It's funny, there are only two people that show up on my second day. Very lonely. :(

On the subject, I'm sure most of you have already seen this, but this book is vaguely exciting for on the go nutrition ideas:

Feed Zone Portables: A Cookbook of On-The-Go Food for Athletes

Yes... and surely the usual case of x% sag applies?

That's what I do anyway.

Keith Bremner who finished 7th on last years HT550 swears by training on an empty stomach such that your body eventually learns to use fat as the main source of energy....but it's not nice and takes months of training on that basis. It's really not that bad. It sucks for the first few weeks of trai...

Every time I've used mine it's tasted fine. I guess if you're worried about the taste you should probably go for one with a carbon filter aspect.

Lake District? There's tons of fantastic stuff up there.

Only about 2.5 hours by my reckoning.

Mart wrote:Knee recovery progress: another ride in the bag with little after effects
With a bit more work, I might have this injury thing sussed

I'm having to take another enforced couple of weeks off to let mine try and recovery. It's really frustrating. :(

ootini wrote:You anywhere near north Wales ? Got about 4kg sat in the garage you can have.

I only just noticed this. I'm not, but thanks for the offer.

I usually stick to the guidelines of 55g or so of carbs an hour (for my weight) and then hit the protein and fat fairly hard whenever I can digest it with no problems (evening / morning). It's a tiny amount of food (~6 shot bloks) so you're very unlikely to struggle to eat it. I've never had any pro...

I have one myself, and yeah, you basically need a tree or a truly massive pole to make it work.

I'm guessing this wouldn't be much use for off road routes, unless you manually put in where you have turns somehow?

My new bottle cages and bottles have arrived for my experiment with lead weighting... Now I just need some lead shot!

I'm thinking that I'm probably going to need to velcro the bottles in place though as whilst I bought the sturdiest cages I could find, they still don't seem that sturdy.

You can get really light high capacity batteries now too, which makes using phones for GPS navigation quite feasible.

Some phones (Like the Nexus 5 and some of Sony's Android offerings) have crazy large batteries too.

I'm up for this, assuming I've fixed my knee issues by that point anyway.

Richpips wrote:I've yet to come across someone who has paid for their bags.

I did after using Stu's samples. Couple of other guys on the WRT did as well.

No complaints from me so far, but I think for nicer weather (yeah, right) I'd go with something a bit less heavy duty.

Recently my training and fitness has stepped up a few levels, and, current knee injury aside, I've found myself getting a bit frustrated when out with friends who are quite a lot slower than me. More to the point OP - what have you been doing to get to this (^^^^) point... I'd love to be in the sam...

Probably best I don't use the bottles for drinking from after using them for that! I wonder what a 750ml bottle full of shot would weight. I'm guessing quite a bit. ...and it shouldn't ruin a ride any more than having bikepacking gear on the bike would. Probably less so as it'll be easier to balance...

I've tried doing that first suggestion. One of my friends said that it felt like he was just doing a solo ride and got a bit pissy about it. The headstart is ok in summer, but in winter you just end up freezing your arse off whilst you're waiting for them to get a big enough lead. ...and yes, I'm tr...

Aye. I suppose I could just fill a standard frame bag with lead shot. Would certainly keep the weight reasonably low and centred. :D

Some soft and sticky DH tyres and DH tubes. That will provide lots of overload without making your bike a badly handling lorry It's not a bad idea, but I really don't want to be messing around changing tyres for specific rides as my rims are a pig with most tyres and I now run tubeless which has ot...

I have a merino base layer that seems to make a massive difference to the amount of cold I'm able to deal with. Still doesn't help that much with windchill though.

Wont actually be doing any of this until I've had some quality time with a physio. For now easing off the gas a bit is quite welcome (especially when I hit the point in the ride when my knee inevitably gives up).

I'm half tempted to bid on a couple of those. Just for the mental factor.

slarge wrote:Give your mates a head start? That way they might get the first round in

More likely to get eaten by wolves. I tend to do the navigating.

Ankle weights are an interesting one.