road.cc live blog: Documentary on why cyclists ‘enjoy’ suffering on YouTube, study finds dangerous noise levels in spin studios, near miss cyclist pulls giant knife on driver in Croydon, Team Sky reveal Ocean Rescue TDF kit (+ more)
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Fri, Jun 01, 2018 13:58
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Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn’t especially like cake.
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Latest Comments
wtjs 12 hours ago
@FionaJJ These officers deployed next-level stupidity, and it must be difficult for the police to find people this dim. It doesn't even need rolling-roads or whatever, just a reputable bike computer on a quickly changed mount for the difficult cases where a proper EAPC has been modded, although you would need to look hard in Lancashire to find a police officer who knows how to make a pedal cycle go. Most illegal electric motorbikes are immediately obvious, not least because the crim is wearing a face mask. I saw an obvious one tonight coming out of Garstang Sainsbury's, not pedalling but without a face mask because everybody knows that the police only come into the town to hide away in the police station 200 yards away.
bikeman01 13 hours ago
Gustav Gullholm.. that's not a good look mate
mdavidford 15 hours ago
@Chris RideFar I think what you meant to say was "REMOVE this and put it on PODCAST CC".
jaymack 17 hours ago
As Mary Whitehouse never said - one doesn't have to read the article if one doesn't want to read about an off-road bicycle.
Rendel Harris 18 hours ago
@FionaJJ In London they're allowed to stop on single and double yellows to deliver packages or empty pillar boxes; in practice they take this as carte blanche to park wherever and whenever they want, such as this chap on the Brixton Road who pulled into the bus/cycle/motorcycle lane without indicating, as I approached at 20mph, to park on a red route, response to a remonstrance, "I suppose you never get post delivered do ya?"
FionaJJ 18 hours ago
@Rendel Harris We have a pavement parking ban, but around here at least, royal mail vans are already exempt, subject to certain caveats, such as allowing at least 1.5m, and only being stopped to do their work.
FionaJJ 18 hours ago
It was already embarrassing for the police that they made such a mess of their attempt to determine whether a bike was legal or not, but I had assumed it was a group of well intentioned, but under-trained officers acting on their own initiative, having spotted something they thought looked not quite right. I'm now discovering this was a planned activity, something sufficiently organised to have been given a name - Operation FRISLEN, designed specifically to identify and remove illegal e-bikes and scooters. It's apparent that the officers were sent out without adequate training, never mind the kind of equipment that should be used for this sort of work. I'm not saying they always need specialist equipment to spot all illegal bikes, but at least if they'd been given a demonstration with that equipment, they'd have realised why their approach was not going to end well.
Geoff Ingram 20 hours ago
Have put drop bars on a 2001 B1 mtb, a 2007 stumpy hardtail and a 2010 stumpy full suss. In all cases fairly basic conversións leaving gearing and wheels broadly the same and concentrating on correct positioning of bars and fit. Oddly, with all 3 I was happy with the result when recently done, but after a few months found that the extra speed on easy trails was more than offset by the lack of ability (probably mine) on tougher routes and finally preferred flat bar with slammed and inverted stem as best overall compromise. Good fun playing around, though.
mark1a 20 hours ago
The photos in this review look they are for a different bag?
mattw 22 hours ago
This is a strange reactionary knee jerk overall. But what is this "are essentially motorbikes in disguise" waffle? "One letter claimed that high-powered electric ‘e-bikes’ were “essentially motorbikes” in disguise, with many being used without lights, helmets, or any hi-vis clothing." Surely, they simply ARE motorbikes?
23 thoughts on “road.cc live blog: Documentary on why cyclists ‘enjoy’ suffering on YouTube, study finds dangerous noise levels in spin studios, near miss cyclist pulls giant knife on driver in Croydon, Team Sky reveal Ocean Rescue TDF kit (+ more)”
Team Sky in Ocean Rescue kit?
Team Sky in Ocean Rescue kit? Sounds a bit fishy to me.
Seriously though, Sky TV have been pushing a campaign against single use plastics for a good year or more before it became The Thing to be concerned about on BBC and other media outlets.
Be interesting to see how this impacts plastics in cycling/sport generally … SIS gel sachets for instance.
