Week 48 metrics

23rd - 29th November:

• Total distance: 0mi
• Total elevation: 0ft
• Longest ride: 0mi
• Time in saddle: 0h 0m

Don't say anything. Just don't. Say. Anything.

Week 47 metrics

16th - 22nd November:

• Total distance: 19.37mi
• Total elevation: 430ft
• Longest ride: 10.76mi
• Time in saddle: 1h 29m

Money well spent ... and not so well spent

My latest weight reduction/upgrade was to replace the OEM bar-ends on my bike with some Extralite UltraEnds. Extralite have replaced these with the CyberEnds now, but I got the UltraEnds on eBay from a bloke in Italy for a bargain price, because one bolt was missing. Thanks to Extralite's excellent spares policy, I was able to source an original bolt (also from Italy). All told, I spent about £40 buying and completing these - not bad considering they would have been (a slightly mad) €99 new, and even better when you consider the g/£ weight saved to cost ratio, as evidenced by the Scales Of Inaccuracy™, look:

  

So, money well spent.

Less well spent was the £17 I parted with to buy an IceToolz Ocarina torque wrench. I'm usually a bit sceptical about such bargains, on the basis that they're probably cheap for a reason, but I was swayed by this complimentary review from the usually reliable BikeRadar. What arrived, again from an eBay seller, certainly looked the part, and I was glad to finally have the chance to use it. Turns out that gladness was short-lived. Yes, the Ocarina correctly tightened the bolt on the right bar-end to a torque of 5Nm. Fixing the left bar-end in place, the Ocarina got to about 4Nm and then something inside let go, so that the shaft now turns freely from side to side in the handle ... rendering it completely useless.

So is a £17 torque wrench that covers a range of 1-10 Nm too good to be true? Seems that way. Whilst there are certainly some areas of bike upgrade and maintenance where economies can be sensibly made, it turns out that torque wrench purchase is probably not one of them. Buy cheap, buy twice...

Week 46 metrics

9th - 15th November:

• Total distance: 24.42mi
• Total elevation: 961ft
• Longest ride: 5.34mi
• Time in saddle: 2h 12m

Week 45 metrics

2nd - 8th November:

• Total distance: 0.92mi
• Total elevation: 7ft
• Longest ride: 0.92mi
• Time in saddle: 0h 7m

Somehow, this pitiful sum is even worse than the zero recorded for last week...

Week 44 metrics

26th October - 1st November:

• Total distance: 0mi
• Total elevation: 0ft
• Longest ride: 0mi
• Time in saddle: 0h 00m

That's right, a big fat zero. In my defence, I went away for the week (whilst I still could, Tier 1 to Tier 1) and didn't take a bike with me...