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 Shimano 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?