The Cycling Thread

Any Garmin users? Just picked up a Venu 2 (which is great) but its uploading all of my gym sessions and stuff to Strava when I only want it to do cycling. Anyone know if there's a way to pick what activities it uploads?

You could set everything to private by default, then un-private bike stuff manually. Or try some third part filter type thing like strautomator.com/home

I think my forerunner uploads everything to strava. I just delete the gym sessions & rowing manually from strava.

Anybody know and can recommend an insurer who might cover my bicycle hire on holiday next week? Get a member discount with British Cycling via Bikmo, but it's all reselling/rebranding, and while they cover ski hire, they don't mention bike hire in their docs.

There can be a difference, no way of knowing without trying and/or risking your braking ability. I stick to OEM pads personally but pretty much everyone riding on aftermarket ones doesn’t die

Disk or rim pads? If rim, I've just fitted a set of jagwire ones (£3.99 per pair on wiggle) and they seem fine for my billy basic road bike. They stop, and so far they do not squeak.

Yeah disc. They're pretty quiet although they've started making a bit of noise in the wet recently.

I've been told that squealing discs generally means shit on the rotors rather than anything to do with the pads. Alcohol based cleaner to degrease them might help?

Really? Nice to know. The aesthetics of discs with less wires etc looks nicer on a new bike, but I sort of know where i'm at with rim brakes and can adjust them if required. 


How easy are discs to adjust if you change pads, or need to remove the wheel to fix a puncture etc? 

I've ordered some Clarks ones for a fiver so if stop posting you know why.

I worked it out that if I only rode discs, I’d be spending £500 per year on OEM pads at the rate they wear out. It’s cheaper to just ride a carbon rim wheel through winter and buy a new set of bora 50s every 5 years

I used Gorilla pads off ebay, about 7 quid a go, Shimano ice-tech things are just silly money. I don't bleed them every new set either, maybe do that every 18 months, might top them up once or twice in between bleeds. Organic pads maybe less inclined to squeal but don't last as long by the way.
My main complaint with Shimano road discs is setting them up, the clearances are so tiny any warping on your rotor and you're buggered, and Shimano rotors are thinner than others so more inclined to get damaged. Even set up well you get rub at the bottom of a long descent as the rotor heats up.. gah.

Shimano ice tech are also prone to delaminating for the alloy core when the steel wears thin enough.

The only noise campy carbon rims make with their red pads is an incredibly sexy woosh like a turbine spooling down. Sounds like an Angel singing softly in your ear while tickling your nuts with her wing

First day back cycling to work after a loooooong time. Less than an hour cycling and already had a back and forth with an aggro bus driver who was shouting at a woman for cycling in the middle of the road ahead of a right turn at a crossroads.

Tbf, also witnessed 20+ cyclists dicing with death whizzing over red lights at junctions.

So much aggression for 3 minutes of life.