I know what you mean. I’ve hardly been out on the road this year – a mixture of ice and high winds hasn’t been ideal. I do tend to mix it up on the roads, I’ll head out and deliberately keep in a low gear and spin or conversely keep in the big ring for an entire ride to encourage power. It does help in the latter case if you know how long a hill goes on for and what it’s rough profile is 8)

You’ll have a “natural” cadence, though it actually seems to be the cadence you’ve accustomed yourself to rather than one that’s hard wired in to your body. Find a section of road that you know and that you normally pedal in a big gear but drop down one gear and try and keep the same speed going. Practice is the only way you’ll change things.

The current thinking seems to be that Z2 & Z3 are fine as targets but for efforts you get better results by monitoring power due to things like HR lag. Unless you live in Holland then any road (or off-road) ride is going to have ups and downs, you try keeping in Z3 on a 8%, mile long downhill. OK that’s a slightly silly example but I’ve been out on a Z2 ride and come to a downhill that’s only a couple of hundred yards long and dropped out of the zone.

Perhaps work to power zones and post ride see how the HR zones match up – this should give you clues to your efficiency, i.e. if you are riding at your FTP but your HR is in zone 7 then something’s wrong or you are about to come down with an illness. Similarly if you are riding at FTP and your HR is in zone 2 then you probably want to retest.

The Joe Friel zones look very narrow to me and would be really hard to keep to.

I’ve used the Garmin (510) zones but I can’t remember the exact figures for them now but they are closer to the BC ones. Unless you are on a flat ride even these are quite hard to keep within.

Be useful to know for me as well.

I’ve the app on my iPad and it just sits on the bed to the side of the bike, so if I’m not looking at it then I can miss prompts or hints as to what to do. On the TR forums there’s a request for some form of beep/alarm so you know when a prompt is about to appear which would be useful. So long as I could hear it over the music 8)

Obelisk – http://www.trainerroad.com/cycling/workouts/5460-Obelisk- will help you get up to speed (sorry!) , birch http://www.trainerroad.com/cycling/workouts/5472-birch is slightly slower both have instructions and tips to help your cadence higher.

I’d add fifteen rpm to yours. Quite a few of the workouts do cadence drills but it’s not obvious which ones are best as you can’t filter for it.

It does get easier quite quickly

Until you’ve done a couple I think it’s hard to determine the effort you need to put in, I aimed at finishing the test even if I was perhaps slightly down on the result. Looking at the output, I managed to do the last minute of the second effort at around 300W, so yes there was definitely something left in the tank.

I take it that now you do the workouts and possibly adjust the level if you feel you can’t complete it, i.e. better to complete a workout at 90% or even 80% than not finish it at 100%.

tomd: I though vol 1 was aimed at long days in the saddle and vol 2 mainly shorter, more technical stuff? Some crossover obviously. Both good books and there aren’t many bad rides in them (Glen Garry excepted)

FFS! 8O 1st FTP test.

Hard work but I possibly could have gone a little harder in both 8 minute efforts as I felt I could have done another minute or so on the first and possibly 30 seconds on the last. FTP is now 218, at least I’ve got something now to work on. I think I’ve got the resistance level about right: the recovery periods were 80rpm in next to bottom gear and my efforts were in the middle of the block at just over 90rpm so I’ve got room to improve at the upper end.

I think I’ll stick with Sweet Spot Base Low Volume for my initial training plan, gives me the option of getting out at the weekend should the gales subside :roll:

One mistake I did make was not to check the pressure in the tyre before I began the session, oh well.

Just done Clyde as a test of resistance level 2 on the turbo which I think will suit me better as I’m in the lower-middle of the gear range for 90% FTP level. Just felt like a steady effort.

Mash the test out for your next session for a rough FTP value.

Gulp! :lol:

I’ll have a rest day tomorrow and go for it on Wednesday …

OK, just done my first TR workout – Birch. I was looking for something about 45mins in duration and that was a gentle introduction rather than a beasting. I need to get used to the system plus learn to spin a little quicker.

I’m using virtual power and took a guess at the resistance level to set the turbo to, I think I probably got it about right as I was hitting the power bands with a cadence of 85-95. I might try the next level up but I’m in the right ball park.

Right now I’m thinking that I’ll do a few more workouts before trying my first 8 minute test and commencing the Sweet Spot Base LV 1 plan. So can anyone suggest maybe four workouts that can lead me in to that? Ideally 45-60mins in duration.

Shoes are a personal thing, what fits one person won’t fit the next, one of the few things it isn’t worth buying via the interweb (unless you know the model and size is right for you). Go to your LBS and try a few on.

FWIW I’ve a pair of Shimano shoes for commuting/touring. No idea of model, fastens via three velcro straps.

