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.

Not even close to on-target

Sigh. Remember those cycling goals for 2025?

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 update after the second quarter:

So... behind on all counts... and I'd be even further behind if I hadn't just done a small sportive. I have one other of a similar length lined up for later in the year, but that's it. I'm not going to meet any of these targets, am I?

Weight...wait...

The Tank™'s diet continues, with another saddle change. I picked up a secondhand Selle Italia Kevlar Gel Flow saddle on Ebay for the princely sum of £40.41. It's quite an old one but is in fair condition and, crucially for my purposes, tips the scales at just 180g. That's pretty light for any saddle, but especially for an MTB-specific one.

Whatever, that's a further 160g shaved off the bike as a whole, bringing the whole thing down to 13.05kg. Not bad considered it started at 14.5...

There is still more to do, but am starting to get to the point where big differences will be hard to make. Still, every little helps, right?

Helpfully/unhelpfully

As you'll know from recent posts, I'm trying to shave some flab off The Tank™. The next obvious candidate for an easy weight loss is the seatpost, currently the OEM alloy post from the mid-90s. With a good carbon post, I could probably save at least 150g, if not more. And this is where it turns into an ISIHAC parlour-game.

Helpfully the current seatpost still bears an original sticker, proclaiming it to be 26.4mm in diameter.

Unhelpfully part of the sticker is missing, and I interpreted what was left as 25.4mm.

Helpfully this used to be quite a common size for Cannondale bikes, so they, ENVE, Zipp, FSA and a very few others make a carbon post this size.

Unhelpfully they are ruinously expensive.

Helpfully there are some on Ebay.

Unhelpfully these are still quite expensive, or don't have the right offset, or are overseas and ruled out by extortionate postage charges.

Helpfully, I found what looked a like possible candidate in the shape of an old Easton EC70.

Unhelpfully they didn't list the diameter in the description, only the length and offset.

Helpfully they did include this picture, which suggested the post was 25mm or a whisker over:

I should not have relied on this...

Unhelpfully I relied on this, and took a punt.

Helpfully the post arrived quickly, beautifully packaged and in great used condition.

Unhelpfully there was no way in a million years it would fit The Tank™ - my middle-Lidl digital vernier caliper suggested it was actually more like 27.2 mm across. And that the partially stickered OEM post is actually 26.4mm. Bugger.

In a fit of pique, I rummaged around in a toolbox, found a hacksaw and lopped about two inches off the old alloy post. The Kitchen Scales of Inaccuracy™ suggest this realised a weight saving of 27g, for free. And I now have a 27.2mm carbon seatpost to sell on Ebay. The moral of the story? Don't be fooled by photographs, and get yourself a caliper. And/or a hacksaw.

Behind on all counts

Remember those cycling goals for 2025?

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 update after the first quarter:

So... behind on all counts... and still no sportives lined up for this year yet. I've got some work to do.

Oh, and regarding the annual Eddington target of 17. Really annoying when this happens: bad route planning on my part.

The Tank™ is on a diet

As mentioned last time, I'm trying to breathe a bit of life into The Tank™, a 30yr-old steel mountain bike that has been through the mill but is seemingly indestructible.

Part of that resuscitation involves putting the whole thing on a diet, and I was quite pleased to have shaved nearly half a kilogram off last time. But why stop there? As it happens, the old girl needed new tyres, the old pair having clocked very nearly 4,000 puncture-free miles.

So my starting point was a 26 x 1.9" Schwalbe Land Cruiser on the front and a 26 x 2.0" Land Cruiser Plus on the rear. Don't ask why they were different widths - that's what happens when a bike shop only has certain tyres in stock. Anyway, they came off and a last-gen pair of new Land Cruisers went on, but narrower: 26 x 1.75". And I was amazed at the weight saving. My admittedly increasingly inaccurate luggage scale reckoned the old front tyre was 700g but its replacement was 350g. And an even bigger reduction came from changing the rear.

The upshot of all this is that The Tank™ now tips the scales at something like 13.25kg, more than a kilo lighter than it was this time last month. And because the tyres were last-gen, i.e. last year's model, they were only £11 each. So my secondary aim of rejuvenating the old girl on the cheap holds up too.

Wondering what I can do next? The seatpost is an obvious candidate but being an old-school MTB it's a funny size: 25.4mm. Don't find too many carbon posts that size. I might have to result to more rudimentary changes, as in pulling the post out and seeing if there's scope for cutting it down a bit. Now, where's my hacksaw...?

Life in the old dog yet?

You may have seen me refer to The Tank™ on here before. Well, here it is:

The only thing older and more clapped out than this bike is its rider.

For clarity, this is a Saracen Rufftrax that I bought new from Halfords in Folkestone, Kent, all the way back in 1995, for the princely sum (then) of £199.99 - as you can see, it is not all original (that's a padded but very comfortable Wittkop saddle from middle-Lidl, of all places, and Giant bar-ends, for starters) but is, for the most part, the same bike I did the 1996 London to Brighton bike ride on, incredibly.

