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Jen,
I have the Specialized shims on my 105 brake levers, I also have an ITM Elle bar. The shims fit in very easily (well it looked easy when the SO fitted them ;) ). They basically "pull" the lever slightly for you, I think you just pull the lever and insert them in and it prevents the lever returning to its original position (they are inserted underneath the bit that says Shimano 105 on the top of the lever if that makes any sense). Once they were inserted there was an amount of adjustment made to the cables for the brakes to adjust them to the new position. When you first insert the shims your brakes will be on the rim, you need to adjust the cables to back them off a bit. There is a technical term for all this (involving the phrase "cable pull" somewhere but it completely escapes me at the minute :o ).
The Elle bars have quite a shallow drop in comparison to the SOs road bars which is good, however I didn't find they made the reach to the brakes any easier, hence the need for shims. I have short fingers rather than really small hands. I specced the 40cm wide bar and actually find it a bit on the narrow side however I think that has a lot to do with my MTB background, both my MTBs have 26 inch wide riser bars on them. I never really got the chance to ride my road bike last year as I got it just before they started salting the roads (I use it for commuting) so I think some of the struggle with the narrowness of the bar was due to adjusting to the road bike position from the MTB. I'll be getting the road bike ready this weeked :D and will persevere for a bit, however the 3T Eva bar looks more tempting.
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I have a WSD Bianchi that came with women's bars. I must have wide shoulders becuase they didn't feel good to me. I had to swap them out for wider bars.