This morning (against better judgement) we went for a ride at the head of Wharfedale. Conditions were testing to say the least :roll: After having had cold and wet feet on my previous rides I tried the following:

Coolmax socks covered by plastic bag (Morrisons’ very own freezer bags) with SealSkinz over the top. It worked pretty well. My feet did become wet though that was no different from the rest of me but they were, reasonably, warm. As martinhutch reckons – the knee length ones would be better.

Mulling over the problem in the bath (as you do) I reckon that my ideal winter setup for my lower half would be: full length bib tights with 3/4 waterproof baggies over the top; thin socks then plastic bags or vapour barrier socks then SealSkinz on my feet; then to stop water ingress from the top use full length gaiters the top of which should be overlapped by the lower part of the baggies. All that I need to figure out is a decent winter boot that I can attach the gaiters to.

Might be a bit warm for trail centres but for conditions like today it would be ideal.

Went for a ride in upper Wharfedale this morning – what started off as “interesting” soon became nasty and we binned the ride after 16Km. When the wind is stopping you coasting down a 15% slope it becomes a struggle. Add in increasingly heavy rain and sleet and it definitely wasn’t nice – the original route would have been another two hours *into* the wind and rain :? My hands were wet and increasingly cold despite having mountaineering gloves on.

Fortunately it was nearly opening time so we dried off a bit by the fire in the pub :D

On the plus side: socks then plastic bags then SealSkinz keep your feet warm if not totally dry in such conditions.

Ta. Setting up VP on the app it asks you which of the levels you are using so the above makes sense.

Do an FTP test as soon as you can so TR can ‘scale’ your intensity to suit!

That’s what I’m not looking forward to! :oops:

We’ve a Roomster 1.9tdi, had it for nearly six years now and it’s been great. Can get three adults and bikes inside.

Had one or two problems with the electric windows and the reversing sensors but the only mechanical problem was just before new year when one of the front coil springs broke but that can happen to any car. Done about 90,000 miles in it.

Not had oil leak from mine. Did the first oil change a little late – meant to be at 2000Km but I did it nearer 4K. The 11sp is much less tolerant of the indexing being off, I get occasional slipping but cleaning the cable line and re-indexing sorts it out.

deadkenny: Fair enough

I log my commutes but mark them as private – two reasons: 1. One individual in our club kept giving me kudos for riding in to and from work? 2. Marked as private they don’t count towards any of Strava’s challenges but you still get them in your personal weekly and yearly totals.

I’m all over the place on segment rankings and challenges. I’m top ten on a few segments with only local semi-pro riders above me, on others I’m nearly last though those often have rather long stationary times as either I don’t know where the segment ends or I’ve had a mechanical :P Generally I reckon on adding 50% to the KOM time and I’ll be in the top third. I’m approaching my 56th birthday so I don’t think it’s too bad. My 50% rule doesn’t apply to off-road descents, I’ll be double or triple the time as I’m a crap descender.

I believe that if you upgrade to a Premium account then you can also filter by age group – I wouldn’t be in the top ten then either as there’s some seriously fit old timers around.

The Monthly Training Series challenges are a bit boring really but those that are tied to events or races are more interesting: Ten days to climb the equivalent of the Tour’s mountain stages or similar.

I’ve a clutch mech on my hardtail with a NW chainring, not had the chain drop yet even when ragging down stuff in Grizedale last weekend. I replaced the chain (at 0.7% growth) a couple of weeks ago so last week was on a new chain.

On occasion I’ve run the setup with the clutch off due to knocking it when cleaning and not noticing and not had any chain drop.

Might be worth trying a new chain, assuming you haven’t gone past the 0.75% mark.

No one bike (or type of bike if you prefer) is going to be perfect for all styles of riding or even all riders, somewhere along the line you are going to have to compromise. Obviously some styles of bike are more suited to particular types of riding than others so if you have one bike it makes sense to pick one that is closely allied to your main type of riding, an extreme example would be having a rigid bike when you mainly ride downhill courses. Conversely having just a DH rig and you ride long distance ITTs isn’t particularly clever either.

Most riders (looking at Strava stats) ride at trail centres so a bike aimed at that type of riding makes sense, typically these days that equates to a medium travel FS. It doesn’t mean to say that other types of bike are no good for that usage but you have to make allowances and accept that some things aren’t going to be as easy or pleasant.

I don’t have a fat bike, never ridden one so can’t comment on their suitability, for the riding that I do a fat bike would overlap my existing bike’s usage/capabilities by quite a margin so it would be a curiosity/talking point as much as anything and I don’t think it would get the amount of riding it deserved. SWMBO wouldn’t let me have one anyway 8)

We’ve got the Ortliebs (or a very similar model), great bit of kit. Ours stood up to Hebridean downpours the other year.