Maybe they could promote the
Maybe they could promote the recycling of used inhalers too
dreamlx10 wrote:
You so furnney
StoopidUserName wrote:
Maybe they could promote the recycling of used inhalers too
— StoopidUserName You so furnney— dreamlx10
Stoopid by name stoopid by nature
Looks like Sky are going to
Looks like Sky are going to have a whale of a time at the TdF this year!
They are clearly trying to
Team Sky are clearly trying to make a big marketing win out of stuff they could/should be doing anyway, but still, I applaud them for doing those things.
Maybe something they should be sorting though is getting their riders to stop discarding bottles a rubbish while riding. Throwing away bottles to roadside spectators, where the bottles will definately get picked up is one thing, but doing it where there’s nobody should be stopped, and chucking gel wrappers etc is not on and they should be required to hand them into the team car.
Maybe the organisers should sort out a bin on the back of a few of all motos that buzz around the race that the riders could deposite rubbish into?
I’d wear one of those jerseys too, so long as all the brand names have been taken off.
joules1975 wrote:
Is it really better than not bothering? The green special edition ones they wore in 2011 did nothing to help the rainforests. And it’s all a bit hypocritial coming from the pro peloton’s spendiest team* and likely the biggest consumer of natural resources, especially fossil fuels.
It’s all just greenwash / whalewash.
* the 2016 budget was £31 million. For 2 dozen blokes to ride their bikes with some other blokes following them around in cars.
Simon E wrote:
Not strictly true. Sure the jerseys didn’t do much but they were advertising something that did make a difference – not much of a difference maybe, but a difference is better than nothing.
https://rainforestrescue.sky.com/
I think that’s a little naive/short sighted. Yes it might be better for the environment if Sky didn’t exist (waits for people to come up with other reasons too), but if Sky aren’t there another team would be. Sky or whoever are not suddenly going to stop – there is clearly a demand for cycle races and they are simply helping to fill that demand. Therefore it’s important that they do something to mitigate the impact they have doing what they are doing.
Also, if suddenly cycling stopped, the riders and staff would go off and do other jobs and other things with their lives, which for all we know may have bigger environmental impacts.
So rather than thinking that anyone impacting on the enviroment should stop what they are doing, get realistic, realise that they are going to have an impact whatever they do, and applaud their efforts to reduce that impact.
Could they do more? Sure, loads, but you have to start somewhere and if enough people applaud them for the initial efforts they are more likely to do more.
This applies everwhere, not just to Team Sky.
Now you’re starting to sound jealous.
joules1975 wrote:
Bigger than running the massive Death Star bus plus the other vehicles, plane flights here, there and everywhere? And that’s not just to races but all year round. You’d need quite some job to match that for the 70-odd riders and staff; and the costs won’t include the sponsors, suppliers, liggers and whoever else is travelling too.
I’m sure lots of people find tokenism like this is more than adequate. I don’t. This whole “raising awareness” of a single environmental issue by multinationals without addressing any of their own impact in any way is a crock of shit. I hate to shatter any illusions but cutting out single-use plastics on the team bus is a start but it’s a nanomillilitre-sized drop in the ocean. Making another batch of jerseys may seem to be better than doing absolutely nothing (though I’m not sure how) but it’s nowhere near as good as genuinely making a difference. If you like their shade of greenwash that’s fine but it’s still greenwash. I prefer to wear the MCS Save Our Seas t-shirt from Rapanui.
* the 2016 budget was £31 million. For 2 dozen blokes to ride their bikes with some other blokes following them around in cars.— joules1975
Now you’re starting to sound jealous.
Ha ha, not in the slightest! For comparison AG2R spent 8 million Euros that year to do the same.
what about all the bidons
what about all the bidons that get thrown into the undergrowth/side of the road during a race. is old dave going to commit to somebody going round and collecting all of these aftera stage
thehill wrote:
All Elite bottles (the most common in the Pro peloton) are 100% biodegradable. They’re made of corn based ‘plastic’ rather than oil based. They’ve been this way for years. Even the caps are made of corn.
