Search results for:

Before the race there was some talk of landslides on the course, possibly making some sections impassable. From what I can tell everyone went that way implying that the route has been altered slightly.

They’re underway! Obviously we learn nothing substantive at this point but happy to see my track leaders (predicted mode on) placing skinny up near the front of the pack.

Yeah, I guess what I’m most interested to understand is what the “minimum viable standard” is for a race like this?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to be flippant, but I’m just wondering how plausible SRMR would be for a “normal” human being… specifically me 😀 even if it is an exceedingly remote aspiration.

I would never be near the pointy end but there was a time, long ago, when I was a reasonable enough endurance athlete (in a pretty limited amateurish sense… I.e. multiple IM finishes with best times around 9:50-10:10, multiple running ultras up to 100mi etc). However, as with frank, my current life offers me relatively few opportunities for adventure and SRMR is an event that really ignites my inspiration.

Are there any good write ups or accounts of what it’s like for the back markers?

I’m captivated by the superhuman efforts of heroes like skinny, hippy, samuli sofiane etc, but also interested to hear what it’s like for those racing to make the time cuts… especially what their daily mileage and schedules are like.

I've got an anodised grey soloist (maybe 2007?). I bought it second hand c. 2016 and it has a brass shim in the seat tube. I've always been careful with tightening the seat-post clamp but it's never slipped. No cracks last time I checked either.

Good idea to swap the fork... those wolf ones were recalled, I think because they were snappy.

I’ve currently watched up to the end of the planche des belles filles but had to miss a few days due to travel. What stages should I make sure to watch and which can I miss while I catch up?

Pls @ me so I don’t have to get any spoilers in the meantime.

I think what you want is a metric like "mean topographic roughness". Topographic roughness would be calculated per pixel and captures the maximum elevation difference between a central pixel and all immediately surrounding pixels. You would then take the average value across the landscape of interest. Of course this kind of metric is heavily influenced by the scale of analysis and so you could then move the discussion along to an enjoyable debate about the appropriate scale of the pixels to be used. However, just for reference, last time I did this kind of work (>10yrs ago) most open access digital elevation models were available at 90m resolution.

Edit: It looks like this is essentially what this database does, calculated at a 30 arc second grid scale (~930m at the equator). On that metric, the Netherlands wins the "flatness contest" by a considerable margin... Netherlands 3.7m Vs Denmark 18.9m.

We have GCN+ but prefer ITV4 for the tour.

We usually watch the daily highlights show on ITV which is far better than the GCN/Eurosport offering. On ITV they actually string together a coherent set of clips with relevant commentary to explain the main events of the day, whereas GCN/Eurosport highlights are usually just the final 30-40minutes with no explanation of anything that happened before then. Then, if you want to watch the analysis on GCN then you have to navigate to a separate show (the breakdown) which is sometimes listed as its own show, but is often not uploaded until later so you have to find it at the end of the actual race show. The only problem with ITV highlights is that it is on regular TV at a reasonable time, but if you miss it they often don't upload it to the itv hub until late.

Aside from the obvious travesty of leaving Are CaV at home I was a bit surprised by his interview at the end of nationals where he said he hadn't had any contact from the team to tell him either way, then according to his instagram he found out about his non selection and the content of the tour squad via his social media.

Surely just like any other workplace the teams have some kind of email listserv of current riders that, at the very minimum, they can email to say something like "Team management has selected this years tour squad including the following riders, we know this will be a disappointment to some, but this email is just to give you a heads up before tomorrow's official press announcement". Keeping riders in the dark about these kind of decisions seems like poor management and internal communication - regardless of whether the riders in question had a realistic hope of riding.

No one cares about your hard facts and figures!!

Leaving Cav out of the squad in his nat champs jersey is tantamount to treason… the Queen needs to get Lefevre beheaded.

