Trelawney

My Saturday ride had mostly uphill for the first hour and I utterly froze until about 8.15 when things started to thaw around me, so on Saturday I found the cold debilitating even though I was going relatively slow on the uphills (I think we averaged 16 km in that first hour with some 400 m of climb). Always a chance I suppose but what I'm angling for is whether you saw a significant difference between the two days, which I think you are saying you saw, I don't think 2degC difference would do that necessarily. Ho hum, decisions, decisions.

Did you use liners or just as is ?

Oh, so Anatomic don't just do bike gear, they do ski clothing too ? Didn't know that. And you tested them last Sunday if I am correct ? Wasn't quite as cold as Saturday but would still have been a few degrees above freezing I guess.

Chris, you said you went & bought the ski gloves, just wondering which shop you bought them from and approx at what cost ?

The Ski Gloves.

Where can you buy these ? I'm in Pretoria.

How easy is it to operate the gears with the ski gloves ?

Can anyone vouch for a pair of gloves that work if you ride at 0 degC (e.g. Gauteng winter) ? So you add on the wind chill factor and they still work. I rode yesterday morning starting at 5.15 ... I think I came the closest I have yet come to frostbitten fingers. During last winter I managed to : - Solve how to keep my head, torso, arms and legs OK. - Partially solved how to keep my feet warm (jify bag trick cuts air flow through mesh in the shoe & helps keep in the warmth) - Totally failed at the finger frost bite thing. And yesterday's ride brought me back to the frostbitten finger state, yowser, I had forgotten how cold your fingers can get. I have tried two different winter gloves that claim to work but both fail miserably, even with liner gloves inside. I have considered those hand warmer tabs (seem expensive and no guarantee of a warm finger just because your palm is warm). Short of carrying a can of deep heat and blasting my hand once an hour, what other ideas ? Surely the Scandanavians or Eskimos must have sorted this out ?! T.

Good luck with losing the weight and all your other great goals ! I tried losing a few kgs about 18 months ago and this was my first ever diet attempt. I also cycled lots during that period. My conclusions to lose weight were that you have to get the calories under control and if you actually take note of what's in everything you eat you have a much better chance of reaching your goals. Simply keeping the calories the same and adding in exercise guarantees nothing, if you start eating more because of the exercise you can happily gain weight despite the exercise ! I eventualy tracked my food via www.crosstrainer.ca software, they give you a 40 day free trial as I recall. Adding my food choices to the software and using some of their pre-loaded data really opened my eyes to how many calories I was chucking down every day. I then also found that I could drop my calories lower and lower but that my metabolism just slowed right down. The trick I eventually used is to try and fool your metabolism by selecting an average no. of calories per day, say 1800 and making sure you average 1800 a day but never have 1800 more than twice a week, so the one day I go down to 1600, the next up at 1900 etc. By keeping your body guessing, your metabolism doesn't seem to slow as quickly. I also found that I would have Saturdays off the diet, cycle in the morning, then eat whatever I felt like for the rest of the day (usually avoiding fatty things), that really seemed to confuse my metabolism, I usually weighed more by Monday than I had on Friday, but if I dropped my calories back down from Sunday and did some exercise, I could continue to drop again the next week despite having seen my weight loss slow down towards the end of the week. I comfortably lost 1 kg a week for 13 straight weeks and have kept it off. Make sure you have a strong mental picture of how you want to look, pay attention to your calories, keep your metabolism guessing and keep regular notes of your weight. The weightloss people say people who weigh themselves every day lose weight much quicker than those who don't because they don't take their eye off the ball. Good luck !

Talking of warranties, a tyre that gave me problems was replaced today under warranty after 11 months of ownership, the first time a warranty has ever benefited me, wow, felt like winning the lotto. Hope you sort your warranty issues out.

I started a smoking thread a couple weeks back as a Poll, it also got quite heated, I see it is still alive, so if you want to read some more emotive smoking posts, head on over to : Smoking Poll Interesting to see that about 20% of the voters smoke.