Ken Alog wrote:
Unfortunately the biodegradable credentials of corn starch plastics are at best limited. Firstly the ethics of growing crops to produce plastic rather than food is a questionable one. Secondly this material (PLA) will only Biodegrade in a Land Fill environment so any thrown in the hedge will not biodegrade as you have been lead to believe by the marketing department. Also i think you will find the FLY bottle that the pro teams use is made from a plastic composite and not corn starch and certainly will no biodegrade. So Sir Dave will need to send a clean up team to follow the race and pick up any bottles not taken by fans. Lets just hope they drive an electric van powered by electricity from renewable sources when they do!
Team Sky spurt all the stuff about plastics and saving the oceans but clearly do not consider that flying their riders around in privately chartered jets & helicoptors adding unnesssary air polution to the environment & wasting fossil fuels is a bad thing?
Ken Alog wrote:
With all due respect, that’s not true. They’re made of plastic pellets held together with 5% corn based oil (PLA) so in most respects they’re very very similar to ‘oil’ based products. They are 95% ‘oil based’ product.
‘Biodegradable’ from a marketing point of view does not mean that it breaks down into CO2 and H2O, as in ‘disappears’. Like many single use plastic bags, they are biodegradable because they break down from their bag form into plastic micro pellets which then enter the ecosystem. Many of these things have to go into a commercial composting system (I’ve tried putting ‘compostable’ coffee cups and lids into my compost at home, and they’re still there a year later, unchanged) to degrade to their constituent parts, and actually commercial systems won’t allow them in.
Think about it, if they are going to decompose at the side of the road, they’ll also decompose on your bike, so either thy’er going to decompose / biodegrade / break down very very slowly (in which case they’re still ‘litter’) or only under very specific circumstances, and that is what the real case is. Coffee cups can be advertised as compostable, but in reality the fibres they are made of are, but in effect when those fibres are coated in wax and made into a cup, they aren’t.
So, no, those bottles thrown aside, though marketed as 100% biodegradable are to all intents and purposes, and in the majority of their uses, non-biodegradable, so should be taken home and recycled where possible (they’re not recyclable from a commercial perspectiove, so end up in landfill when put in re-cycling), or (my preference) sent back to the manufacturers for them to live up to their claims.
I know it’s subjective, but
I know it’s subjective, but that Sky jersey looks terrible. I applaud the cause, but couldn’t they have done a bit better with the design?
S_P_A_C_E_M_A_N wrote:
Agree on the front, but the back will look ace from a helicopter shot.
Doesn’t Nibali have the
Doesn’t Nibali have the copyright on large oceanic predators?
At the risk of standing up
At the risk of standing up for the evil Newscorp and the hated Sky team, as Cygnus says, they did start talking about the plastics issue before the BBC did. Their rainforest rescue campaign from 2009 onwards with WWF has allegedly helped save trees. They also claim to be carbon neutral as a company.
None of this is of course is entirely altruistic, or even at all. But are we so cynical to say that all corporate social responsibility is bad because it is used as marketing? I think there’s a need for pragmatism surely.
Don’t assume that all companies designated as ‘charities’, are altruistic organisations set up to benefit society either. Many operate as competitors to the private corporations, using tax break privlidges to be more competitve and boost profits and bonuses for their staff.
Regarding the noise in spin
Regarding the noise in spin studios, it’s not just them. We used to play table tennis in the same hall as a dance fitness class, and we had to give up because of the noise; we literally couldn’t hear each other shouting the score because of the incredibly loud music. I did wonder at the time about the effect on people and thought about calling in H&S, after all, it is a work place.
Nice ass moustache Monsieur
Nice ass moustache Monsieur Froome.
Those nails in the Danish
Those nails in the Danish mountain bike trails are pure malevolence. Somebody went to great lengths to make those, and bury them in the track to blend in.
‘ZOMBIE KNIFE WIELDING
‘ZOMBIE KNIFE WIELDING CYCLIST’ now on ITV News at 10.
Immediately followed by news of a hit and run on Europa Way in Trafford Park. No cycling angle but I’ve seen those muppets doing donuts when I am out doing some laps on the quiet industrial roads there and steered clear of them. It’s weird when the news all seems to relate to you somehow.
You ain’t no weight weeny,
“You ain’t no weight weeny, bro. You ain’t no weight weeny.”
Woldsman wrote:
And… he’s gone full roadie. Holes in the blade to save weight. Handle’s probably high modulus carbon too.