While giving my bike a little once over last night I discovered that I had broken one of the teeth off the 13T sprocket. This left me with a bit of a dilemma. Do I leave it and hope it can last 924 miles without any issues, or do I fix it? After pondered over the situation today I decided that the best option would be to fix it. I had already thought about replacing my small 39T chainring on the front to help with some of the hills but decided against it in the end. Although I will be carrying a lot of weight on the back of my bike i figured that i could manage with what ive got.

Seeing as I was now going to be doing work on the rear cassette I decided that rather than just replacing the 13T sprocket I would replace the whole cassette and improve my gear ratios at the same time. I was currently running 11-12-13-14-15-17-19-21-23 and after a quick trip to the local bike shop I bought Shimano Deore 11-32 Cassette giving me 11-12-14-16-18-21-24-28-32. This new cassette will still give me the speed on the flat while in top gear but should now give me that little bit extra while going up some of the steeper hills. When I get a bit of spare time I will take the opportunity to give the old cassette a good polish while its off!

5 minutes changing the cassette and another 5 minutes tinkering with the derailed and the new cassette is looking rather nice! I’ll give it a proper little test ride tomorrow just to check it’s all working OK.