I am both serious & confused ! The number boards I have used have an RF ID Tag in that gets read wirelessly and on events I've done (usually the 70 km marathon) that's all I've ever seen. My question is therefore ... what's the difference between the RF ID Tag system and these chips ? Technology wise, types of events etc ? Thanks.

What's the deal with Babaas Lodge ? They seem to have MTB events every couple of weeks ? How's that work ?

I have to agree with Leeu52, it would be good to have some sort of rating system in place for the technicality of the ride. It would mostly help the new riders and less experienced riders ... but what is the sport without a healthy number of new participants constantly streaming in ? Any one know of systems used elsewhere ?

I have had ITB when running for several years and have only gotten through it by stretching exercises. I have MTB'ed for 3 years without any ITB .. until recently when I bought new MTB shoes, suddenly its back. I have tried checking cleat alignment and all seems OK, for now I stretch & pray. In all that time I have never had an itchy sensation associated with ITB.

What kinds of timing chips are these ? I've only seen the board type that you cable tie to your handlebars.

No I don't ! My reason for asking is I have entered the Nissan Diamond Rush this weekend and was reading on the thread about what a killer set of hills we're in for (they call them 'mine dumps' out in Cullinan) and I was imagining how many bits of my lungs I might be coughing up by the end of the one mine dump (where Wessel said he may give a prize if anyone stays on their bike all the way to the top) ... and then I wondered how smokers feel on such long climbs. Kind of a zig-zagging thought process but that's what happens in my brain sometimes T.

Just wondering whether you can smoke and still climb mountains ? Trelawney.

Not wanting to distract anyone from the bun fight but ... I bought a Silverback Mercury 2 a year ago almost and have been quite happy with it. When you buy a bike you basically buy the frame as I see it as all the rest of it is Rockshocks and Fox Shocks and Shimano this and that which all the bikes have in any case and it all breaks after a while ... and you replace as you see fit. The frame seems really solid to me, not too heavy, the rear suspension mechanism is fine, my arse is in one piece after a year and I still have a sex life so something must be OK with it. My only real problem came when I fell off it :-( Oh, and I paid R20k for it in August 2009 from a FPC store, for R10k right now I would buy two and keep one for my Golden Years when the first one has broken. And by the way I don't work for Silverback or a bike shop of the FBI or Interpol. Yours independently, T.

I popped a Google Earth pic of the location here : Hijack Site

I plotted these coords into Google Earth to get the image below : http://www.chezwallis.com/MTB/MTB_Hijack_2010-06-19.jpg

Tell us more ?

OK, then I'm off to buy some full body Zip Lock bags !

OK, so we are talking a 'sandwich bag' (which was the original posting) or something a little bigger ? I tried on a sandwich bag earlier today and it covers half of my foot ... gave my wife a laugh if nothing else ! Are you talking perhaps a 'small freezer bag' that hangs out the top of your shoe ? Sorry, this conversation is sounding dafter by the minute but simple tips like this can seriously add to the experience on the day ! By the way, I went for a ride after work yesterday evening with the mercury sitting 6 degC to remind myself of how cold things can get in Gauteng in winter (in prep for Fast & Furious experience this Saturday where it is forecast at around 0 degC at dawn) and felt pain in the order of (1) fingers followed by (2) toes followed by (3) cheek bones ! My gloves are the Thermal Paw variety but still my fingers went numb. I am hoping that by having an extra layer on the arms will lead to warmer arms and hence some chance of my fingers not breaking off from frost (hate that when it happens). As for the cheek bones I assume a few more wors roll breakfasts should fatten me up in all the right places ! T.

Excuse my ignorance, what's meant by 'WW Type' ? I'm guessing Woolworths ? I've been thinking of using a thermal vest for the cold rides, one I got from Cape Union Mart that I use when we camp in winter. Is that the type you mean ? Also, any experience of whether they just get too hot ? Thanks, T.