It was starting to feel very tired though. Last October, I had to bite the bullet and find some new shifters, because I just couldn't change gear any more. I managed to find an as-new compatible Shimano set, still boxed, from an Ebayer in the US who bought them for his kids' MTBs years ago, never used them and then rediscovered them at the back of his garage. Result. They went on and suddenly I could change gear again. I put a new rear mech on at the same time.

I also upgraded the brakes, which felt like a more significant change because it meant a move away from period correctness - I swapped out the old cantilever brakes and fitted V brakes instead. I can stop a bit better now (though the gain is marginal).

I've been using The Tank™ all through the winter for commuting, which is why it's in the state it was at the weekend, propped up against the table tennis table in the back garden. But having spent time and money keeping it usable, money that could easily have bought something half-decent (and modern) on the used market, I suddenly realised that I have committed to keeping the old beast on the road. And that, having made concessions to modernisation with the change of brakes, the shackles were off in terms of other modifications.

Let's be clear, although it's technically a mountain bike, most of the time it's on the road, just in bad weather. So the fact that it weighs a tonne is an issue. Okay, not a tonne ... but I picked it up with a fairly accurate luggage scale on Saturday and it clocked 14.5kg. That's a lot, and needs to change. However, I also don't want to spend a lot on the bike. It doesn't owe me anything, but I have other bikes that I'd rather spend money improving. So, my goal is to see if there's life in the old bike yet, but do so without spending too much... and this is how I started at the weekend:

⮜	OFF:	Wittkop Medicus MTB saddle	-	430g
⮞	ON:	Giant Performance Road saddle	No cost (had it spare in the garage)	340g
⮜	OFF:	Saracen OEM alloy handlebar	-	416g
⮞	ON:	USE Atom carbon handlebar	£44.49 on Ebay	135g
⮜	OFF:	Giant Contact SL bar-ends	-	158g
⮞	ON:	Houson R15 bar-ends	No cost (freebie)	64g
⮜	OFF:	A leftover bolt from the old cantilever brakes	-	5g
Total weight saving:				460g

In other words, I battered the weight-saving rule of 1g/£, by a factor of 10! Hanging it back on the luggage scale returned a figure of 14.1kg though, so there's still work to do...

As luck would have it, The Tank™ needs new tyres. Because it is mostly used on the road, for commuting in inclement weather, I plan to downsize from 26 x 2.00 to 26 x 1.75. I'll be sticking with Schwalbe Land Cruiser Plus though, as they've served me brilliantly. The tyres have been ordered, I'll post here again when they've arrived and I've put them on. Maybe there'll be an "after" photo too, to go with the "before" above. I also plan to save a few cheap grammes with a new bottle cage. Whoop-de-doo, right?

My anti-fascist buff...

...is not a phrase I ever imagined I would use, yet here we are:

Okay, it's not my first choice of colour, but if there's a buff that proclaims me to be both a ciclista and an antifascista then I'm going to wear it.

This comes from Ciclista Ciclista, in Germany, though sadly they seem to have shut up shop for the indefinite. Shame.

"I can see clearly now the rain has gone...."

"...I can see all lobster-claws in my way..."

That is how the song goes, right?

All of which terrible punning serves only to introduce the fact that I bought myself a pair of lobster-claw cycling gloves back in the autumn, thinking I wanted warmer hands when winter came calling. After much open-mouthed gawping at the cost of such gloves from established brands, these are what I ended up getting:

No, I wasn't especially familiar with VeloChampion as a brand either. But these were being sold as new on eBay for a tenner. I took a chance.

And you know what? They're excellent, probably the toastiest cycling gloves I've ever had. The claw design, allowing your fingers to keep each other warm, has been a real boon. In fact, it has taken until this week's sub-zero temperatures for me to get even slightly chilly hands cycling - that's how good these have been. Very comfy too, with well-placed padding. And although they were not advertised or sold as being waterproof, I've completed 25-minute rides in steady rain and emerged with bone-dry hands too. Your mileage may vary in a downpour, but I can only speak for my own experience so far.

Downsides? Well, the glossy black stripe on the back isn't really to my taste, but even that isn't gaudy or bling, is it? That said, the gloves could use some reflective details for these dark winter nights. Oh, and if the cuffs went 5 or 10 millimetres further up my sleeve, I wouldn't complain. But these are minor niggles, for what are properly good gloves and, at the secondhand price I paid for them, an absolute steal.

TLDR: warm, comfortable and even showerproof, these lobster claw gloves are terrific. ★★★★☆

BUY: seems that these are no longer available from VeloChampion, but you might be lucky and find some on eBay like me.

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.

Partially met

You know when you have your annual appraisal at work, and you're supposed to say how many of your objectives for the year you actually met? I always seem to list several as "partially met" as in, yes, I did something but not everything. Looks like my cycling goals for 2024 were similar... remember, I'd set myself these targets:

1. Complete 2,000 miles distance
2. Complete 56,000 feet of elevation
3. Record an annual Eddington of 16 miles (requiring 16 days of 16+ miles)
4. Increase lifetime Eddington from 40 miles to 43 (requiring eight days of 43+ miles)

This is how I ended up:

So I fully met goals 3 and 4, and got pretty close (96.9% of the way) on goal 2. I fell someway short (only 86.5% there) on goal 1 though, distance. Sigh.

