dexterdent

You will typically only get anecdotal responses here, very few people have tried enough combos enough time to give a proper data-driven response. I'd go to https://www.bicyclerollingresistance.com/road-bike-reviews?orderby=pr and sort by puncture resistance and then choose one of the top ones with an OK rolling resistance. This turns out to be the Cinturato Velo as well, so maybe anecdotal evidence is ok too

Ah man, came here to chat about the amazing road race I saw yesterday with a generational talent doing something amazing, and sorry to see the standard "must be doping" responses. Of course, you are welcome to your opinion (it's no more based on facts than "definitely not doping"), but I think you are depriving yourself of what is probably the golden age of cycling. Back to the road race, the fact that Healy/Skujins could stay away from the "big dog" chasers for so long probably tells a story as to just how disjointed the chasing was. I saw many micro-attacks from all involved and seldom a coherent train - I'd imagine this would be pretty leg-sapping. The large amount of climbing probably also played a role in how efficient a group versus solo rider could ride.

I think there is a greater than 6% chance that he wins (he has won his last 5 one-day races, although not against toptop tier), so that means money on average at 18/1. Same as Jorgenson with a strong team at 25/1 looks like a good bet. It's playing the odds, not predicting the winner. It's basically, if this race happens 20 times, with all the bad luck that can happen in cycling and less settled teams than normal, would Hirschi win once? Or Jorgenson? I think so. Obviously Pog/Remco/MVDP/Rog (lol) cover the other 80 odd percent (with some small chance for an outsider). Would I put money on Pog at 4/7 odds... jeez almost yeah.

Given what I've been reading online, MVDP and Remco ARE the underdogs. Hirschi at 18/1 seems a good bet though.

The bikehub fantasy league is still the best one ever in terms of effort versus impact - so thanks. One year there were specific challenges for each stage with a prize attached and I figured out that the one was to get the most total team points on a sprint stage, so I stacked my entire team for the whole comp with sprinters and won a fancy Giro helmet. Still a bit salty on the Cannondale year where I lead for the last 2 weeks and lost because Demare decided he was feeling a bit sick. Bikehub is awesome, congrats on the 20 years!

Ah my bad. I've done Sa Colobra and I can legit say Swartberg is cooler. It's pretty crazy that they built the pass with hand tools in 6 years - imagine how long it would take these days with all the tools we have access to. I'd imagine much longer.

Bit of an overdue post, but we just had two weeks in the Karoo and what a place it is. We started out with the Race to the Sea 100 miler (my first gravel race) which was awesome (although I hurt my hand and chest in a minor fall early on so the last 5km was pretty sore). The highlight probably being the bit where we rode under the wind turbines: Next up (after a tiny bit of drama involving a broken Land Rover engine and a swap to my dad's Everest - queue hundreds of"I told you" so messages), we went to Calitzdorp. Seems like it could be a cool little town, but there are a lot of poor and desperate people around. Did a quick ride out to the top of Rooiberg and back: The road surface wasn't that great and I had to stop several times due to hand pain from braking so much (bit of a skill issue of course). The highlight was Prins Albert - Swartberg Pass should be a national monument. I managed to go up and over a bit, but here there was a different hand issue - they were frozen Roads were in great shape and the climb wasn't that bad given my attention was on the stunning views all the time. Hardly any cars too. Lastly we stopped at a rural farmstay south of Laingsburg. I wasn't expecting much, but the ride out to and through Seweweekspoort was another awesome experience. Coming down southbound you have a 17km ~3% downhill which is just enough that you should still peddle and hardly ever have to brake. Feels like the gravel version of coming down supertubes. And climbing back out isn't even that bad due to the low gradient and some more awesome folding mountains (the highest point in the Western Cape is right next to you). What a holiday - can't wait to go back.

Anyone know of some nice gloves I can get for my 1.5 year old? We are having lots of fun with the Feva seat, but some mornings are a bit cold and then his hands freeze. Wouldn't want something thick as then he wouldn't be able to grip the bar.

A friend came down from JHB and we did our first gravel 100 miler together. This was an awesome idea. We got caught by the leading ladies after the Franshoek Pass downhill, and we decided to stick with them for a while (this was a bad idea). We felt really good so even tried getting away from them a couple of times, but come the first gravel climb they dropped us like stones (and ended up taking something like 1.5 hours by the end - they were clearly sandbagging on the flats and laughing at our attempts). I had a minor fall around 50km, and my back and hands hurt quite a bit up to about 90km - glad to have a friend pull me through. After that I started feeling good again and we made good time until those double hemel and aarde tar climbs (which is where we realised our Silver dreams were smashed). Good spirits at the 15km to go water point, but wow those last 5km's were brutal on the hands - we stopped to watch people slipping down the muddy grass field bit. Came home with a solid Bronze time. The organisation was perfect, water points were amazing and the route is spectacular (95% of it at least). The race was epic, and not only will we be back next year, we will find some other events to do as well. Call me another gravel convert

You can find hundreds of free workouts to download online and put them in a folder so that Indievelo can read them. Here is a single zip file with many of the zwift workouts: https://forums.zwift.com/t/workout-refresh-october-2023/609799 They seem to have the messages built-in. I think the workout browser is great once you have enough content in your custom folder - Choose the duration you have available, choose the intensity you are looking for on the day, and then pick the prettiest / most savage graph you see.