What’s your brother’s intended use? How much kit is he wanting to cart about? A frame bag is fine for smaller and lighter stuff but if he’s intending to tour and camp then I reckon rack and panniers are the way to go. If he’s in to bikepacking then stuff like Wildcat gear http://www.wildcatgear.co.uk/ is probably more use.

Different styles of bike require different riding styles. If you have only ridden a FS for the last few years then a HT or FB is going to take some getting used to. It took about a month for me to get the technique dialled in when making the switch from FS to HT. Obviously if you ride FS, HT, FB and rigid in equal measure then you are going to (or should) have all the styles sorted.

deadkenny: easy to do, simply set up a “club”, it doesn’t have to be a real club just a name that people can “join” then invite others to join. You can then filter the league table to just members of that club. You do get the occasional individual joining a club for no other reason to be at the top of that leader board but you can spot them quite easily.

If you don’t want to create a club you can filter the challenges by “I’m following” so long as you aren’t following Team Sky then you are just comparing yourself against your mates.

The tools are there, just not particularly obvious or you have to think around the “problem”

Note that the Tour de France finish is on the far side of town on the way up to the ski lifts, there’s a short descent before you get to it though. There’s probably an official finish to the climb but I’m not sure where it is. The book “Mountain High” reckons at least 300 try the climb every day through the summer.

I’ve a Schmidt dynamo hub hooked up to a B&M Cyo front light on my commuter (complies with German motoring laws) along with a Moon comet on flashing mode (which doesn’t). The Comet is pointed downwards. On the rear I’ve a Moon comet in flash mode.

This setup is good enough for a commute that is 1/3rd canal towpath, 1/3rd lit urban roads and 1/3 unlit rural roads. MTB lights are *not* suitable for on road use as they don’t have diffusers or an appropriate beam pattern.

If Hope were making shoddy goods and pulling the wool over the customer’s eyes then they’d soon go out of business. Since they have seen near continuous growth suggests that this is not the case.

I’ve had one occasion to ring Hope about a “faulty” product: I’ve one of the early Vision 2 bike lights and about a year ago it would keep cutting out seemingly at random, I could then turn the unit back on and it would work OK for a varying amount of time before cutting out again. The unit was several years out of warranty so I rang Hope (on a Saturday):

“I’ve a faulty Vision 2 but not sure if it’s light or battery, how do I get it back to you?”

“How old is it?”

“About five years I think”

“Have a look down the end of the battery lead, is there a split across the internal pin?”

“Yes”

He then described what the problem was and how to fix it and avoid shorting the battery. Since then it’s worked fine and just as importantly I know how to deal with the problem should it arise again. Some firms would have said “Send it in, we’ll have a look at it and it’s a £50 standard fee plus parts”.

Customer service is usually the first thing to be cut when a firm is looking to cut costs. If Hope were having huge numbers of units being returned then they couldn’t afford to offer the service they do, it would bankrupt them. From that you can only assume that they have very few returns.

I’ve Hope hubs on two of my bikes, on the road bike I’ve done around 20,000Km, in 2 years no servicing and it’s are fine. On my hardtail I’ve done 1600Km in 9 months. Again no servicing and it’s fine.

The above is anecdotal evidence as is yours and both are essentially meaningless. Without knowing the number of freewheel hubs sold and the number of returns it’s not possible to know if the unit is fit for purpose or not. Even the best production facility will have a percentage of returns. Products have a MTBF (Mean Time Before Failure), it doesn’t mean that *every* single unit of that product will last that long and some will last a lot longer. If there were any systematic problem with the units then Hope would be issuing a recall.

With MTB products there’s also the difference a rider can make – we all know people who are for whatever reason hard on their gear while others hardly ever seem to break anything.

I think the western (Dunnerdale) side of WS is smoother than the eastern. The eastern is smooth from the top for about 200 metres then it’s increasingly rough though not overly so through the zig-zags then it’s smooth again until you get to the two rock gates, then it’s rubbly for a couple of hundred metres. Below the Dow Crag/Goats Water path junction (just above the rock gates) your biggest problem will be avoiding the walkers.

Not done the lower part of WS on the Duddon side but rode up from where the Stephenson’s Ground path joins just above the fell gate. This upper half is greening over so is unlikely to wash away now.

TR have a list of supported kit, some ANT+ sticks won’t work with iOS devices for example. Start at http://www.trainerroad.com/getting-started or ask on their help centre.

What makes a bike fast?

I found that if I took off those two metal ring/disk things bolted on to each wheel I went a lot quicker :lol:

From another thread (Solaris Yay or Nay) I wrote:

Yesterday (Sunday) there was a group of us riding round Grizedale Forest partly on the North Face trail, I was just about able to keep up with those on FS despite me being rubbish at downhill and having never been on it before.

