Sometimes it's worth paying extra

We've all been there, weighing the cost of a branded item in the supermarket and wondering whether the cheaper own-brand equivalent is as good. Sometimes feeling agrieved when the packaging suggests the two were made and packaged in the same factory, with just a different label or wrapper slapped on at some point along the production line. I'm looking at you, bourbon biscuits. I'm looking at you, own-brand pain relief. Squash. Mouthwash. Loo roll. There are almost as many ways for us to be screwed over by brands as there are products on the shelves.

Sometimes, though, it's worth paying extra for the brand - an appreciable difference in quality for the extra cost. Jaffa Cakes, for one. Yorkshire Tea, for another. And, as it turns out, radar bike lights.

Full disclosure. I had the opportunity to try the Sigtuna radar rear light pictured for free, in exchange for a fair review on a well-known e-commerce platform. And for free, I shouldn't complain. But the gist of my 3-star review was this:

As a light, it works well. It has an excellent seatpost mount, a variety of light intensities and patterns, and is very visible. I feel seen! I can also report that the "standby" works, whereby the light goes off if you're stationary for 10 seconds or more. I'm not a big fan of this - I like to be visible when I'm standing at a junction - but your mileage may vary. Anyway, as a light this works very well. But what about as a radar device? Well, don't mistake this for a Garmin alternative - it doesn't talk to your cycle computer, and instead relies on a "cheep cheep" audio alert for an oncoming vehicle. That does work, and is clearly audible, but it claims to detect vehicles up to 70m behind you, and that's where the problem lies. A Garmin claims more than double that, but 70m would still be useful. However, in my tests commuting to work, the detection was more like 10m at best, and often less. If you haven't already heard or sensed a car behind you at less than 10m, you maybe shouldn't be cycling on public roads, but if you're relying on this to give you 70m warning, well, you're going to be disappointed. A real shame.

But here's the rub. This Sigtuna radar light currently retails at £30. The latest, greatest Garmin, the RCT715, is £300. Ten times as much! But it actually works, and is widely acknowledged to be class-leading. Whereas the Sigtuna is just a nice light that beeps when you already knows there's a car behind you. So just a light, then, basically. And there are other good rear lights available for less than 30 quid.

I asked an AI LLM (Google's Gemini) why the Sigtuna's radar performance was so poor, and if there was anything I could do to improve it. This was the (annoyingly excellent and comprehensive) response:

The short answer is that cheap budget-friendly radar lights (like the £30 Sigtuna) often suffer from severe hardware limitations, including low-grade radar transmitter-receiver modules, weak signal processing, poor antenna tuning, and a lack of proper firmware filtering.

While name-brand units (like the Garmin Varia or Coospo TR70) use high-spec components and sophisticated Doppler-shift algorithms to filter out environmental noise and pick up vehicles from a safe distance, ultra-budget units often cut corners to hit a low price point. As a result, they struggle to separate real vehicle signatures from background noise beyond a few meters, reducing their effective range to almost nothing.

Unfortunately, there is very little you can do to physically improve the radar's range or detection capability, as it is bottlenecked by its internal hardware. However, a few positioning and troubleshooting steps can ensure you aren't accidentally making it worse:

• Check the Mount Angle: Ensure the light is mounted completely vertically and straight. If the unit is angled too far downward toward the road or tilted toward one side, the radar beam will project into the tarmac or off to the shoulder rather than scanning the straight path of oncoming traffic behind you.
• Clear Obstructions: Make sure there are no saddlebags, loose straps, or mud flaps hanging directly behind or below the unit that could block or distort the radar waves.
• Accept It as a "Light Only": Treat the device purely as a well-mounted, highly visible rear light with a bonus audio cue for cars that are already right on top of you. Relying on it for early hazard warning isn't safe, so sticking to traditional situational awareness (and regular glances if safe to do so) remains your best bet.

Ultimately, because reliable vehicle tracking requires precision radio-frequency hardware and advanced processing, this is a case where the old adage holds true: you generally get what you pay for.

At least my "real" intelligence came to the same conclusion - just accept it as a "light only".

TLDR: If - and if it's a massive if - the Sigtuna worked as claimed, and detected vehicles 70m away, or even something close to that, it would be a great bargain and easy to recommend. As it is, it seems that radar rear lights must join Jaffa Cakes and Yorkshire Tea as products worth paying extra for. ★★★☆☆

BUY: Sigtuna radar rear light, currently £29.99 from Amazon

Full disclosure: I received this item for free in exchange for an honest review.