Has anyone used http://www.rxsport.co.uk? I need to replace my trashed pair of daily glasses and have always gone through my local optician, but they are being irritating and slow with the model that I want and they are in stock on http://www.rxsport.co.uk, but I've never ordered prescription glasses online. Are there any obvious pitfalls I need to avoid?

Yeah I only use it because that's where all my other training is. I'm happy to continue using TP for monitoring the duration of weight training (hrs per week as part of my wider training mix), but a well designed app that lets me record the actual content of the weights session would be ideal.

Is there a good app for recording reps and weights of my various exercises, and that allows me to easily check my previous weights and reps?

I’m currently struggling with the comment section of TrainingPeaks, but it’s a PITA.

Looks great, super jelly.

Shame about no triathlons, I hope everything is ok?

I seem to have broken wordle…

Last night i had two guesses on Monday’s #345 but then got distracted by a crying baby. After midnight I reopened wordle and my guesses were still on the screen so I made a third guess and got the correct answer. But now it says I’m on a 1 day streak and won’t load todays game.

Yes for us... all our results are online so I arbitrarily looked at the last 7 events this year and we had an average of 13 riders per event (max=19, min=9). Taking the same period of last year (n=6 events, +1 cancellation), the average number of riders was 38.5 (max=47, min = 31).

For me the reasons are the same as several others... baby, time etc. but this can't be driving the overall trend. A few guesses as to broader trends might be:

1) The ongoing expense of the arms race - a few years ago it felt like some time, home testing and some judicious second hand parts could elevate you to near the top of the field in terms of aerozzz, but now I feel like you need 5k just to begin. Maybe this has always been the case and I'm just grumpy because I'm no longer in the group who can afford it but it's my perception.

2) road safety - I get the feeling a growing number of people are getting pissed of with the dangers of riding on the road. I've now got very little enthusiasm for racing on big roads with big lorries, or small roads with cars pushing past on every blind bend. it's definitely intimidating to novices and I no longer encourage my friends to come along and have a go anymore.

3) local road events restarting - last year we had a lot of riders in our road categories, now we get just one or two on road bikes. I think this is because the local crit series has restarted after a COVID hiatus and so many of the road riders have gone back to those events instead.

I'm sure TSTR will tell us that all of these issues are as old as the sport itself, and I'm sure he's right but just some of my reflections.

If the primary purpose of the session is to work a particular energy system and make a physiological improvement then I always do intervals on the turbo for the consistency. This applies to most of the season.

However as I get closer to races (lol I don’t race anymore 😭) my focus will change from improving my engine to developing race specific skills (eg holding a desired power while in the tt position on real world terrain). To work on these skills I begin to do some interval sessions on the road, but since the focus isn’t solely on the physiological gainz I’m not so worried if I get stuck at a junction or caught in traffic.

@greentricky @DethBeard - cheers - both good tips. thank you.

Super thank you. Your trick works and allows me to confirm that the typos are indeed part of the the original article!

I want to read about turtle dove auctions but all three articles are behind a paywall:

FT - https://www.ft.com/content/6bfbd5e2-10f9-4400-b4e1-258225e3ac0f
Economist - https://www.economist.com/britain/2021/07/22/how-an-auction-is-helping-britains-turtle-doves
Telegraph - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/01/06/post-brexit-farm-subsidy-plans-will-see-landowners-paid-protect/

Does anyone with access want to share the content of those articles?

Ours is 11mo… the mini bike/ mini hulsroy content is literally my favourite stuff on the internet right now. How old is little H and when did she start on the balance bike?

Sadly I don’t think it’s official US NPS (although I wish it was). https://instagram.com/subparparks?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

I was in glacier national park once when there was an unusually large calving event off the front of one of the glaciers. It was one of the most amazing sights I’ve seen but another tourist standing nearby turned to their partner and said “is that it?”.

My towel is a massive lion rampant of Scotland flag, deliberately to mark the spot.

Ganna punctures, no team cars!

Where are jumbo? I know wout is in group 2 but commentators just said he had no one to help pull things back together? Are the rest of the team all sitting on the back of g1?