This will be my first gravel race - first time getting real excited about a race in a long time

That sounds very sweet (low malto, replacement for glucose) and seems high in fructose (current preferred ratio seems to be around 1:0.8 Glucose:Fructose). Yes, and I absolutely hated the texture (which to me felt like someone had made some fridge jelly with slightly too much water and then ran it through a blender for 10 secs). Very neutral taste and contents are obviously fine (many athletes swear by it) but couldn't get around the texture.

I got 25kg of high DE maltodextrin delivered from one of the beer places for around R1100, and got 10kg of fructose from Komati Foods for around R700. My cupboard looks like a drug dealer's now. Theoretically, lower DE malto would be better but I struggled to find it, and the mix doesn't taste overly sweet to me at a 1:0.8 ratio, even with 100g in a 750ml bottle (I'm not really bothered by sweet stuff anyway). I've only used it for energy drink powder (in combination with some salts, citric acid and Oros), but I'll definitely try making a gel or two next, where the sweetness may become more of an issue.

At the moment for me there are three similar competitors (Zwift, Indievelo, MyWhoosh). The other Video-based ones are a different breed, you either like them or not (I REALLY don't). I also don't think workout availability is a real differentiator as all of these allow for the import of custom workouts, of which you can find 1000s online. So, in my opinion with current pricing, there is no real competition for IV - I haven't seen anyone that has tried both prefer MW. But when they start charging, it will be interesting - do you go with Zwift with its expansive world, cartoony graphics, massive user base which equals good racing - but very expensive. Or do you go with IV - likely to be a little cheaper, more "realistic" graphics but much smaller world and player base, great physics, less gamification. Killer features like gear offsetting (critical for me, as I run a gravel bike on the trainer). Racing is great but not enough people yet. Or lastly MW, which will likely continue being free, and is not that far behind the other two - massive issue being it seems hard to run on less powerful PC's. It might be that integration with your other platforms of choice could be the driving factor.

I would love to see some version of the old school "intergiro" jersey at the TDF: "In its initial inception, the calculation for the intergiro was similar to that of the general classification, in each stage there is a midway point that the riders passed through a point and where their times were stopped. As the race went, their times were compiled and the person with the lowest time was the leader of the intergiro classification and wore a blue jersey until 2005" This has some very specific advantages: 1. A jersey for the pure breakaway rider, and creates some excitement in the middle of the stage 2. Could make for some exciting strategies 3. You can adapt the points for green and polka to make them a little more "pure" as you don't need them as much to create action. e.g. on a flat stage, put three intermediate sprints; on a mountain stage, put one before the mountains / hills and none after.

After a period where the TDF started to get a bit samey, and boring, I think we have now had 5 years of great tours. This one in particular had like 2 or 3 boring stages at the most - so many cool stories. Proper battles for green and polka too. This new style of all-out attack really elevates the tour. I hope we get a fully fit big 4 competing next year. Super combative should have gone to Abrahamsen though.

So as far as I understand the rules (which might not be a lot), lane deviation is usually only punished if it causes danger to another rider. So you can deviate as much as you want as long as you are lucky/good enough not to have someone close behind you. 2.3.036 Sprints Riders shall be strictly forbidden to deviate from the lane they selected when launching into the sprint and, in so doing, endangering others.

I find clicking pause and then going "back to live" works pretty much all the time.

Yes, and along with adverts that sometimes come in at twice the volume this it annoys me so much I often turn to the notoriously unreliable tiz which tends to be better than the paid for DSTV stream.

While probably not beating you on time, I might beat you on HR - 186 average and 200 max. See, fun! I see they also have a VO2max estimation - guessing this is pretty inaccurate and meaningless?

I did the 4km TT challenge yesterday - fun! it shows your time relative to everyone else who tried it, and it is filterable by country so please go ahead and obliterate my time Also starting to learn descending corners are handled much better than zwift, although it means you might need to pay some more attention.

Great idea, should we call this the "bru'tjie rule"?

I had some fun trying out pretty much all of the platforms with their free trials - but then again I like indoor training which already makes me a weirdo.

Cool, glad that works for you. I would recommend trying out Indievelo for the same experience but without any restrictions, but to each their own, right?

I've been on Indievelo for a while now and don't think I'll go back to Zwift - the list of meaningful changes Indievelo makes on a weekly basis is about equal to what Zwift does twice a year. The only things I think they are behind still is km's of different roads (and how important is that really), the amount of gamification (bikes/kit etc), as well as the amount of people online. The physics feel better, they have virtual shifting (as well as a virtual gear offset), customisable HUD and a working elevation profile. I've done a TT which went well but next up is to try racing which looks pretty good as well.