Cycling UK Forum

How about reading what I write, rather than being, frankly, rude?

If you scan back over my entire contribution to this thread, you won’t find a single word of “scaremongering”, and neither will you find me making intemperate accusations against other contributors when my own views are very slightly challenged.

Did you feel even the slightest sensation of “butterflies” simultaneous with the spike?

And, has it happened before/since?

If so, worth getting checked out.

I had the same affect, spike when backing-off at the top of tough hills, sometimes accompanied by a tiny bit of butterflies, so the specialist rigged me with a recording ECG and off I went for a ride. The results showed very minor, short duration mis-firing as I backed-off from full effort.

That then led on to a very thorough look at heart function, all good, and after much hemming and hawing being told that it didn’t look threatening, so basically not to worry too much about it, but also to manage more carefully the amount of time I spend at >90% HR, because prolonged thrashing away at >90% HR is not good for overall heart health.

There was no suggestion from any of the medics involved that I was acting like a hypochondriac, and I was told ‘if you feel butterflies seek advice’. Fortunately, one of the medics was a keen cyclist himself, so I felt that I got good advice from someone who understood both perspectives, cardiology and cycling!

All this did lead me to drop the size of front ring on the bike I use most, which has 1 x 11 gearing, which has slowed me down a tiny bit, but been beneficial overall.

For reference, I’m just short of 63yo.

Vorpal

You seem to have overlooked “reasonable practicability” in what you say.

I would suggest that if people were cycling as part of their work (some are I guess) we would do all that is reasonably practicable to reduce risk to them while doing so, which might include issuing them with a helmet, which is after all a low-cost thing to do, and possibly reduces risk to some extent. I’d be really surprised if people who cycle while employed aren’t issued with helmets, and required to wear them.

Kevin

Mattheus

What question are you trying to answer?

I get that you think it’s the most important question, but maybe I wasn’t paying attention when you said what it was.

Kevin

I would ask also: effective at achieving what?

There seem to be multiple, overlapping questions at play in this thread. Is the question, for instance: how best can we protect cyclists against head injuries (which the helmet focus implies)? Or, how best can we maximise bicycle usage, while containing resultant head injuries to an acceptable level? Or, the same, but expanding the question to all injuries? Or, or, or ……

Unless the question is clearly defined, nobody on earth will be able to work out what data are needed in order to answer it, and unless/until there is consensus that it is the right question to ask, it will never get answered, because everyone will spend their time debating that point.

If I were engaged in this discussion as part of my paying work, rather than to stave off boredom while recovering from covid, I would get everyone to focus first on defining and agreeing upon the question, then to focus on deciding what data might be needed in order to answer it, then on looking to see whether the data exist already, or whether it might be necessary to commission work to obtain the data.

Yes, I injured the lower part of my back c5 years ago, and although it’s generally been perfectly fine since, “the wrong thing” will provoke it, and one of the things that I have to go carefully about is lifting my bike over gates etc.

For carrying up and down steps at railway stations, I always put my arm over the crossbar and grip the seat-tube down near the bottom bracket, which keep the weight close in to the body, and makes the lifting action something that happens in the legs, not the back or arm.

My limited, and admittedly unscientic, observation in the NL is that the vast majority of the vast amount of cycling falls into what i would call the "low energy; low probability" bracket, and takes places on very good reserved cycleways, very much akin to my shopping and school trips on my slow bike, where I don't wear a helmet, ditto what I saw in Denmark in the suburbs of Copenhagen.

Random anecdote: while in NL, we went for a ride on an excellent preserved rural steam tramway. At the start of the run, an extra carriage was shunted onto the train, for a party from the equivalent of the Women's Institute, who were to join later in the journey. When we stopped out in the sticks to pick-up the WI, I was mega-impressed that they were all on sturdy bikes, about thirty or forty women, who then proceeded to heave their velcipedes up into the carriage, which functioned as a mobile bike rack, after which they came to sit with the rest of the passengers.

