Road Cycling

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janp said:
Think your right, perhaps I shouldn't have accepted the bike :/

Probably doesn't help matters that I paid half on a debit, and the other on a credit card.
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Doesn't matter the credit card will cover you for all of it if it's over £100 iirc.
 
janp said:
So what do you guys recommend I should do?

Assuming I can get the full £3,000 back on this current bike. I have around £5-7,000 to play with, would that be enough for a custom build? If so, where do I even begin, any particular companies?
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Sorry, I dont know what the answer is here.
I guess either:

1 - get a frame as close as possible to the size you need and put up with a compromise. I dont mean putting up with discomfort, just unusual positioning - a layback seatpost turned forwards, short stem, sweepback bars, etc.

2 - Get a custom built frame exactly to your body.
 
I think Condor do a custom geometry option on most of their bikes for £150, seems similar for a lot of smaller frame manufacturers. If you have uncommon body proportions and the budget to account for it i'd say it's definitely worth looking into.
 
Well I've asked for my money back. The shops not open yet so had to send an email off. Will take the bike back in my lunch hour, I'm expecting a bit of a battle.

A friend actually recommended Condor, so might take a look at them. I'll wait till I've got the money back first though.

Has anyone heard of Craddock bikes? I like the look of the bikes on their website.

Told myself I was going to take an easy commute in today, till I got overtaken by another cyclist, he couldn't drop me though :D Legs are telling me I should have taken it easy though.
 
After a long day & evening I finally got to play with my new toys last night :D

Picked up two of these from a LBS that was closing down, absolute steal for the turbo.

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And two of these for the new rims. Probably won't get much use before the weather starts to turn:

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Can't wait to get these on and ride this weekend :cool: (The front was actually 5g under at 665g, I only weighed out of curiosity, forgot to weight the back but it's probably 5g over :p)

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Just need to get my LBS to tighten up the cassette today:

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Thought I had a 28-11 on the rear but that turned out to be a 27-12 so I'll see how I get on with a bit more range top & bottom.
 
FrenchTart said:
Do it today, now.
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Chill pill for mr Tart please! But totally agree with all of your points mate, the sooner things are resolved the sooner jan can move on!

Vonhelmet said:
Ha! I do always seem to have two bottles on group rides when others have just one and one trendy tool bottle holder thing... It's clearly my calling!
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Same here, any rides over 20 miles if I take 1 bottle I invariably find myself short, I'd rather carry 2 bottles and use 1.2, than take one and be gasping for more!

uv said:
afraid not, custom builds start at £7001.
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I lol'd.

janp said:
So what do you guys recommend I should do?
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You've got a fantastic budget but hard/tricky fit requirements, maybe a traditional bike shop isn't the best way to go. Some of the bike fit info I've read about comes from the sports science angle but many of the articles I've read are sports science guys who do specialist fits along with suggesting frames for riders based on body size/shape. Maybe that is the route to go?

Just an example from RCUK of the type of fit/place I mean: http://roadcyclinguk.com/longform/le-beau-velo-holistic-bike-fit#1pw5PdijDCzVOWDL.97

Has Paul got any thoughts/advice on a good LBS you should try?

Any other guys/clubs you ride with - ideally you're after a rider who's been around a few years and experienced most the shops rather than a guy who's always gone to the same place. Opinions of riders who've had fits at places, or even required a bespoke fit/frame/sizing should be the route to go rather than looking at shops online. Whatever the frame, with your budget you can get it the colour and setup you want, the important thing is getting the sizing right and should be the deciding factor! :)
 
FrenchTart said:
If I could get the time off work I'd head down now :p
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I know the feeling, I'm working every day until the 16th November now :O

I'm a bit of a loner when it comes to cycling, most of my close friends are mountain bikers, so they can't really help.
There's a few guys in the road group I sometime join up with. They've recommended places, which I've visited, to be honest they haven't seemed interested. As I said previously, I've been to 6 seperate LBSs.
 
janp said:
I know the feeling, I'm working every day until the 16th November now :O

I'm a bit of a loner when it comes to cycling, most of my close friends are mountain bikers, so they can't really help.
There's a few guys in the road group I sometime join up with. They've recommended places, which I've visited, to be honest they haven't seemed interested. As I said previously, I've been to 6 seperate LBSs.
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My workload is quite high atm but thankfully not as bad as that :eek:

It sounds to me like you could do with doing some test rides on a few bikes to try and find one that fits your legs without massively compromising on reach. Get the geometry of that bike's frame down (along with the stem size/angle) and then work things from there.
 
FrenchTart said:
It sounds to me like you could do with doing some test rides on a few bikes to try and find one that fits your legs without massively compromising on reach. Get the geometry of that bike's frame down (along with the stem size/angle) and then work things from there.
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Yeah that's how we'd suggest doing it - if he hadn't had a fit and didn't know his measurements. He does and has paid for the privilege! Jan has learnt through bitter experience that a normal/generic size and frame is going to be hard to fit to him, so his next logical step was to go to a LBS and ask them to suggest a frame based on his measurements. In short - pay them to do the 'hard' work of hunting for a frame to suit ;)

For some reason the place he went to seemed totally incapable of fitting a frame (to his measurements) and somehow tried to justify selling him the wrong frame and didn't even get the measurements right! :rolleyes:

It's not like this was a £500 sale, it was £3,000... What I would consider a fairly substantial sale (even if their markup is as low as 20% that's a £600 sale)!

Name and shame them Jan! ;)

BennyC said:
After a long day & evening I finally got to play with my new toys last night :D
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Now they do look awesome! Jealous! :o

Edit: Weather here is warm (8 degrees on my commute this morning) so I'm going for a blast after work... Some gusty winds (headwinds this morning) along with all of the cut hedgerows means it might be quite an unplanned route...! My better half isn't working saturday so I can't do the shop/social ride, I'm fully planning on getting out saturday or sunday afternoon if I can somehow find some way to distract her! Fully intending on tackling the climb I had to walk the end part of in the sportive a couple of weeks back. Providing the roads are dry (was greasy and slippy in the sportive)! May also aim for this one which I've not ridden the direction of the segment (did it from the easy side!).

Also have a pass from the mrs to use the turbo in our conservatory this winter (woohoo! previously I only turbo'd outside so I was slightly weather dependent). Need to sort myself a big floor fan and a mat to ride the turbo on (tiled floor). Any suggestions? New laptop has 8.1 installed and should be finished downloading Win10 today, I'm assuming TR is ok on W10, anyone else able to confirm Zwift works ok on W10?

I'm fully prepared that tonight's ride might be the last one with my mate, he's going on honeymoon for 3 weeks and when he returns things will be too dark after work. I've promised to give him lots of abuse on facebook when I'm out riding/on the turbo so he doesn't feel left out. With no riding 'commitments' (just the occasional saturday social and commuting) I'm intending on hitting TR hard this winter. :cool:
 
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Got back from Mallorca early hours Wednesday, wow what an amazing place for cycling. Ill put a few pics in the Cycling Holidays thread with some info that might be handy in the future for people.

But heres a couple for now;)

I took my bike but i couldn't resist this. I rented a F8 for the day, wow what a bike, absolutely amazing. Going to the showroom this Saturday to enquire about buying now:D
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Last section to the light house.
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A local :)
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All in all, i cant recommend Mallorca for cycling highly enough. It really is fantastic
 
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