@kyleforrester87 Sweet ride. I would love to get a gravel bike but have spent so much on kids bikes recently and the garage is also full so I'd need to see about getting rid of something. Good call on the gearing, I'd have gone for the same I think as I'm generally more comfortable knee wise spinning up something than I am having to push a harder gear. There's plenty of scope for on and off-road with that range. That's one of the good things about running a triple on my mountain bike still as I would lose a lot of range, which I do tend to use as I'll ride down to the trails from here and that's all on-road. The weight saving and mechanical simplicity of dropping to a single chainring would be great as well as extra clearance under the BB for steeper drops etc.
Tyre wise I sometimes run a wider tyre on the front than I do on the back. Having a narrower tyre on the back allows you to cut into mud to get better traction where most of the weight is going to be pushing down through the bike, whilst having the wider tyre up front gives you extra stability and shock resistance. There's actually a big push now with "mullet" bikes where you run two different size wheels, 29" up front for those things mentioned above whilst having a 27.5" on the rear in order to keep some of the manoeuvrability of a smaller wheel size as well as making it better for drops as there's more clearance at the back. Pretty interesting stuff but it all feels like it might be a bit of a fad at the moment so I'm definitely going to hold out on that for now.
@render 1x does look really slick, but then some of the cassettes you see to provide a decent range look insane. Triple's get a lot of crap but aesthetics/weight and maintenance aside (that's a lot to put aside) I can understand the significant value they have for some.
Thanks for the advice on tyres - I will certainly look into that further, then. Plenty to learn about tyres. Most of my riding is on the road where you slap a pair on and ride them in all conditions until they look a little on the dangerous side, and if all was well you put a new pair of the same ones back on again until they either stop manufacturing them or are not in stock when you need them!
@render@kyleforrester87 My wife got an e-bike for commuting when we lived in our previous house and loved it, particularly with it being so hilly in Devon!
They feel really weird to ride for the first time though. She bought it second hand from a bike hire place that were selling old stock off and it was interesting how three different bikes we tried all felt so different to ride.
@Thrillho my only experience is riding the rental e-bikes around London, I don't know how they stack up to better ones. The motor is pretty cool, but it cuts out after around 15mph and they are so heavy it's horrible trying to get anymore out of it. So you just sort of have to cruise on them or you'll get there more worn out than you would on a regular bike.
@Thrillho@kyleforrester87 A friend of mine has one and brings it over if we ever do a group ride. I've thus far avoided taking him up on his offer of having a go as I don't want to find out that it's as good as he tells me it is and then I'll want one too 😅.
It does look like great fun as you can really boost the assistance up when you want that extra power or down when you want to save some juice. I think his will do something stupid like 150 miles on the lowest power setting which is pretty amazing. He tells me that ride wise you don't notice the extra weight as the power delivered offsets that, and as the weight is lower down you can really sling it around the trails making it look a hell of a lot lighter and really well planted.
When I was in the bike shop the other day a sales guy was trying to shift a brand new lightweight e-mountain bike with internal rear suspension, think it was a Scott. It looked impressive as from a distance you'd not even know it was an e-bike and it was something ridiculous like 15kg which is insanely light for an e-bike. It was 10 grand though so not surprising they'd managed to get it down to that weight. The funny thing was he did a terrible job of selling it, going on to the couple interested about how expensive it was to service and get replacement parts. I think he should probably stick to the maintenance side of the operation.
@ralphdibny I was passing through a field last summer on my bike, went through a gate into a field, turned around to get back on my bike and was face to face with a cow - we had a bit of a moment, I think I have spent too long in the city haha.
Here she is, actually!
@AgentCooper Nice work Coop, it's always good to make some positive changes. Hopefully it's something that will stick and you'll not miss it one bit down the road.
Exercise and food can always be tricky ones to balance out as it's easy to give one a miss when you don't have time or don't feel like it and even easier to double down on the other. All I can say is it's a great time to be getting back out there if you've not run for a while what with the weather picking up. Others have mentioned the couch to 5k which I haven't done myself but others have said can work well. Might be just the thing you need.
So much of bad diet (and drink) is just based on habits though isn’t it.. I’m a fiend for biscuits but think I manage to balance it out elsewhere!