"That is probably the reason that the manufacturers have stated they do not protect against concussion [forgive me, I don't have a citation to hand]."

Its OK, I don't need a citation, you only have to look at one to know that it will offer barely any meaningful protection against concussion, because a thin hard shell, plus very dense foam, will transmit force direct to the skull with barely any deformation, so barely any decelaration, and barely any dissipation of energy.

What they probably do do with some effectiveness is spread the impact load over a wider zone, so reduce the probability of a cracked skull for a given impact.

Regarding snagging, I do think that changes in shape and surface material might help, but you are right, even a full-face motorcyle helmet isn't fully proof against the problem.

None of which says to me that cycling helmets are a bad idea, just that they might be susceptible to improvement.

"I've yet to meet anyone who has had Covid, or knows anyone who has had it....."

Without wishing to be rude, that suggests that you must live a very cloistered life, because the well-founded estimate is that, in England one person in every sixteen was infected last week, and that something like 45 Million people in the UK, roughly two thirds, have had it at some point over the past two years, and while there is plenty of evidence to suggest that socio-economic status correlates quite strongly with outcomes, the correlation with probability of catching it is nothing like strong. As a random and not entirely serious example, Prince Charles is quite posh, and he's had it twice hasn't he?

Of those that I think of as my immediate family, none of whom spends their days swigging cider on the town hall steps, twelve of us have had it, and three haven't. Of those three, one is thankfully my mother, who lives on her own in really cloistered circumstances, the other two being one of my brothers and his wife, both retired, who, like me until last week, have dodged it probably because they tend to be mostly "outdoor types".

Been there, done it, and the only practical, all-weather option is to change at the office.

I used to leave a couple of suits at work, and take them direct to/from the dry-cleaner from there. You can do the same with shirts, but it gets expensive, so I used to pannier five shirts in on a monday, and pannier five home for washing and ironing on a friday.

You can buy very specialist smart cycle wear, but it is expensive, and I've never fathomed how anyone who uses it deals with the typical british weather scenario of arriving at work drenched ........ do they just sit there steaming like a damp dog all morning?

Cycling to the station, then train commuting from there, can be even more baffling, because you are then faced with either a train ride while steaming like a damp dog, or changing at the station, which isn't a practical proposition.

see page 11 of discussions
There is an issue that helmets could make rotational levels higher and increase the accident risk.

Its back to the "some scenarios" problem again. The way the abstract of that report summarises things, under most scenarios the helmet is beneficial, but under some the reverse is true.

It still feels to me as if scientific/medical knowledge has limits, and contains uncertainties, to the degree that the best one can currently do is try to form an informed judgement based on what is published, and the range of possible scenarios, an "on balance" judgement effectively.

What none of it does in my view is make a clear case for compulsory helmet-wearing for all cyclist, under all conditions ....... its not like seat-belt law, where the evidence in favour of compulsion is compelling.

But, I do wonder whether part of the issue might be that cycle-helmet design is still fairly primitive, an analogy might be seat-belts in the pre-inertia-reel, pre-three-point-attachment days, when some were bordering on being worse than not wearing one at all in some scenarios. Might it be possible to create practically useable cycle helmets that give a broader range of protection, without negatives like excessive mass or impaired sight-lines? As an engineer, i have to ask! To me, the current ones seem to lack "crumple zone", which is what gives controlled decelaration to reduce concussion, and include features that can lead to snagging, and the very high rotational forces under some scenarios.

The two rings vs one debate is now pretty old, and will probably never be resolved conclusively, but my three pence-worth is as follows:

Off road and riding at fairly high intensity 1 x 11 is very good fun, somewhat similar to cyclocross in many ways, and, again like cyclocross, it can get pretty tiring because you end-up riding in “not the perfect gear”, pushing yourself, for a significant proportion of the time.

On the road with a 1 x 11, actually the same applies, it’s just that what constitute suitable ratios change - you need more top, and less bottom.

