Andymann

The other thing of course which I wondered about, is the ethical dilemma of the Spraypainter - from what I have read here Bogus seems like a very straight up and down kind of guy - so would he (or any other painter) even consider painting a unbranded frame in Bianchi, or any other Manufactures name for that matter.

Seeing as we are talking frame resprays, I have a question which I'd like opinion on - my very first proper MTB was a Bianchi Julian Absalom replica. Loved that bike and it's paintjob and rode it until the frame cracked where it was replaced with a Giant XTC frame. I now ride a blank carbon frame from China and would love to have it sprayed - in the old Bianchi colours - including the name. Part of me says that seeing as it's a 29er and the old Bianchi only ever came out in 26er everyone would know it's not genuine so it should be fine, but there's still a nagging feeling that it's not quite the right thing to do.... Comments?

I've been a Rossi fan for many years but I think it is time for him to move on. If he is really desperate get another Title he could try WSBK - Biaggi has one which probably irks him more than being passed by Brad on a KTM....

Knowing what we know about ancient Egypt and cats and the afterlife, I wouldn't be surprised if that cat actually is Gollum.......

I agree - I desperately wanted a 308 and did all the research so that I knew what to look for when I found one. Eventually I did - they were going for around R250K back in the early 2000's which was about R50k more than a Golf4 GTi so off I went for a test drive. Suffice to say that I opted for a new Golf- the GTi would have blown it into the weeds. And it could take my Bianchi in the back too. Sadly the Golf would not be worth R600k+ today though

I saw an article where Vettel has just bought Mansells old Williams. Must be so cool having the resources (and the skill) to own an old F1 car. I wonder if he will take it for blasts around the track. If he does, he's probably going to wish he had that car instead of the London Bus he drives now.

There was even a crossover in the last season where Hawaii Five-O helped the new Magnum solve a case and then the next episode Magnum helped rescue some of the Five-O characters. But not enough to get me to start watching Woke Magnum

They did that with Hawaii Five-0 - Steve McGarret was the son of the original Steve McGarret - they even had some flashbacks with original episodes, with the remake picking up on 30yo cold cases from his dad's era. On the odd occasion Steve Jnr drove his Dad's car from the original series which was also cool. The wife and I were a big fan of the new series, although towards the end it also started getting a bit far fetched and lame.

Just seeing those wheels has made my fingers hurt - I spent a weekend refurbishing mine with Autosol and it took my blisters ages to recover....

Crazy Fool!

One of the guys at work here also married his step-sister. We give him endless *** - especially as he lives in Krugersdorp. Best part is he also used to be a Rugby ref so he reckons the players used to really wind him up!

So must give credit where its due - one thing I have become aware of is that while the shoes did give me blisters, when I upped my running mileage with my previous brand I always developed really bad sciatic nerve pain. I could manage it with stretching and a bit of core, but I always knew I was upping my km's when I got out of my car after sitting in traffic for an hour and my back lower leg was almost numb. With the Arahi's this hasn't happened - it might be a coincidence, but I'm up to 40km a week now and still no pain so I can only think this is attributed to the extra support in the arch. So with this in mind I went to the Hoka warehouse yesterday and had a brilliant chat with the guys there. Bought another pair or Arahi's but this time with a different inner sole which we hope will solve the blister problem. Makes a real difference when you deal with someone who believes in their brand and actually goes our of their way to try and assist with a solution.

I must be honest I thought that too about the BMW GS310 - it just didn't give me that BMW quality feel - It certainly looked the part but there was something I just couldn't put my finger on. I felt something similar then we brought in the little YZF150 from India - lots of steel parts painted silver to look like Aluminium castings.....

While we're at it... https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x752gdf

Then you will love this.... https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7ht9lb

So you NZ dwellers - isn't it crazy expensive to run a bike in NZ? - I have a good school friend who lives in CHC and he used to have a CBR500 which he rode on the weekends. Last time I spoke to him he said he sold it because it was waaaay to expensive to licence and insure - something close to the equivalent of R10000 per year he said. I speak under correction but he was saying that because the NZ Government sees motorcycling as a high risk which could cost a lot in medical fees if you have an accident, they make it really expensive to do.

Interestingly enough we are experimenting a bit with Power vs. HR vs. Cadence curves of a group of her athletes to see if there is a sweet spot where an individual's cadence might naturally settle - and use this as the base - but it's all a bit experimental right now. Ideal time to play though because with the lockdown there are no goal races so we can afford to try some new ideas.

I've actually had that discussion with her pre-zwift when I was doing my workouts built on the TACX software and it pretty much comes down to getting a feel of your body - after a few months of training I had a pretty good idea that if she said I needed to ride at 60-70% FTP that would be on 2%, 70-80% was 3% and above 80% was 4%, and all of those were at an intensity which was very close to what it should be. I initially tried to keep my HR and Power in the same zones by changing Cadence and Gradient but it became almost impossible to balance, and given that we were basing my program on Power, I opted to use Power as the first metric. I'll chat to her again, but I'm pretty sure she's going to say the same thing.

Ok some feedback from the coach - she says there is definitely a time to use ERG mode - usually after a tough 3 or 4 week training block where your legs are fatigued and you might also be a bit mentally tired, or if you have just moved up to a new FTP value and you need to get used to the higher intensity. She would then recommend it. But for day-to-day training blocks she reiterated again that it makes you a bit lazy and you tend to forget how to change gears when it comes to riding IRL.

I think it was more about the guys forgetting how to ride a race in real life - she would set them intervals and they would program the trainer using ERG and then just sit in one gear while the trainer did all the work - come race day and they would forget that they had an extra 9 or 10 gears to play with. I'll chat to her tonight and get her to refresh my memory why, but I remember it was a few of her athletes who were of the first on Wahoo Kickrs after using normal dumb trainers and their goal races were very disappointing.

I recently did the whole investigation thing because my old TACX PC was not compatible with Zwift so I needed to upgrade it. I found an article which I thought was the most informative of all the ones I read ( https://zwiftinsider.com/zwift-pc-guide/) where they said putting in a hi-end graphics card was really not necessary as Zwift was more an interactive training platform than a gaming one. They recommended spending the money on extra memory and an SSD Drive - both which I did. Of all the things I changed the SSD drive made a massive difference.

Just from a coaching perspective my wife has had athletes who have trained solely in ERG mode and had shocking IRL races because the trainer was doing all the thinking for them and they had become lazy. So she has actually told all her Athletes that they are not allowed to train with ERG on especially if they are training for a big race.

Exactly the same situation with us - UID has made a world of difference.

I liked Herve Poncharal's informal interview too

I'm also happy to see Darryn managing to finish regularly now and not fall off as often. I've mentioned before that when both of them were racing Yamahas Rob Petersen regularly mentioned that Darryn was a lot faster than Brad. He's wilder that's for sure, but if he gets the right mentoring can you imagine how quick he will be.