bikemonster

What do you weigh? That might influence your choices. Do you fancy yourself on the steeps or on the flats? If you want lighter, than aero are really out, because light and aero are mutually exclusive unless you want to get very spendy. If you aren't planning on going solo on the flats, then you won't get much benefit from aero. And I speak here as one who has elevated wheelsucking to an art form.

Shirley that deserves its own thread? Possibly its own forum? B)

'Kin hell! We need more of the likes of you over on the roadie side!

When the Internet was all just trees....

Wait! I know you! You're Uri Geller!!!!!

Deep sections for the front wheel, disks for the two rears. And tubbies, of course. And naturally, hand-sewn Andre Dugast silk tubulars.

Bit of an over-reaction don't you think? Couldn't you have just given her a stiff talking to? B)

Fifth birthday is the bike birthday. I am biased because that was when I got my first "two wheeler", and when son of bikemonster got his. Small persons do need a certain amount of co-ordination, survival instinct and hand strength for cable brakes. To help you get there, Giant make an awesome, indestructible tricycle...which is great for a third birthday prezzie.

There can be no better advice than that given by Eddy Merckx: "Ride your bike. Lots." As long as you are a weekend warrior, you don't need a "training programme". Ride with others. Mostly, just ride. Challenge each other to reach the tops of hills first, challenge each other to get to nominated road signs first. Ride your bike, have fun and fitness will follow. You're in the W Cape, so do PPA funrides races and set yourself goals. Aim to finish with your start group. Aim to finish in the top half of your start group. Aim to help set the pace in your start group. Aim to get seeded into the next start group. Ride your bike, enjoy it (so that you want to ride your bike even more) and everything will look after itself.

Cramping? Now we're off on a different topic, but it's all interesting. When last I tried to read around the topic of cramping, there seemed to be some doubt out there about what is acshly going on when a person cramps. Not sure if that's true, or if it has changed since, but in my experience (alarm bells: anecdotal evidence, survey size = 1) unless I train at the kind intensity and distance that I intend to race at, I am susceptible to cramp. I am not very susceptible to cramp, and it's only been an issue for me when I have trained with too-short rides, even if I have done plenty of them, or too-gentle rides, even if they have been long rides. Some more detail, which I left out, was that I use slightly watery Game for my shorter (read 1-2 hour) training rides, and over those distances, cramping is not an issue. The only reason I don't use water for those short rides is that if I train hard, I sometimes get back feeling "flat". To my mind, the watered down Game is providing enough carbohydrate to keep me going. Psychological? Possibly, but it's a routine that I've found works for me. My approach has been to "save" the energy gels for race days. Partly because I'm a tight-wad and partly because I figure if I put something extra in the tank on race days, I will be able to go a little bit faster than I do when I'm training. On long (2-4 hour) training rides I use USN powdered jungle juice and eat a banana or two. Getting back to your comments re: training the body to utilise fat resources, my experience (see alarm bells above) gels with what you say. Over the summer, as I get fitter, I find I am better able to ride longer with less on the bike refuelling.

You're really Clark Kent, aren't you?

The fabled jungle trails of Darkest Luxembourg! Be careful the natives don't catch you and turn you into gromperekichelcher. If you do get caught, try and barter your freedom with shiny glass beads.

EFA

And wrapping magnets around your car's fuel line might make your car faster/more economical. So you ought to do that too. And in other news, despite the emails you received earlier this morning, you have not won the lottery, and Microsoft does not want to give you money. No need to thank.

More than a ton? More than 2.7kg of sugar a day? I'm not on a crusade against your product, and like others, I've enjoyed reading what you have to say, but this particular stat just does not stack up. As I'm now participating in this thread, let me ask a question: I train on a watered down version of Game sports drink. Largely because it's cheap and pleasant tasting. As it's watered down, I guess it's a hypotonic solution. I realise that hyper/iso/hypo-tonic is a different concept to glycaemic index, but how does my approach differ, physiologically, from using 32GI? Apologies if this has been covered elsewhere on the Hub.

Don't tell me...the same guy who was selling it to you "tested" it on you. Well there's some quality science right there! But hey, you're even braver than the OP.

Only one possible reason why a guy would wear "a white bicycling pant", and it's the same as why he would wear a pair of knicks that have been washed to a lovely, sheer, translucence.... he wants a new boyfriend!

Lots of opinions, yes. Positive research findings? Not so much. Popcorn, anyone?

GT1's statement was ridiculed, and I believe correctly, because he attributed his bike's great ride to the use of carbon, and not to the design. I don't doubt that the bike in question has a great ride, nor that it is made of carbon, but the link between the two is very far from established. When we ride a bike, frame material is just one of the inputs into what we feel. Unless all other variables have been removed, what you are feeling is "the bike", and not the frame material.

Let's all take a deep breath and go back a step. Dummies are being spat because GT1 said "Covie I ride a carbon mountain bike, but not for weight saving, the ride is a lot nicer than aluminium." Covie and I then pointed out that this kind of blanket statement was a massive oversimplification. And nothing that has been put forward since, despite some sarcasm and use of polysyllabic verbiage has offered a coherent contradiction. That is all.

On two occasions I've given tubes to fcukwits who've been out without carrying so much as a spare and a pump. WTF? How unprepared is that? In both cases I've instructed the recipient to donate twice the cost of a replacement tube to the charity of their choice...I only hope that they did so. There are some weird people out there...fortunately we're all OK!

Sorry, but consumer reviews are rotten, for a number of reasons. The product may be great, or it may be lousy, but stop and think about what you get when you look at online consumer reviews: 1. Many of the people on there are reviewing something that they have bought. That gives them a strong incentive to be happy about it, after all they parted with their hard-earned to get it. 2. Some of the people on there have an axe to grind. Either they were poorly treated in the store they bought from, perhaps they have a pathological hatred of the company's product, or some other reason (perhaps "reason") to p!ss all over the product. 3. Are these people qualified to carry out a review at all. What are they comparing the product with? 4. What kind of test protocol was observed? Consumer reviews may give some rough idea of how a product performs, but they are far from the best way to find out how good a product really is. And finally...we're talking chain lube here folks. For one thing it seems to be more like religion than, well, religion the way Hubbers argue about it. For another, it's geezly chain lube. The very worst chain lube won't cause your bike to disintegrate, and the very best chain lube won't get Angelina Jolie to give you a blow job. All chain lubes will lube your chain. Some will smell nice, some will be sticky and gloopy. If you don't like a chain lube, give the rest of the bottle away and try another. If the chain lube you're buying is so expensive that you don't feel you can laugh it off after one use, then you're spending too much on chain lube! Any questions?

...and then the dwarf arrived, leading the giraffe on a chain. It all made perfect sense until the disco-dancing lesbians beat him to death with a Camelbak that the undertaker had filled with heavy water. (Hello mate!)

Excellent! I'm getting a mental picture Steven69 and covie dishing out advice from the depths of their own private pharmaceutical hazes by randomly rolling their foreheads around on the keyboard.

In the last few weeks there was somebody on here selling a breathing exerciser. For most peeps it looked like a bunch of hooey to me, basically it was snorkel mouthpiece with a variable airflow restrictor. The idea being that it worked the diagram and the pentecostal mussels. It may offer some benefit to you. This advice is worth exactly what you paid for it!