[notfastenough]

£800 for custom Ti ?! I’ve
£800 for custom Ti ?! I’ve been drooling over an Enigma Equinox (double the money) for fast riding, but surely that price is too good to be true?

[notfastenough]

Welcome to the forum.
Welcome to the forum. Mobydick has a good point, bike sizing/position might well be the issue.

We can’t see what you look like on a bike, but is your upper body moving much, your shoulders swaying for example? If you lack stability/strength in your core, then higher cadence will cause you to ‘bounce’ on the saddle, and this may make you fatigue sooner.

[notfastenough]

Well I’m in the gym this
Well I’m in the gym this afternoon so will look into the S&C aspect. I have a goals/personalisation appointment on saturday morning, but will check the guys quals. Thanks everyone.

[notfastenough]

That’s quite interesting from
That’s quite interesting from a pure weightlifting perspective. I’m unsure if we’re thinking of ‘strength’ differently though. To clarify, I want to be a better bike rider – on hilly peak district and flattish Cheshire courses of around 60 miles each, I want to achieve higher average speeds, be faster on the long climbs and to regain my top end speed for pulling the group along quickly on the flat.

So, my week for the winter looks as follows:
Monday – commute, easy spin
Tuesday – commute, repeated short hard efforts (circa 30-60 seconds each)
Wednesday – rest
Thursday – 2 hour ride in the morning, 1 hour weights and core in the evening
Friday – rest
Saturday – Wattbike* session followed by weights and core
Sunday – club run, circa 4 hours/100km-ish

*Every 12 weeks I intend to record my FTP :& , which will be the key metric for measuring my overall improvement. Other weeks will be split between climbing, intervals and technique sessions.

So from what I can see (happy to be corrected!), the gym work looks like:
Squats – 3 x 20
Deadlifts – 3 x 20
Curls – 3 x 20
Calf raises 3 x 20

Plus I can use a bunch of the upper body kit to avoid looking like popeye-legs/oliveoil-arms.

[notfastenough]

Well initially I’m looking to
Well initially I’m looking to be further up the group on long climbs, and taking longer turns on the front on the fast run home or on the chaingang. If I feel up to racing, then I’ll work on explosive power in the spring.

@J90 – suppose I didn’t research it really, my dad showed me how to use the gym/weights kit that he bought, but this was before the internet, and I was just getting fit for joining the forces.

Family routines etc mean that I’m in the gym anyway, so I’ll make the most of it, and supplement with bodyweight exercises at home.

Thanks all.

[notfastenough]

I don’t have one but there
I don’t have one but there are at least half a dozen in the club, all very well liked. I did ride one lad’s R872 or Stealth or whatever it’s called, it was stiff and fast, not that comfortable but you could always just let a few psi out of the tyres, choose well-padded bar tape and maybe a clever seat post like the Canyon VCLS 2.0.

[notfastenough]

Ok, slight change in routine.
Ok, slight change in routine. My mum has kindly offered to babysit one evening a week which provides an extra gym session without being too close to Sunday morning rides. So I’m going to use that for a leg weights session. I’ll have to supplement with further exercises at home.

One of the instructors in the gym was talking about 5 reps at a weight where I cannot manage a 6th rep. Wouldn’t that result in gaining weight as well though? Any suggestions for reps/sets?

@J90 – sorry, what are compound exercises?

(I used to do loads of weight training as a teenager, but all the jargon has changed since then!)

[notfastenough]

@Scrufftie – indeed, I quite
@Scrufftie – indeed, I quite liked the idea of a pair of victory 30’s, and the branding would suit my Trek Madone quite well. However, looking around online there’s a lot of talk about lack of stiffness, which is quite high on my list of priorities.

@abudhabichris – I can only see them for $900 a pair – as turboprannet says, that sounds like £300 per wheel?

@Drmatthewhardy – perhaps I could have worded my post better, I agree entirely that weight isn’t everything. There’s others I could get that are lighter, but having felt the difference when losing 5kg of body weight (decent, but it’s hardly night and day), I can’t see that losing a few hundred grams more (and sacrificing stiffness) is worth bothering with.

@The_kaner – nice! I quite the look of Swiss Side, although I fancy a slighter deeper rim.

@Olic – thanks for getting back to me. I PMed someone else who did have them switched on but he didn’t receive it either, so I’m not sure it makes much difference anyway. By anodising, you just mean that you were left with a silver brake track right? Takes me back to my Mavic Open 4 CD SUPs in the 90’s!

Do you find the hubs good? I ask because while noticing that ordering seems to be a faff (they’re ramping up for another batch now apparently), I do note that the rims themselves are in stock, and a couple of forum threads questioning the hubs. So I’m wondering:
Rims £100 (plus duties? Don’t know how much)
Sapim cx-ray spokes x 44 £88

Thoughts?

Cheers for the contributions everyone.

That would leave me having to spend more for hubs, skewers and build cost (I’m not that skilled!), but it’s an option.

