The Price Of A Lighter Bike

This blog post starts out quite sensibly, but persevere - there’s some silliness at the end…

Some people are still obsessed with the weight of their bikes. I reckon it costs between 50p and £1 per gramme to lighten a bike.

For example, with road bikes…

• Giant Defy 4 ‘12 - £600, and 10.22kg

• Giant Defy 2 - £800 and 9.84kg. i.e. 380g for £200 - £0.52 per gramme

• Giant Defy 1 - £1,000 and £9.54kg. i.e. another 300g lighter for £0.66 per gramme. Total weight saving 680g (equivalent to one bottle of water) for £400. So that’s £0.59 per gramme.

• Giant Defy Composite - £1,250 and 9.42kg. i.e. another 120g lighter for £2.08 per gramme. Total weight saving 800g, for £650 spent - £0.81 per gramme.

Above this sort of price, manufacturers and shops just stop listing the weight. The deal becomes all about the aerodynamics, exotic materials used in components, and the quality of those components.

Or how about a Brompton bike?

• Brompton M3L - three speed versatile folder at £760 and 11.71kg

• Brompton M3L-X - pretty much the same bike, but with titanium forks and rear triangle, and a lighter seat post. It’s 10.75kg and £1,310 - a saving of 960g for £550, which is £0.57 per gramme

This madness has to end. The heaviest component on the bike is the rider, so that’s the obvious place to start. Trouble is, a lot of people struggle to resist the lures of cake and pies and beer.

• Greggs Pasty - £1.50, 560 cals, equivalent to 160g on the bike.
• Big Mac - £2.90, 490 cals, equivalent to 140g on the bike.
• Pint of Guinness - £2.80, 210 cals, equivalent to 60g on the bike.
• Belgian bun - £1.40, 420 cals, equivalent to 120g on the bike.

So here’s the deal. Rather than spend money on lightening the bike, you could NOT spend money on pies and cakes. The trouble is, you’ll be missing out on all those tasty, sugary, fatty sensations.

It’s to satisfy this need that I’m establishing the Lard Offset Trading Market (LOT-M). Here’s how it works…

1. You fancy a pie / piece of cake / whatever, but you want to keep your bike lightweight
2. Rather than buy the pie yourself, you log onto LOT-M (there’ll be an app for that), where people can bid in a reverse auction to eat the pie for you.
   • Bidders will probably be car drivers who obviously don’t really care about their weight, or people training for Ironman, who can obviously eat whatever they want and still struggle to maintain their body-weight.
3. You pay the winning bidder to buy and eat the pie, and they describe the taste and sensation to you IN GREAT DETAIL. This can be done over the phone, by internet chat, or for premium subscribers by video link.
4. Pie eating will be independently audited and verified, with a full certification and traceability process in place.

So you save the hundreds of pounds that you’d spend on cutting your bike’s weight, and getting all the fun of eating pies!

I’m sure this is a real winner, and this time next year we’ll all be millionaires.

Filed under: Bike Culture

Tags: bike weight, Brompton, Brompton Bike, diet, fat, Greggs, Guinness, MacDonalds, photos, road bikes, titanium