Wrapped

"Wrapping" at year end is a big thing now, isn't it? So although the year is not quite over, with eleven days of possible activity left, here are some highlights from my Strava "year in sport" to date.

This includes anything and everything I've recorded on Strava, not just cycling, but even so a couple of things stand out. It's flat where I live: in the whole year I've only managed just over 93,000ft of elevation ... and a big chunk of that was climbing a very high mountain overseas. Astonishing, really, when you consider I notched the best part of 56,000ft in nine days doing LEJOG. And how is lazy, unfit old me in the top 4% of most active users by time recorded? Because I record nearly everything, even one-mile round trips to the village shop, that's how.

Actual cycling-only figures for the year to date include:

• 1,436 miles covered (a whisker up on last year)
• 47,648 ft elevation climbed (so a lot more than an Everest but still less than one LEJOG)
• A longest ride of 149.55 miles, a lifetime PR ...
• ... but an annual Eddington of just 12 miles
• Over 122 hours in the saddle, probably 123 by the time I cycle home tonight
• About half of this year's miles were done on The Tank^TM, just over a quarter on Old Faithful and just under a quarter on the Project Bike

I might write some more about Eddington numbers in the new year, we'll see. My lifetime Eddington is currently 37 miles. In the meantime, more of my cycling stats are always available here.

Insane in the membrane

I'm not big on posting photos of myself, but this is during and after the 150 mile Insanity Sportive today.

Proof, if proof were needed, that the focus of my bike weight reduction strategy should really be to reduce my belly...

Here endeth the Bargain Bike Challenge

You remember my Bargain Bike Challenge? The task was basically this: could I buy a cheap secondhand bike and turn it into something decent, rather than spend thousands on a fancy new road bike?

It all started with me spending £200 on a 2016 Giant Defy 2 in mostly original condition. I wrote my intial assessment of it here if you're interested but in a nutshell, the brakes weren't very good, the wheels felt heavy and I wasn't convinced about the Tiagra 10-speed chainset. As bought, the bike weighed 9.6kg and looked more or less like this:

Sixteen months later, I'm bringing the Bargain Bike Challenge to an end, with the Defy weighing 8.25kg and looking like this:

The changes, highlighted in green above, are as follows. Any costs shown exclude things that I would have bought for any bike (like a Wahoo mount, tyres, inner tubes, and so on) and any items that I already had somewhere in the shed...

• Saddle: replaced Giant Performance Road with secondhand Selle Italia SLR Kit Carbonio Flow (£78.34)
• Brake calipers: replaced unbranded short-reach with a spare set of Shimano Ultegra R8000 I had knocking about
• Wheelset: replaced Giant SR-2 with secondhand Mavic Aksium Elite (£100)
• Pedals: put my Shiamno Ultegra R8000 SPD-SL set on
• Tyres: put new Continental Gatorskins on
• Tubes: fitted new Schwalbe Extra Light inner tubes
• Bottle holder: fitted secondhand Elite Vico Carbon bottle cage (£24.45 for two)
• Cockpit: fitted Wahoo Aero mount
• Handlebar: fitted new bar tape (£20)
• Bling: fitted Lifeline Professional carbon and titanium QR skewers (£18.99)

So excluding wear and tear items, things I would have bought for any bike and the sunk cost of items I had laying about in the shed, I spent a total of £441.78 on the project bike. But then I sold the old SR-2 wheelset for £40, so the net cost of the Bargain Bike Challenge was £401.78 - 400 quid for a road bike that is very comfortable, reasonably light and (with a better engine sat on it, rather than me) pretty swift, whilst also being an all-day endurance road-eater. All that, and without spending the couple of grand I was originally considering. Job done, right?

Well, maybe. For whilst I'm very happy with the results, and I don't have the budget to spend more, there are some niggles that I'd like to address. I'd like an Ultegra 11-speed chainset and I'd like 11-34 on the back. The Aksium Elite would take that, as would the long cage that's currently fitted, so who knows what the future will bring? Or what the future can afford?

For now, though, here endeth the Bargain Bike Challenge. It's been fun. You can review other posts in the series, including lots more detail about the various upgrades, with this link. Me, I'm off to do my first sportive on the project bike this weekend: 150 miles in a day on a "new" bike. What could go wrong?

Swarm

Finishing the Cycle Swarm 2023 25-mile sportive.

The weigh-in

I still don't have a fancy bike scale like the one pictured left. Until now, every time I wanted to weigh my bike or any large component all I could do was stand on my bathroom scale with and without the bike, and compare the difference. Not the most accurate method, I'm sure you'll agree. But the fancy bike scale currently costs in excess of £77 over at Jeff Bezos's place ... so what's a cyclist to do?

