yeah, the constant sprinting out of EVERY corner, lap after lap, just fkn kills me.

That sounds like the perfect warmup :)

Exy - I hope you got yours with the extra wide shiny alloys and the mega stereo in the back :)

Fark me Repat. That's ugly! :eek:

Went over the handlebars of a bike for the first time in my life yesterday. Breaking my over the bars cherry at 33 isn't probably the best way of doing it as it scared the living ****e out of me. As soon as I saw my front wheel go into the big farking hole some prick had dug in the middle of the track around a corner I thought "please don't break your neck, please don't break your neck". Spitting blood all the way home I thought I'd punched my spine through my throat. Went to the hospital and all is well thankfully. Just look even uglier than normal now. ;)

How can you tell if you've bent your forks a bit? They still seem to go up and down alright. Hopefully 32mm forks take a bit more than that to bend?

They come with a 160watt stereo. Now I just need some 21 inch spinners and a few flat TV screens. You watch too much Pimp My Ride. :D

Saccy, your forks are fine. Learn how to crash though. I can tuck and roll with finesse, as I've done it thousands of times...

saccy, you poor bugger, it hurts when you get old ! Hole dug out of the track? You mean a hole hole, not an obstacle you are supposed to negotiate? :)

It would probably bend at the crown if anything, does it turn left and right OK?

Nah, I'm usually a fantastic crasher. Came from years of practice riding enduro bikes. Don't really know what happened. It was after doing 90 minutes of a local XC loop. Decided to go home a different way through thick trees that was a bit overgrown, that I hadn't been down in years. Combination of not paying attention and not expecting a hole to be there I guess. I was wondering why I didn't try and manual the front wheel over it, but I think I only worked out it was a hole to late. It had grass growing out of it so it'd been there for a fair while. Probably a nice little obstacle if you knew it was there, thanks climbo. ;)

Bike seemed to ride home okay. I was paying more attention to myself than the bike. Everything looks fine though.

shoulda had the docs throw the fork in the x-ray machine when they did your melon :D

any scars?

Yeah, no amount of warning or reading/hearing about it could've prepared me for how hard it is.
Which Vets are you with? Have you ridden at METEC (Kilsyth)? 8 bloody corners!!

Southern Vets.

the whole reason I went there was becasue I thought Sandown had no slow corners!! It's much better that a short course, but there's still bloody corners, and a bit of hill out the back!!

Great course, though: no gutters, grass on each side on the road, a pit lane.....cool!!

sounds like I won't be going to METEC :)

They actually couldn't get a clear image of my spine when they tried to get an x-ray of it front on. They had a couple of gos and couple get anything. Must mean I'm spineless. *groan* ;)

Yeah, got a nice lot of bark off from the right corner of my mouth around to the ear. It's only really deep near my mouth though. I was riding home poking at the would trying to see if I had any holes that went right through. ;)

So I'm not having any luck on this new bike. 10 years on the old Trek since I had a stack on it. So far I've had 5 on this new thing and I'm still not going as fast as I used to on the Trek. These new bikes are overrated.

You blokes have gotta find a nice 500m hotdog course somewhere. Excellent interval training in those races. Good for setting new maxHR endurance records :D

Hey Sacc, that was you in that pic you posted a few weeks back, right?

what are those red tyres on your bike?

I think it's more my crappy cornering skills: if i'm near the back I'll lose at least 5 meters on the faster corners, then i'm off the saddle, sprinting as fast as I can for 100m :p

Also, the last race I did I had a newish Pro Race on the front, and I could hear it squeaking around each corner, even though I scuffed up the sides of the tread with some sandpaper. I thought it was slipping

Sure was. What a fine specimen I bet you all thought. :p

They were Michelin ProRace 1's. I got 4 of em cheap at the end of 04 from Probikekit and am on the last 2 now. Grip well if you keep riding em and don't let them get hard. Quality seems funny with them. 3 never punctured. 1 punctured quite often. All in all they were good though. Don;t know what the ProRace 2's are like.

ahh, that'd feel like home again :)

Are you racing at Braeside this Sunday? East vs South?

hmmmmmm.....9am? Don't think so :)

do you know if I can use my license at Eastern Vets?

So go up a cog before you get into the corner, stay off the brakes, and stand as soon as the guy in front gets on the gas again.

Squeaking was probably the new tyre beading squirming on the rim, not the road surface. Add 10psi on Thursday so the tube presses the clincher harder onto the rim.

hmmmm....interesting.

You're a motorbike guy, aren't cha?

I reckon motorbikers know more about tyres than anyone.

that's what Danno said. Seems to happen more with Pro Races than any other tyre I've had.

I've raced there with Blackburn a while ago. Pertty technical course, and even less fun when it starts to rain! But better than Kew Boulevard circuit in the wet :eek: That's a no go zone if there is any chance of it being rain affected.

and don't go to the back of the pack, you'll be sprinting your arse off all day. :)

Used to be a motorbike guy. Ended up costing me to much in crashes and lost licences so I gave them up for a while. That was about 5 years ago now. Love to get another one. Just need a better paying job. ;)

But yeah, I used to know what worked on motorbikes. Still trying to learn on the pushies.

Yeah. Mine are squeaky buggers when put back on the rim.

Yep, they told me that I can race in any Vet club.

yeah, found that out the hard way... well, sort of... I noticed a couple of things riding in the pack that surprised me.
First was that they were all much more tentative going into turns than I expected, and I noticed that when I'd dropped off the back (did that quite a bit) I could get back to the pack after a couple of turns, mainly through corner speed.
I'm not trying to sound like a smartarse or anything... my mate commented on the same thing. (we're A&B grade road racers so entry speed and corner speed are what we do)
The other thing was that the other guys didn't like getting too close. I was expecting a fair bit of biff, but it was nothing like that at all. :)