With a 10-42 on the back, and speaking as an old bloke, I reckon you want 38 or 40 on the front for off-road, and 44 or 46 for on-road.

So, 1 x 11 alright for maybe two hours-snack stop-two hours on a given day. Once you get beyond that, and want to do three or four two hour slots in a day, and/or keep it up for several days on the trot, you really need closer gear selection in order to control tiredness, and especially so if you are riding a mixture of road and off-road.

I’ve ridden what amounted to almost exactly the same nearly all off road week-long tour on my 1 x 11 repurposed CX bike, and on a tourer with 3 x 10, and the closer ratios definitely reduced tiredness, although the tourer is a lead slug, and really boring to ride. The best bike around for this sort of stuff is possibly the Croix de Fer, fitted with two rings at the front, selected to match personal style/age/fitness, but the OP clearly wants something less off-road, and lighter than that.

Advice in one sentence: go for two rings at the front unless you are confining yourself to relatively short rides.

“ The catastrophic brain injury worry is mainly down to culture: we have collectively decided it's very likely, but as decades of racing without helmets didn't produce an outsize tendency to catastrophic brain injury it seems like a worry beyond the likelihood.”

In risk terms, CBI when cycling is a classic “low probability; high consequence” event, and such things always cause huge debate about the extent of precautions that it is worth taking against them …… it’s hugely difficult, impossible effectively, to obtain universal consensus around low probability, high consequence events, partly because individuals obtain different levels of benefit (the opposite side of the equation from risk) from whatever activity gives rise to the risk

“ I do struggle with this line of argument a bit. Your dead slow rides are what helmets are designed for, and your quicker-paced ones aren't. Helmets are fundamentally designed and tested for the impacts resulting from a vertical fall from a standing start (i.e., basically, falling over sideways when stopped).

So whilst it seems like common sense to wear more protection when the risk is greater, and that faster rides carry more risk, all other things being equal, it does also sound a little like arguing that you'll not bother with a bullet-proof vest in an infantry battle, but you will when facing tank fire.”

I don’t wear a helmet when walking, and assess the head impact risks of my “shopping rides” to be no greater than when walking ….. a trivial level of risk essentially.

And, I get that a helmet doesn’t provide complete protection in a very high energy head impact, but it does provide some protection under some circumstances (it can make the difference between a smashed skull with catastrophic brain injury, and severe but recoverable concussion), added to which even at a higher pace, there are plenty of crash scenarios in which the main impact isn’t to the head, but the head does benefit from protection. I assess the probability of me having a higher energy crash to be non-trivial, and that the helmet could provide decisive protection in some (by no means all) such crash scenarios.

If you notice, infantry troops going into a battle that involves tanks don’t fling off their helmets and body armour on the basis that a direct hit from a tank shell will turn them to red mist irrespective (which it will), they continue to wear both, because they offer some protection against the flying shrapnel, associated small arms fire, falling debris etc. which characterise such battles. It’s the same “some scenarios” logic that I’m applying.

“so the only question is how do you live with it.”

I will repeat my view that the only real questions are: when will each of us catch it, and how badly?

“Living with it” and “catching it” are synonymous, given how incredibly prevalent and transmissible it is.

In terms of death rates, England (I can only seem to find figures for England alone) is experiencing fewer deaths than typical for the time of year:

Based on my experience of trying to get over it right now, and the experiences of everyone in my family when they all had it a couple of months ago, the overall severity is a about the same as proper ‘flu (not “man ‘flu”), although the symptoms are distinct, so the older you are, and/or the less generally fit you are, the longer it puts you out of action.

Trying to stage an heroic recovery, rather than taking it gently, doesn’t seem to work: my generally fit as a flea teenage son went back to his rather full-on regime of badminton and football too quickly which actually prolonged his recovery time, as did a couple of other lads in his footy team.

This seems to summarise all the best advice that is floating around. Losing five or six weeks proper cycling is a right annoyance, but better than going too mad too soon, and losing seven or eight: