Category: Mountain Biking

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Carsington Christmas MBO Score

carsington1My back has been getting better week on week recently. Is it the 4 months of Pilates? Is it the fact I am not driving 32 thousand miles a year in a worn out car seat? Or just time? No idea, but it means I am feeling confident enough to ride for a little longer and up steeper hills and, for the first time in 2 years, have been thinking about Mountain Bike Orienteering again.

I had originally intended to do the Military Challenge but this year it doesn’t seem to be taking place. A quick look at the BMBO website showed a fun Dark and White Christmas event on the Friday before, just up the road from me at Carsington Water adventure centre – perfect.

The weather forecast was terrible and, to be honest, I felt terrible too, with what I know now to be a good dose of man-flu.

Rocking up in the cold and dark, it was great to see Adrian and the Dark and White team again after so long and it was great to be finally doing my first event as a Vet, two years in!

I got some advice from Adrian about bumpy tracks to avoid, strapped on my long unused hope vision 4 ( now 4 years old and still going strong), Orifix mapboard and compass and headed out into a vicious head wind, intending to stay on the roads.

I’d decided I wouldn’t push my luck and go out for the full two hours allowed and the combination of my man-flu and my sensible head brought me in nice and early in time to catch up with a few old friends over some coffee and cakes. There were some serial comedy moments as people tried to make coffee and tea with the tea urn that actually contained mulled wine….

Lets hope this is the start of a recovery season!

Results available here

 

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Android bike computer – IpBike

Many UK riders have seen in the past few years British Mountain Bike Orienteer Ifor Powell riding around with a small box on this handlebars, a home made cycle computer. (he is a electronic engineer and programmer) This development has culminated with an android phone based bike computer which in my opinion ticks every box. I have been using it for a while and recommend trying it if you have an android phone. ( I use a sony Xpeira Ray though the Active model would be perfect)

IpBike is an Android bike computer app. It does everything you would expect of high end bike computer plus a bit more with the extra capabilities of a phone. There are a good number of Android bike computer apps but most of them just use the GPS. IpBike also gets data from ANT+ based sensors, e.g. bike speed and cadence sensors as well as heart rate and also ANT+ power meters. For this to work you either need a phone with built in ANT support, like various members of the Sony range or with a modern phone you can plug in a USB ANT stick to add ANT support as detailed here. This of course allows you to use it to log your turbo trainer sessions as well as outdoor rides.

As well as supporting ANT+ sensors if your phone has a pressure sensor IpBike uses it to give you high quality altitude information and thus those interesting incline and rate of climb numbers. The display is optimised for use on the bike, with b
IpBike is free to download from Google Play but there is a 1,000,000 wheel revolution limit to let you try it out after which you you need to buy IpBikeKey to unlock the limit.ig clear text you can read at a glance for the main sensor data. There is mapping data from Open Street Map sources that can either be directly downloaded or pre loaded on the phone as described here. You can upload a .gpx route files to follow, the map will show the route with your position on it and automatically rotate the map to keep it aligned as you go. Post ride there are all the stats you want from the ride as well as a map of the route and a plot you can pan and zoom over to take a closer look at the climbs with. The feature it has you don’t get with a stand alone bike computer is direct upload to various websites like Strava, RunKeeper, TrainingPeaks and Attackpoint so no need to have your PC around. Once you have a good bit of data recorded you can query it to say find out how many race miles you did in the year or your total stats for the month.

http://www.iforpowell.com/cms/

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.iforpowell.android.ipbike

 

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New Bridge for Cannock Chase Mountain Bikers

Last night, planners at Cannock Chase gave their unanimous approval to the  construction at Moors Gorse, off Marquis Drive
This is great news as the crossing has been an accident waiting to happen for a couple of years now.

However the danger of the main road crossing where cars regularly exceed the 60mph speed limit is still a problem.

Read more:  http://www.expressandstar.com/news/2012/09/13/new-cannock-chase-bridge-to-be-built-in-months/

 

 

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Epic Bleed Solutions

Although sounding like a mountain bike accessory for inclusion in a first aid kit for downhillers, Epic are a Stoke on Trent company producing after market hydraulic Brake bleeding systems. Anyone who has looked up the price of an Avid brake bleeding kit to baulk at the price and then continued to suffer with spongy brakes will jump for one of these kits which are up to 80% cheaper than originals.

They have kindly sent me a couple of kits and some frame protection tape to try and as soon as I get a Torex key small enough for Caths old Magura Julies Ill be giving them a go and posting a full review here. They are available online together with some useful ‘how to do it’ videos at

http://www.epicbleedsolutions.com

   

 

 

 

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Olympic Mountain Biking Tickets – Thanks Acer!