I’m actually faster on the Solaris than I was on my old FS (2007 Marin Mt Vision).

At the moment I’ve no need for a FS (perhaps more to the point no room – there’s 8 bikes in the house!) and I suspect that if I did get one it wouldn’t get used much after the honeymoon period. I’d be more likely to get a singlespeed hardtail. Cost doesn’t have anything to do with it, if I wanted it I’d get a FS now but want and need are different things.

About ten years ago I drove over to the Lakes for a run round the Skiddaw leg of the Bob Graham Round. As I climbed upwards there were several deep snow drifts across the path. By the time I got to the summit of Skiddaw I was in cloud and it was blowing a hoolie. I looked in to the Back o’ Skiddaw to see a maelstrom of swirling snow and darkness, thought “sod it”, turned round and ran back down and drove back home. Five hours travel for an hour and a half’s running.

Now about riding/running/walking in the fells on your own (I left our solo climbing, my old favourite!)

Done lots of both. Apparently I’m still here to tell the tales :P

Used to nip out for a run round the Fairfield Horseshoe after work, sometimes with a solo of Westmorland’s Route on Dove Crag thrown in for good measure. Nighttime runs up the local fell were great fun.

From memory there’s a section in the Martin Moran book on navigating whilst skiing, similar to biking in that judging distance travelled, is really quite hard. Even with modern GPS units a map is still a very good idea (along with knowing how to read it) as it gives you a feel for the layout of the terrain. If visibility is reduced then you have to try and determine your position at any opportunity – the idea is to reduce the area of uncertainty – then look ahead and try and identify features that you can “tick off” as you pass them. If you don’t pass them then you have to relocate and try and figure out where you are.

Having a route card that has basic directions on it can be a help, you don’t need to have bearings down to the half degree, the nearest ten degrees will be good enough in most circumstances (I’m fully aware that there are locations where navigating on an exact bearing is desirable), easy to set on the compass and follow. The route card just needs directions like: “Track drops to col, junction take left”, nothing fancy but just enough.

+1 for contacting Stu at Dales Bike Centre, he built mine up for me, in fact he was so taken with my 1×10 setup he converted his own!

I tried a couple of bikes on demo then swung a leg over Stu’s bike and realised it was just right for me. Haven’t regretted it in the slightest. Run 120mm X-Fusions, 1×10 with Hope tRex, Hope wheels and dropper post. In theory I’m smack in the middle of the recommended medium size range but went for a large, feels right for me. I’ve also had paint chips/scrubbing issues so it might be a bad batch.

It’s my “go to” bike, so much so that I gave my FS to my nephew! Yesterday there was a group of us riding round Grizedale Forest partly on the North Face trail, I was just about able to keep up with those on FS despite me being rubbish at downhill and having never been on it before.

While it’s quite flattering at the moment I don’t think that’s why Strava have added this feature. I think it’s more about keeping people competitive. My wife and I went out for a steady ride this afternoon, I got 4 2015KOMs. None are better than my personal best for those segments, a couple are close (< 10 seconds) but one is 50% greater than my PB. One of the KOMs is just 4 seconds slower than my PB, if I knocked 2 seconds off my PB I’m top ten. My wife got 15 2015QOMs but also got two genuine top ten cups. Now at some point I’m going to get the “X has taken your KOM, go get ’em!” emails, so will it make me try harder? … what do you think?

An analogy with the old system would be turning up at the Olympics, winning the 1500 metres and because you didn’t beat the Olympic record you don’t get the gold medal. Listen to the commentary of a televised athletics meeting and you’ll often hear “X has done the fastest time in the world this year”, this is essentially the same. What I haven’t found yet is how to show the top ten for a particular year for a segment but it might need a premium account to see that.

Came across a graph that I hadn’t seen before: View a segment then click the “View full leaderboard” button at the bottom of the fastest times. You get a graph of all your attempts on that segment.

Create your route using whatever tool you prefer. Usually you can save this as a GPX file but turn-by-turn instructions aren’t created/saved in that format so you need to convert it to a TDX file. An on-line utility like bikeroutetoaster.com can do this for you.

Now that you have your TCX file you need to get it on to the unit. Plug it in to your computer and navigate to it using Explorer/Finder. You should find a folder in there called “New Files”, copy the TCX file to that folder. The next time you start the unit it will take your route.tcx file and convert it to route.fit and move it to the courses folder.

That’s it!

Here’s a Wikipedia list for you – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Waterfalls_of_Norway Yet another country with simply stunning scenery

Europe’s highest waterfall is a short walk from the top of Hvalfjordur.

It’s not even Iceland’s highest waterfall :-) Quite a few in Norway a lot, lot higher.

Iceland’s definitely on my bucket list, just looks amazing.