And with running it’s a similar thing that I found I have to make it a routine to make myself get out; I feel very twitchy if I don’t get my Thursday or weekend run. Strava goals really help me personally as well as they encourage me to keep pushing on for distance and climbing over the month.
@AgentCooper I go through patches like that as well where if I've not got an event planned I often find a good excuse to not bother. At the moment I'm feeling the opposite and want to get out at every opportunity so I'll use it whilst I can but you are right, kids don't make it easy. The worst time for me was during lockdown as the only time I got out running was when I took the kids out for their daily exercise. I'd get them on their bikes and I'd run, and as my son was quite young still I'd be pushing him along for the extra training 😅.
During that time I remember Strava being a great thing for me as even though I couldn't meet up with other friends for activities we could motivate each other by posting our runs / rides on there. I'm a bit more on and off with it these days as quite often I just want to go out and not worry about how fast or far I'm going but do still post and look at what others are doing. There's a load more functionality in the app than that even but while I haven't really bothered with the segments stuff for a long while I do like having a look to see other routes people do around me. There's also some groups stuff in there now as well where you can join a group with similar goals for extra motivation. I'm sure @Thrillho will have some better advice on it but hope you find something that works for you.
@AgentCooper I find Strava useful to track what I’m doing and having the 100km monthly badge to aim for (and the 2,000m climbing one) pushes me to try and get them each month. I’m on a streak of doing those and a half marathon every month since Jan 2022!
You can set weekly goals too but I think that’s a paid feature. I pay for it now, mostly to use the route planning feature if I’m thinking of trying something new. Being able to see other routes near you is handy too.
But as I say, I find the routine is what helps me. My wife knows I’ll want to go out Thursday and Sunday morning so we try to work it into what we want to do.
The great thing with running though is that you can just throw shoes on and go and remember that getting out there for 20 mins is better than not bothering at all!
@AgentCooper well done mate! I haven't counted the days but I think I'm roughly the same without alcohol. I stopped drinking in early/mid December. Admittedly I didn't drink much anyway but I stopped for similar reasons I think. Basically I just wanted to not have my mood influenced because my moods had become super intense.
Alcohol is such a wild card as well, like it can make things much better or much worse so always a bit of a gamble. I haven't missed it though to be honest. I think my main day associated with drinking were board game days/nights but I switched out for Punk AF and it's fine tbh
Totally feel you on the food replacement though and addictive personality. I need to curb it. I attempted to do so and started recording calories on the app a couple weeks ago but Easter was particularly hard on me unfortunately :/
I'm going on holiday next Friday so I reckon I'll try and start it all up again once I've got back from that. Hopefully there won't be many interruptions to a regular schedule and by the time I do get interrupted (a wedding in June) I'll be in a good enough place to write it off as "one weekend" instead of "omg I've failed, there's no point in carrying on!" 😅 which is how I felt about that middle of the night tub of ice cream I had on Good Friday 😭
@AgentCooper One of the other things I find useful with Strava for running is using the audio cues to check my pace. I have it set to tell me every km my distance, overall time, and current pace.
The latter was useful when starting out to make sure I was going at a steady pace and not pushing too hard, whereas now I use it more for the other way around!
You can set it to update you every half km too which is more useful for shorter runs. If you’re not doing couch to 5k (or doing your first continuous runs) it can help with pacing and it’s really nice to help see when you’re making improvements.
Good luck though as the first month or so getting into/back into it is always the hardest.
@render NZ is a great destination, spent two weeks there many moons ago. Visited both North and South Islands but didn't do any of the LoTR locations as those tours didn't really exist back then. Would happily go back to check them out though.
So I turned 31 a couple of weeks ago. My wife ‘wanted’ me to get blood tests.
I’m not really a fan of needles so I made her do it as well (& we had a bet on who’s healthier- due to It’s Always Sunny) as we’ve been talking about trying. In the end we got everything checked.
Long story short…she’s definitely healthier than me. However my glucose levels were higher than normal.I don’t even have sugar in my tea/coffee😅, but they said it’s common in my ethnic group (Asian/German).
Get your bloods done people! I was incredibly surprised that my body is kind of ok.
Also replacing Basmati rice with Red/Brown rice when I’m on nights moving forwards.
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