Don't jinx it

I haven't had a puncture for two years and counting.

Regular readers (ha!) may recall that, after a spate of punctures on my commuter bike in Autumn 2024, I bit the bullet and fitted some heavy-duty (and just plain heavy) Schwalbe tyres, and Slime inner tubes. I haven't had a puncture on that, or any other bike since.

For context, I should add that I have cycled 1,678 miles on that trusty old flat-bar since fitting those parts, and over 3,000 miles on all bikes in total. All without a single puncture.

Now I've written this, you know what's bound to happen when I cycle home from work today...

The wheels have come off

Here's the quarterly update of progress against annual cycling goals which, slightly revised because of this, are now:

1. Complete 1,750 miles distance
2. Complete 54,500 feet of elevation
3. Record an annual Eddington of 17 miles (requiring 17 days of 17+ miles)
4. Increase lifetime Eddington from 45 miles to 47 (requiring two days of 47+ miles)

Sit-rep after Q3:

So the wheels have fallen off, basically. I've gone from being more or less on track across the board to being significantly behind on everything. There are reasons, but they're mostly personal and not for a cycling blog. As it stands, I think the only goal I have a chance (slim) of hitting is the 17 mile annual Eddington. A shame but, in the grand scheme of things, not that important.

See you in three months for another update. I know, I spoil you...

Commuting vs working from home

I used to rack up a lot of miles commuting, so many in fact that I never needed to find a reason to get a bike out - I was just on one, five days a week, rain or shine.

I know 2026 is far from over, and it will surpass last year in terms of commuter days, but getting the mileage in is much harder than it used to be.

Doing alright...ish

I'm a couple of days late with this (again), but here's the quarterly update of progress against annual cycling goals which, slightly revised because of this, are now:

1. Complete 1,750 miles distance
2. Complete 54,500 feet of elevation
3. Record an annual Eddington of 17 miles (requiring 17 days of 17+ miles)
4. Increase lifetime Eddington from 45 miles to 47 (requiring two days of 47+ miles)

Sit-rep after Q2:

Yes, I did change the graph colour scheme. It looks nicer on my new, dedicated Stats page.

Anyway, the goals: I'm mostly doing alright but, as with the last update, I need to have some long days in the saddle. No surprise there.

See you in three months for another update. Try to contain your excitement.

Giant Cima mitts

I haven't written a kit review for ages, mostly because I buy the majority of my bits and bobs secondhand. However, I was in the market for a pair of mitts for commuting, now the weather has turned warmer, and ended up plumping for these Giant Cima short-fingered gloves. So what are they like?

I chose these because I want decent padding, but don't want gel pads. In my experience, they compress and become less effective over time. Your mileage may vary, but they're not for me; I prefer an old-school pad. I've also been spoiled in recent years, using excellent DHB Aeron mitts for all my serious rides. So I expect a lot from a glove.

Mostly, these Giant mitts deliver. They feel very well made, stitching is tidy, and the materials, especially the sweat-wipe thumb, have a quality feel. The all-important padding is firm but comfortable and, for me at least, in exactly the right places. Even the price - £14.99 plus P&P at the time of writing - feels alright for a branded product. And although they do an all-black variant, I went against type and bought the black and white colourway shown, complete with reflective branding across the knuckles. Can't hurt to be better seen, right? So why only four stars?

It's the sizing. I have always worn a Large in cycling gloves and, after consulting the Giant size chart, saw no reason to change that. These, though, are ironically not giant. In fact, they may be the tightest Large mitts I have ever tried. They are just wearable enough for me not to return them, but they are very hard to get off, being so tight. In fact, I had to roll them off this morning, so that they ended up inside-out. This wasn't helped by a complete absence of any pull-tabs to help remove the gloves, which seems like quite a basic oversight these days.

TLDR: these are good quality, nice looking gloves at a fair price, but size up! Consult the chart, then order one size up from whatever that says. And if you have ham-hands, maybe look elsewhere... ★★★★☆

BUY: Cima mitts, currently £14.99 from Giant

Full disclosure: I bought these with my own money. If anyone wants to give me kit in exchange for an honest review, I'm open to that, but unless I explicitly say otherwise everything I review on here will be sourced and paid for by yours truly.

