Sheffield and the fall out

Went up to Sheffield on Wednesday to take one of my sons to a University Open Day, and as he didn't really want me to go round with him I took the opportunity to take my bike and do a loop just a few miles to the west of the university. The loop was 39 miles in total and was really tough - 4100 feet of climbing, windy and hailed a few times. Just about got round but did walk for a few yards a couple of times I am afraid to admit. 

Also had a funny chain "off" about 10 miles from the end - got all jammed up. Seemed OK so carried on and also commuted to work on the Friday although there was some vibration at times when I put some power down - I had a nagging doubt that the bottom bracket bearing is going. Anyway Friday evening when back at home looked at the chain and saw a partially failed link. I fiddled around with my chain splitter and some spare links and made a bit of a pigs ear of it, so did a few other jobs (cleaning, swapping wheels etc that I had planned to do) and had another go successfully, only to then spot another broken link.

At that point the chain went in the scrap bin. It had only done 700 miles, so whether there were some manufacturing faults or I damaged it in the chain off incident I don't know. It was a KMC X10 series chain - (I have used a lot of these in 8 speed guise as well and not had problems before).

Anyway needing a new one fairly sharpish I went to Halfords and got a Shimano 105 chain - bit more expensive than on-line but not overly. Will get a spare in over the next few weeks. Then when fitting the chain and checking the shifting realised that the lower jockey wheel bearing was also shot -put back together for the time being until can get another set, so a more expensive couple of days than I had hoped. Fuel saved so far this year commuting just about covers the spares costs!

Used the Reserve and Collect service at Halfords. They could have made a better job as it took them about 15 minutes to find the chain.