[notfastenough]

I suppose there’s 3 things
I suppose there’s 3 things that could be ‘improved’:

You could have taken primary position in the middle of the lane. It doesn’t sound like this would have made any difference though, since the point of doing this is to make the driver behind realise that they need to move across the white line to pass you safely rather than just squeezing through a gap with you on the left, but since he left plenty of room and was over the white line, it’s arguably irrelevant.

The truck driver could have either waited for a big gap to pass, or given that he pulled over just up the road, just waited behind you.

Once the truck driver had pulled out, the car driver should have slowed down. You know that thing where they keep their speed up while getting worried about the gap? That’s what he did, then adrenaline and deflection of responsibility made him blame you.

Put it another way, the reverse happened to me recently. I’m doing about 30-ish on a long gentle descent, there’s a queue of oncoming traffic led by a car towing a caravan. Then a BMW coupe being driven by a tool pulls out, floors it, gets past a few cars (but not to the front), before just bullying his way into a gap that wasn’t there (otherwise I get wiped out), to the annoyance/alarm of the driver behind him. Now as it happens, I had braked and pulled to the side (while shouting ‘cock’! 😀 ) to avoid an accident, but he thankfully he pulled in anyway. Was that the caravan-towing drivers fault for ‘holding up the traffic’? Nope. They are entitled to tow, just as you are entitled to ride, and different vehicles have different speeds. The beemer driver was impatient, and had I continued unabated and with no regard for defensive riding, it would also have been my fault if/when the beemer and I collided. (im)Patience is the key here.

[notfastenough]

Sidi 700c wrote:Dont like

Sidi 700c wrote:

Dont like getting sprayed by chippings as the cars wizz by you? I dont either so i am prone to taking a handful these days and throw them at the offenders if they hurt me.

I am well prepared with a martial arts background and will make them eat the chippings if they get lippy!

So it’s ok for you to escalate the situation, but if they do it, they get smashed up? I wonder what your Sensei/Sifu would say about this…

[notfastenough]

KiwiMike wrote:Scoob_84

KiwiMike wrote:

Scoob_84 wrote:

Both my bikes run 105 (5800) and the difference in the performance between the two was huge. The newer of the two group sets shifted like a dog whist the older set was light as a feather. If you were blind tested you’d think they were different groupsets.

The only difference between the two was that i was using 2 year old jagwire cable outers on the new groupset whilst the older set was set up with brand new cable outers.

THIS.

Swap out your cables every 1-2000km. It’s £10 worth of hardwear* and 20 minutes, max. for a vastly improved experience.

* a lot less if you buy in bulk.

Are you just referring to swapping the inners though? Swapping the outers necessitates new bar tape and the time to fit, surely?

[notfastenough]

Jif wrote:General advice

Jif wrote:

General advice tends to be to try and keep your cadence above 80, too low puts the strain on your muscles and joints and too high wastes energy. I find around 90 works for me and allows me to keep going for longer.

It did take a few rides to get used to 90 as upping your cadence does work your cardiovascular system more. Experiment with a few different pedalling speeds and see which one suits you.

I think the other aspect is that the cardiovascular system tends to recover more quickly than the legs. My legs feel shredded after a hard ride, suspect I could use a slightly higher cadence myself.

[notfastenough]

andyp wrote:The above tips

andyp wrote:

The above tips are great.
As with any other clothing, don’t wear the same thing day after day. 2 pairs of gloves, alternating day by day is the way forward. As with shoes – give ’em time to dry. And hand hygiene helps, obv.

Ideally with gloves, though, wear for one day then wash them, using the second pair on day 2. If you get in from a ride, stick gloves on radiator ready to use the next day, all those lovely bugs on the snot wiping area will sit and multiply in the warmth and make you proper sick in no time. Cue endless colds.

Alternative to washing daily is to give them a quick squirt with alcohol hand sanitising spray before bunging them on the rad…

Ooh, it’s like the WI in here! 😀 Handy tip, that. Most of my kit goes straight in the wash, but I’m not very good at including gloves every time.

[notfastenough]

stumps wrote:I think the

stumps wrote:

I think the confusion here is that when someone captures an incident on a helmet cam or similar they download it and hand it over to the Police. This leaves it open to the defence saying it has been altered / edited from the original.

If you hand over the helmet cam or body cam etc to the Police they can get it downloaded straight from the machine and it becomes an exhibit.

I wondered about this, because years ago I worked on a design for a system that would archive emails for years. It burned them to DVDs in a massive jukebox (how quaint!), and one of the selling points was the ‘non-repuidation’ (tamper-proof) offered by the use of write-once media, which was apparely required in order to be admissable in court in the case of employee disputes etc. Fast-forward to today and it seems (at least from the media etc) that footage of crime is generally accepted as being what it purports to be.

[notfastenough]

joemmo wrote: it will remove

joemmo wrote:

it will remove the smell of milky baby sick from carpet

Well I’m finding out all sorts of relevant uses for this today! 😀

[Author]

Replies