It's a numbers game

I've mentioned my Google Sheets tool that consumes all my Strava data via an API, and let's me slice and dice everything the way I want. There's nothing new there. But drilling down into some figures last night, I noticed some anomalies. It was a lot of elevation in 2019, more than I could remember doing. So I started investigating... and found multiple rides that year that were duplicated. There was even a pattern - rides recorded on my Wahoo Elemnt Bolt, synchronised to Strava and then edited to change the name. So these rides were effectively stored twice, once with the default name, once with the edited name. I've been through Strava and deleted all the duplicates, and whatever the problem was it didn't seem to happen after 2019, at least not for me, so my stats are in a better place now even if I haven't cycled quite as far as I thought.

This reckoning has sliced 1 off my Eddington number though, annoyingly. In turn, this has required me to revise my Eddington-related cycling goal for this year. It was:

• Increase lifetime Eddington from 46 miles to 48 (requiring three days of 48+ miles)

And it's now:

• Increase lifetime Eddington from 45 miles to 47 (requiring two days of 47+ miles)

Bugger.

If nothing else, that feels more achievable. Silver linings, eh?

A mixed bag

I'm a couple of days late with this, but here's the quarterly update of progress against annual cycling goals which, in case you've forgotten (or care), are:

1. Complete 1,750 miles distance
2. Complete 54,500 feet of elevation
3. Record an annual Eddington of 17 miles (requiring 17 days of 17+ miles)
4. Increase lifetime Eddington from 46 miles to 48 (requiring three days of 48+ miles)

Sit-rep after Q1:

So, I'm mostly doing okayish, but need to have some long days in the saddle. No surprise there.

See you in three months for another update. Try to contain your excitement.

Another year of failure

Remember those cycling goals for 2025? And if you do, do you care how I did? If so, prepare to be disappointed.

To recap, my goals for the year were:

1. Complete 1,800 miles distance
2. Complete 55,000 feet of elevation
3. Record an annual Eddington of 17 miles (requiring 17 days of 17+ miles)
4. Increase lifetime Eddington from 43 miles to 46 (requiring six days of 46+ miles)

Here's a sit-rep at year end:

So, I failed on distance, for reasons I discussed briefly at the last update, only managing 85.7% of target. I did better on elevation, but still only managed 94% of what I'd hoped for. I only managed 12 days of 17 miles or more toward my annual Eddington target, but at least managed an annual E of 16.

As for my lifetime Eddington goal... well, that's a longer story. It's achieved but only because I realised a mistake in my calculations for it. My Google Sheets spreadsheet tool that hooks into the Strava API and does all my stats assesses all timestamps in co-ordinated universal time (UTC) but Strava timstamps are local (GMT/BST for me). So during British Summer Time, any rides that I started between mindight and 1am were being assigned to the wrong day for the purposes of Eddington calculations. I've now fixed the spreadsheet but this had a bigger effect than you might think, which shows how often in my Strava cycling life I've cycled home from a night out in the witching hour. Anyway, the upshot of all this is that although I only managed two days in 2025 where I rode 46+ miles, my lifetime Eddington is actually now 46 miles, my original target for year end. Hooray. Well done me.

What about targets for 2026? Well, I'm relucatant to row back too much on distance and elevation - I feel these are realistic goals, notwithstanding the issues I had to deal with in the summer of '25 (which, inevitably, will recur, if not in '26 then at some point). I've set Eddington goals too, though the beauty of that particular metric is that it becomes progressively harder to advance, so they're modest goals. In summary then, here are my goals for 2026:

1. Complete 1,750 miles distance
2. Complete 54,500 feet of elevation
3. Record an annual Eddington of 17 miles (requiring 17 days of 17+ miles)
4. Increase lifetime Eddington from 46 miles to 48 (requiring three days of 48+ miles)

Wish me luck, if you like.

I've got an excuse this time

Remember those cycling goals for 2025? Well, for reasons I won't go into here, they've taken a bit of a back seat this quarter, as I was barely able to get out on the bike at all during July and August. So although I've had a decent September (my third most miles in a month since I did LEJOG in 2021), it looks like being too little, too late.

To recap, my goals for the year are:

1. Complete 1,800 miles distance
2. Complete 55,000 feet of elevation
3. Record an annual Eddington of 17 miles (requiring 17 days of 17+ miles)
4. Increase lifetime Eddington from 43 miles to 46 (requiring six days of 46+ miles)

Here's an sit-rep after the third quarter:

Still behind on all counts... and unlikely to catch up, especially on the Eddington-related targets, as I don't have any sportives planned for the rest of the year. On the plus side, I have managed to increase my lifetime Eddington from 43 to 44. Whoop-de-doo, tarantula town.