Anyway, the other part of the annual appraisal is to look forward and set objectives for the year ahead. My cycling goals are very unoriginal, in that they are retreads of last year's, but since no-one but me reads this, who cares about that? Without further ado then, my cycling goals for 2025 are as follows:

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)

If goals 1 and 2 look watered down from last year, well, they are - SMART goals need to be Achievable, right, we all know that from the usual appraisal spiel. As for goals 3 and 4, they're going to be hard; I currently have no sportives planned and, unlike last year, no marathon cycling holidays planned either. "Stretch goals" though, right? So watch this space, where I will continue to document my failure in a series of graphs, perhaps quarterly this year rather than monthly. What a time to be alive.

Not looking good

Remember those cycling goals for 2024?

1. Complete 2,000 miles distance
2. Complete 56,000 feet of elevation
3. Record an annual Eddington of 16 miles (requiring 16 days of 16+ miles)
4. Increase lifetime Eddington from 40 miles to 43 (requiring eight days of 43+ miles)

Here's an update after eleven months (and a couple of days):

I've already met goals three and four, as reported in September. I guess there's still an outside chance of goal two but goal one is out the window, realistically. I'm not completely giving up, but it's just too cold to be notching the kind of distance I would need to in December. Oh well. Let's see how close I can get, at least. If nothing else, maybe I can get better 2020's 1,726 miles...?

So close

I need three more 17 mile days to notch an annual Eddington of 17 for 2024. And this is what happened on Wednesday.

FMCL!

The wheels have fallen off

Remember those cycling goals for 2024?

1. Complete 2,000 miles distance
2. Complete 56,000 feet of elevation
3. Record an annual Eddington of 16 miles (requiring 16 days of 16+ miles)
4. Increase lifetime Eddington from 40 miles to 43 (requiring eight days of 43+ miles)

Here's an update after ten months:

I've already met goals three and four, as reported in September. But it's goals one and two I have to worry about. I'm still just about in the running on goal two but after a woeful October in which I was away a lot, and so cycled very little, the wheels have completely come off goal one. I'm not giving up, but...I might as well.

Like a bear ...

... I'm putting on weight for the winter ...

... because I had a puncture cycling home from work last week, and I'm sick of them. So, although the foldable Continental Gatorskins my trusty flat-bar was shod with looked like they had a bit of life left in them (Strava tells me they'd done over 2,800 miles, mind), off they came, and on (with a hell of a struggle, a broken tyre lever and a broken Tyre Glider) went a pair of wired Schwalbe Marathon Plus.

Bottom line, I have a heavier but sturdier pair of tyres on now, roughly 50g heavier per wheel. They are grippy though, and feel sturdy. Plus they have the "Smartguard" reflective band on the tyre wall which, on my winter commuter, can only be a good thing.

The eagle-eyed amongst you (you? No-one reads this...) will have spotted the green dustcaps in the picture above. For yes, such was my ire at last week's puncture, I also fitted some Slime road inner tubes, These are much heavier than the Schwalbe Extra Light they replaced, adding about 110g per wheel. On the plus side, they felt quite comfy on this morning's commute which was a relief, as I had worried they'd be less pliant.

So after all those years of shaving every possible gram off the trusty flat-bar, I have just willingly added about 320g - more than seven KitKats! Impact? Well, I felt slower this morning, and it felt like harder work too. However, Strava suggests it has had no great impact on my average speed or top speed, so maybe it was just one of those mornings when it feels like hard work. Not getting any younger, slimmer or fitter, after all...

P.S. I tweeted (or Xed, or whatever) Tyre Glider about the breakage and they sent me a replacement, FOC, in the post. Good customer service, I would say.

Oh dear...

Remember those cycling goals for 2024?

1. Complete 2,000 miles distance
2. Complete 56,000 feet of elevation
3. Record an annual Eddington of 16 miles (requiring 16 days of 16+ miles)
4. Increase lifetime Eddington from 40 miles to 43 (requiring eight days of 43+ miles)

Here's an update after nine months (and three days):

I've already met goals three and four, as reported last month. But it's goals one and two I have to worry about. I'm still just about ahead on goal two but I've fallen behind on goal one, a side-effect of the declining weather and having been away from home (and hence bikes) a lot lately.

Bottom line? There's still a chance on goal two, just. I think goal one is going to be very hard. I'm not giving up, but...

On target?

You'll remember my cycling goals for 2024?

1. Complete 2,000 miles distance
2. Complete 56,000 feet of elevation
3. Record an annual Eddington of 16 miles
4. Increase lifetime Eddington from 40 miles to 43 (requiring eight days of 43+ miles)

Here's an update after eight months:

So every so slightly ahead on goals 1 and 2, though with autumn and winter months to come. But goals 3 and 4 done, thanks to an 5-day epic trek (with 30kg luggage trailer) around Denmark. I've actually done ten days of 43+ miles this year. In fact, I'm only one day away from upping my lifetime Eddington to 44! But I'm four days away from upping my annual Eddington to 17.

It all looks good then. But I need to be cycling more routinely to achieve goals 1 and 2 in the remaining four months...