Well, what this cyclist has done is buy a hand-held luggage scale, that's what. Specifically, one with a strap rather than a hook, so I can easily hang a bike frame from it. And you know what, it works pretty well; a bit of experimentation is required to find the bike's centre of gravity, to get a nice, reproducible weight reading, but once you've done that, weighing a bike with a hand-held luggage scale is a doddle.

What's more, the scale I found, also at Amazon, costs £7. Yep, one eleventh of the Park Tools super scale. Yes, PT is undoubtedly superior ... but eleven times as good? I doubt it.

Anyway, you know what's coming next, don't you? The big weigh-in! First up, it's the Blue Steed, Old Faithful, the flat-bar road bike I did LEJOG on. According to my luggage scale, it is currently running (no bags, no lights, no bottle) at ... drumroll please...

Not bad for a bike that rolled out of the factory at 9.8 KG, OEM.

Next up, the Project Bike, the bargain bike challenge that is very nearly finished (photos and final spec to follow soon). This currently tips the (luggage) scale at a slightly disappointing:

I might be able to shave a bit more off that, but I should probably concentrate on my belly first as the best place to lose a few grammes.

And finally, for a laugh, The Tank™, a steel-framed mountain bike that is nearly 30 years old yet remains indestructable. Unsurprisingly, it is the fat boy of my bike rack:

So, the moral of this story seems to be, you can weigh your bikes quickly easily, without jumping on and off bathroom scales, and without blowing nearly 80 quid. And as a bonus you can also weigh your hand luggage before your next flight too...

P.S. Feel free to tell me how much lighter your bikes are than mine in the comments. I promise to be grudgingly envious :)

More of this kind of thing please! (Or, "re-cycling")

Spotted on LinkedIn - wind turbines recycled into bike shelters.

Pretty slick! pic.twitter.com/hKrFhrGzpl

— Max Wilson (@waxwellmilson) May 4, 2023

I love a graph

Doesn't everyone?

This show cumulative mileage since I started cycling again, in early 2018, annotated with key factors in explaining the trend.

I know literally no-one else cares about this kind of thing, but look! I even coloured the series line Strava orange...

Saddles... before and after

As part of the continued bargain bike challenge, I picked up a new saddle on ebay for a third of RRP. So here's a gratuitous before and after.

Before: Giant Performance Road saddle (OEM)

After: Selle Italia SLR Kit Carbonio Flow saddle with carbon rails

As you can see, according to the Kitchen Scales of Inaccuracy^TM, swapping out my saddle has saved me 209g - a weight reduction equal to very nearly five KitKats. And okay, I've yet to complete a long ride on the new saddle, but a very unscientific test (poking with my thumbs) suggests it is better padded than the saddle I did LEJOG on, so fingers crossed.

Bargain bike challenge update

So far, I've replaced both wheels, swapped out the QR swekers for some bargain super-light confections, switched the bottle holder for the very light one on my old bike, and removed extraneous items (notably the bracket that held an ineffective pump). Oh, and I've upgraded the brakes, fitting a pair of Ultegra calipers I had spare, and put a new tyre on the back wheel. The bike, which weighed 9.6kg when I got it, now tips the scales at approximately... (drum roll...)

Total expense so far, if you ignore regular maintenance items like tyres and tubes, is:

• The bike (secondhand): £200
• Wheelset (secondhand): £100
• New QR skewers: £18.99
• Total: £318.99

Everything else I either had already or has been swapped for kit on my old road bike, or is an expense that I would have incurred anyway if I'd bought a new bike as originally planned, like an aero Wahoo mount and Bike Register fees. Basically, I'm only counting costs that are unique to my purchase of the project bike, and that wouldn't have been otherwise incurred.

Anyway, the next job will be switch saddles, putting my superlight sliver of carbon on the proect bike. But that's a job for another day.

Leverage

"Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world."
Archimedes

Well, that's all very well, Archimedes, but I bet you never tried to remove a seized-on cassette from a Mavic Aksium Elite hub.

Yes, the same cassette I broke my budget Lifeline chain whip trying to remove, still won't budge. All credit to Wiggle, they replaced the broken chain whip with something more substantial, at no additional charge and with free next-day delivery. It really was perfect customer service. However. I still can't move the cassette, a seemingly lightly-used Shimano 105 eleven-speed 11-28T, even with an eighteen-inch breaker bar - the lockring just won't budge. So why not leave it on, I hear you say? Because the rest of my set-up is ten-speed, plus I much prefer the spread of cogs on the bike's existing 11-30T Tiagra cassette, that's why.

Anyway, the net result of all this is that the project bike is off to my LBS for them to have a crack at it. A cost I didn't want to incur, especially as I just saw a secondhand bike going locally this morning that wouldn't have needed anything doing to it to bring it up to snuff and which would probably end up cheaper (and better!) than the project bike is going to be, once it's all done. Oh well, in for a penny, in for a pound...

The immovable object