Singlespeed & Fixed Gear - what gear do you run in san francisco?

hey everyone, im wondering what gearing i should run on my fixed gear in san francisco, what with the hills and all. i'm planning on riding down 19th from Judah to SFSU pretty often, and it's uphill all the way to quintara, so what do you think? i was considering a 42/16 but i wanted to consult you fellas first. thanks!

takeshi

i second this quote... but for my s/s mtb... i rode up tavaral from ocean beach to 19th... which is not the same ride from 44th ave to sfsu... takeshi did you just move here?

i moved up here recently for school, i live on 18th and judah.

I ride all over town - mostly outer Richmond to downtown. 46x18 and 46x17 both work well for me. For more stop and go I prefer the 46x18. Also, I urge you to ride down to the little bike/ped path that runs between the tow Great Highways and take that to Sloat until Sunset and continue until school. Might be a little longer but the scenery is a thousand times better

that's what i've been taking and it's pretty sweet... although trying to cross over to lakeshore on foot is sketchy... biking it isn't too bad....

make sure you run a big gear. if you want to be riding with traffic on 19th (which could be a lot of fun) you need to be able to average the cars' speed. just around the biggity bay, i ride a 44x17, but if i were to take 19th everyday i would want to run something like a 52x16. At 80 rpm's you'd average about 20-25 mph.

I ride fixie to school and sometimes it's hard as hell to spin my cranks.

49/18 - works great for me. I also rode 48/16 for awhile, but that was annoying not only because it's fairly large, but it's also a 3:1 ratio which causes you to get flatspots. I live in the mission but ride all over. I rode to the top of the Marin headlands on 48/17 a few months ago. It hurt.

On my one speeds I shoot for aproximately a 54 inch gear.

Popular gears for the city seem to 42x16 and 48x18.

A lot depends on many hills you see on a daily basis. Running 48x18 I can just about get to the top of Bernal, Page St hill etc but its tough.

You don't want to run much over 70 gear inches IMHO if you want to get around the whole city. If you're just running around the flats you can go higher.

I ride through many parts of the city with 42-16, great general gear imo.

48 15...

The hills will get smaller as you learn to beat them down.

Think "Kill Hill"