don't assume that I don't care about animal rights, I do.

I heard a very interesting R4 program called "The Report"[/url] about this last night. Well worth a listen.

I think that there is a danger of this thread confusing cloning with gene manipulation. The aim of cloning, as GEDA pointed out, is to be able to recreate, many times over, a single prize winning beast. In this way when breeders produce a particularly high quality beast that single animal can be recreated many times over. The aim of this is to produce many beasts of the highest quality for consumption, not for them to be used in turn for further breading.

It was notable that the R4 program did not mention at all any issues relating to animal welfare caused by deformities. Given that it did not shy away from any of the other tough questions needed to be asked was this a journalistic failure or was it because there simply is not a problem of the scale suggested by a_a?

a_a, do you have proof that this practice does cause the animal welfare issues you suggest are likely or are you just jumping to conclusions based on the type of generic cloning info available you've quoted from the web? I'm not having a go, I'm genuinely interested to know. In this thread you've yet to back up these suggestion with hard facts or direct examples.

Well, just in case anyone ever needs the answer to the question I posed, yes, a 113mm BB fits just fine. In fact, if anything, the chainline seems improved and solves the long running problem I used to have where the front mech used to foul the chain in quite a few of the gears which no amount of fettling could cure.

So, in summary, HURRAH! Problem solved.

Hi markenduro,

It's an FSA Orbit II. Thanks for the suggestion though.