Like many families in the UK we failed to get tickets for any of the Olympic events due to the huge demand and, to be honest, we had given up and decided to go to the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. However as Olympic fever has gripped the country we started to feel a little left out….. I started following the now famous twitter feed @2012ticketalert to see if I could get some random event just to get the atmosphere, although I decided I would draw the line at the horse dancing!

I saw on ticket alert that Acer had lots of tickets to give away for competitions including the Mountain Biking on the last weekend of the games, so on a whim decided to give it a go.  http://www.facebook.com/#!/AcerUK

 

The competition was on Facebook and involved submitting a photo showing family sport or Olympic fever. I sent in a collage of Holly’s Sport Relief Challenge of earlier this year and yesterday found out we had won !

4 tickets to both days of the Olympic mountain biking, travel cards and a night’s stay in the Radisson in nearby Southend on Sea – result !

Now the logistics have started. Unfortunately Holly can’t go to the Saturday’s racing as she is on stage until 10pm at Stafford’s Gatehouse Theatre in the final showing of the summer school youth theatre’s production of Peter Pan so we are going to spread some Olympic love and take two budding Mountain Bike Orienteers aged 9 and 14 years old to watch the women’s race. I’ve then got to come half way home to pick up Holly at midnight on the M1 to get her back to the Hotel ready for the Sunday. We have also given 2 of the tickets to another bike mad family with a 6 year old.

We are all very excited to be given the opportunity to go to the event we really wanted to go to when we first applied for tickets over a year ago. Thank you Acer what a fantastic prize.

We will be cheering on Great Britain’s Liam Killeen and Annie Last but especially Liam as we have met him a few times when he used to hangout in our local bike shop Mammoth when being coached by local mountain bike legend Gary Foord.

To top it all Holly’s favourite presenter who inspired her to do her sport relief challenge is one of the anchors for BBC at the Mountain Biking

 

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The Cycle Show – ITV4 review

Cycling on TV is sorely lacking. ITV4 have fantastically covered cycle races from the UK tour series to The Tour this year but it’s all road racing, exciting as this is there is nothing for the enthusiast up until now…..

ITV4 and Century television have bravely embarked on an 8 show series off the back of the recent Tour de France coverage. The first episode was on Monday and it is now available on ITV player hosted by Graham Little.

It is sponsored by the giant mail order bike company Chain Reaction Cycles which to be honest is fine. A new show like this needs funding from somewhere and as long as it’s not in your face I don’t mind.

The show is modelled on a magazine ‘top gear’ style show with features, chat and regular items to keep things flowing along.

It is based in London cycle café – ‘Look Mum No Hands’ a regular haunt of mine a year or so back when Pozzoni’s London office was almost next door on Old Street.

The first show obviously started with some post Tour Bradley hype but the euphoria of the win made the café so noisy it was obvious the guests and production crew were struggling. I am sure they will sort this out on the next show.

First Guest was Nigel Mansell, now turned cyclist and supporting Team UK Youth. I’d forgotten quite how monotone he was and it’s a shame the interviewer didn’t give a little more context and introduce UK Youth a bit more. He seemed a bit shell shocked to be interviewing such a famous celeb! Graham Obree was also on the sofa. I know who he is, but any non-cycle fans would not have a clue and he was not properly introduced.

We then had a piece on Box hill, where the Olympic road race will be held next week, which was OK but I’m not sure where it was being pitched. Not enough detail for the cycle race fan and not enough background for the novice.

Next guest was the ‘inventor’ of the mountain bike, the crazy Gary Fisher who lived up to his name. Again I know who he is but he needed more of an introduction.

There was a slightly patronising how to cycle in the city bit which was actually pitched OK for beginners but tried to cover too much and was at odds with the rest of the show.

More chat with no real direction and then they finished with a great roller race between the two guests which was fun and I am sure this will turn into a top gear style star in a reasonably priced car type leader board.

Overall it was a good effort but I felt struggled with its level of pitch, they tried to cram too much in and the balance of chat to feature leant too much to the chat .

I’ve set the PVR to record the whole series and look forward to the next ones, although I hope they have taken on board some of the criticism flying around on the various social media and well used forums.

Its worth a watch – support it, help it or lose it!

http://www.itv.com/itvplayer/video/?Filter=322052

The Cycle Show on Twitter https://twitter.com/thecycleshowtv

The Cycle Show on facebook http://www.facebook.com/#!/thecycleshowtv